An Excerpt From My Six Months At Sea.
(I'll Put Pictures In When I get Around To It. This was written when I was 20 years old) If there was one thing I learned from spending six months traveling around Alaska on a Crabbing boat was what a hard days work really entails... 9-5 .. pish posh.. thats nothing.. We sometimes worked 40 hours straight.. When the fishing is good, you work until its not good anymore. Makes me realize just how easy I got these days now that I set my own hours.
A small warn yellow duffle bag slid down the shoot following an Alpine Lowe backpack. Pushing through the herd of people I grabbed by bags and headed out to the white Chevy Z71 in the parking lot. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, my captain drove me to his Seattle house explaining that he filled the positions for the remaining crew with
a kid from Oregon and the same engineer as the previous summer. I crashed on the couch of the captain’s house in Seattle for the night. Captain is an interesting fellow. Having to keep everything in order constantly he was nearly obsessive compulsive, but it worked well for him because of what he does for a living. Owning two houses and playing in the stock market, he diligently keeps himself busy with either construction or fishing. His little poodle of a dog is the one thing that made my head turn. It just didn’t fit. Here was a man, a construction worker, a commercial fishing boat captain, yelling “here Ginger” at his rabbit sized poodle. (Above, the crabbers lined up at Seattle's Fishermans Terminal, I worked on the Norseman II, a 120' crabbing boat). He obviously was a man who was willing to take chances to get ahead in life; this is where my respect for him came from. In the boom years of the crabbing industry, Captain was out there in the ferocious Bering Sea in the ill-equipped boats of the time. Sometimes working the near constant launching and hauling of crab pots for all but the holidays. He gave me a chance, a New Mexican boy who had seen waves in National Geographic articles about the surf.
The morning rolled around and a quick walk several houses down the steep street provided excellent Danish’s at their local market. The three of us loaded the Chevy with rakes, shovels and wheel barrow and drove a couple miles down to Fisherman’s Terminal. We pulled along a small seining boat tied neatly to the wooden dock. In the middle of a serious overhaul, the boat had little paint and tools sprawled acros
s the deck. A kid jumped out of the boat and hopped into the bed of the truck wedging himself between the wheel barrow and cab. I asked what was going on and he replied since he was letting me stay at his house until we were ready to leave on our voyage, I was going to help him move some wood chips to landscape his other suburban home. Fair enough I suppose. (To the left is a plane wreck we came across in the Aleutian Islands) Driving through Seattle, Captain pointed out buildings he did construction on during the winter months. Half an hour passed as we weaved through the horrid Seattle traffic until we arrived at his second home.
Captain built this house. Its long gravel driveway passed a large pile of woodchips and neatly mowed grass as it led to his dream home. This house was the one he was supposed to grow old in with his woman. Things obviously didn’t work out for whatever reason since this house was rented out and he lived as a single in his other home. Moving a little wood wasn’t a bad price to pay but this was a pile high enough to consider mountaineering.
We all hopped out of the truck and I met the guy who jumped on at the dock. Lars, A muscular kid about my age, was from Denmark. He had heard about the vast abundance of money available in the fishing industry and was in the United States on a work visa for the summer. Having lived in various countries around the world Lars was intriguing because of his wealth of knowledge and captivating stories. I tried to remember what he said as we started tell jokes and stories as we started to spread out the wet smelly wood chips. Near the summit of the chip pile a yellow dump truck moved along with its load of chips. Pushing the overloaded truck along a young boy, who lived in the house was attempting to help but, was getting in the way. Somewhere around 30 yards of damp heavy woodchips were spread out in a manner of hours and we headed back to his other home for the evening. After I showered, we baked some sockeye on a propane grill. Eating the fish, we sat on the back deck of his house watching the sun set. Night came pretty quick with a full stomach of salmon and I crashed quietly on the couch nudging the rather vocal white poodle out of my spot.
The next day came and again the little walked provided several freshly made pudding filled donuts. We sat around the living room watching the morning news while the Australian read previous day’s Wall Street Journal.
The boat slammed down on wave, waking me in the middle of a gale. What day is it? How long have I been l
aying here? Four days have past since we left Seattle’s Fisherman’s Terminal. My bunk, one of four crammed into a room most people wouldn’t consider large enough for a bathroom is drenched in sweat. Dehydrated and groggy I wrestled out my nest of sweat and stumbled out into the dining area. A pan tightly fastened to the stove was filling the boat with the smell of onions, black pepper and meat. My stomach quenches and I grab onto the wall for balance as we head into yet another wave. The diesel caterpillar engine and generators whine and fill the air with noise. Where is everyone? I smell cigarette smoke--I bet the engineer is smoking under the protected deck. I work my way up to the narrow stairs into wheel house where I find the other deck hand and captain laughing as the bow of the boat pounded down into another wave sending water screaming at the thick windows of the forward house. They were enjoying the gale. Captain smiles and says “well guess who woke up”? How long have I been out? I mutter. For nearly four days I hadn’t moved an inch. Feeling a little better I retreated back down stairs and followed the smell of smoke outside. The engineer was right where I thought he was. I longed for a cigarette but was satisfied with the mist from the broken waves filling my lungs and soothing my face. Another big wave hit and I grabbed onto a bar to keep me from loosing my balance. I ask myself why on earth would I get a job on fishing boat when I knowingly get seasick; again nonetheless. A painful dry heaving session left me weak, but remarkably, I felt better.
Eight days had pa
ssed since we had left Seattle and vomiting was all but a memory as I stood out on the bow looking with enthusiasm as we approach the land which I have grown to love, Alaska. Over the sky-scraping mountains the sun turned the clouds endless shades of pink and red. Night fell and I would awake at our destination, King Cove, Alaska.
I leaped out of bed after the captain called up and throw on my shoes and headed out on the deck. Tying up the 120 foot boat is not very difficult but the trick is to handle the three inch thick rope without having your hand ripped off by the boats momentum. With the captain yelling from the wheel house the boat docked and I jumped down to the dock to stand on land. Lightly swaying as I walked to the pay phone to call my girlfriend and let her know I made it back to Alaska.
Our emergency getaway craft was something of a joke. A hole was put into the floor of the 12' LUND skiff by forklift leaving the aluminum hull with a baseball sized hole. With a few screws and plate, the hole was carefully sealed and our vintage smoking 2 stroke outboard attached. A strike began as opening day started and lasted for nearly a week as fisherman negotiated their price with the large companies. A restless felling set in and we all went exploring on the nearby Unga Island. I fished for halibut off the boat and for dollies in the creeks the flowed from the volcano. We eventually were put on contract as the fisherman started to settle and were sent to Bristol Bay. The Bering Sea was quiet this time, thankfully, because it has ability to become some of the deadliest water in the world. For several seemingly endless weeks of crane driving and making trips to and from the bay area and even making trip back up the peninsula a good day to take fish in the shadow of the smoking Pavlof Volcano; which turned out to be more than we bargained for.
Arriving early at volcano, the lone two fishing boats hadn’t caught anything yet so it was a day off in the shade. With the binoculars we spotted a small creek running into the ocean about a half mile off. The engineer and I decided to take our barely floating skiff in for a fishing trip seeking the delicious relative to the Arctic Char, the Dollie. We pulled up onto the shore and walked up the little beach to the top of the little hill to take a look at the creek and its origins. A massive Coastal Brown Bear stood out against shrubbery 200yards off and looked at us nonchalantly and turned its head walking up the steep hill out of sight. The engineer said he will be back but for now, its time to go fishing. Our captain watching the bear in the binoculars from the boat had tried to radio us the sighting, but to no avail since our radio was left neatly packed in the skiff. I put on a little spinner and threw out a cast. Retrieving the large Pink Salmon with the small light weight rod proved time consuming and fun, but I wanted the Dollies. The little creek swarmed with salmon and with every cast I either snagged a salmon or one aggressively tried to swallow my spinner whole. Discouraged thinking there were no Dollies I moved into in the faster water and immediately had a nice little Dollie hooked. The grass, near shoulder height was hard to move around in so I kept to the shore of the creek where I stepped in bears tracks wherever I moved. Looking up stream at the engineer to see how he was doing a large brown head popped up out of the grass a mere 100 yards behind him and then disappeared. I motioned to him that the bear was on the creek up ahead of him so the engineer retreated back towards me. I am weary of such a potentially dangerous invisible animal near I constantly looked around while I cast for the Dollies. Every ten minutes or so the large bear would stand on its hind legs and look around, it was then that we would spot him and then move around accordingly; during the ten minutes in between sightings we had no idea where he was. After not sighting our friend for a shot while we stepped up on the little hill we originally climbed over to try to spot our large advancing invisible bear. We could not see him, but when we turned and looked out at our boat, it was not where we left it. The tide had come in and dislodged our boat from its position up on the rocks and was floating out in the water several hundred feet offshore. Quickly grabbing my fishing rod we ran down to the shore closest to our floating skiff. I waded out waist deep and started casting out to the boat trying snagging something in hopes of reeling it back in. The spinner was too light and I could not cast the distance that was required. While stripping down to his underwear the engineer told me to get him a fire going because when he got back he would be cold. I immediately went on a search for wood while trying to keep an eye out for out friend and the engineer. A daunting task considering there is not a single tree naturally growing in this environment. With several small pieces of drift wood and a portion of my pants the fire was started. The engineer had gained ground on our drifting skiff. The riptide was not only moving our boat further out to sea but down the shore line and I quickly found fire in the wrong location. I ran down the beach several hundred yards and started the fire building task once more. Ten minutes had passed and I could see the 40 degree water had the engineer slowing down. The skiff clearly was clearly out of reach. I yelled to the engineer to come back and he stopped swimming and treaded water facing me. I could barely hear his weak voice but the message was clear, “I can’t make it, come get me”. The biggest decision of my life is right before my eyes. If I swim out I could reach him but could I make it back? I decided that if I swam for him I would be in the exact same predicament that he was in, so I encouraged him to swim in on his own. For whatever reason confused or disoriented he started swimming further out. I kept yelling and eventually coaxed him in to the point where I new I could safely get out and back. With the engineer curled up around the little fire, I noticed the anchored on our main boat had been pulled and the remaining two on board maneuvering their way to the skiff. I ran back up the beech and got the engineers clothes and put them on. His body was like that on an ice burg, light blue and cold. After having to wait for the skiff to float into deep water before safely perusing, the two had the skiff in hand. Vintage as the outboard was, with the throttle wide open the skiff bounced from wave to wave towards shore. The deckhand smiled and said “Ugh! I made fire!” pertaining to the movie watched the night before with Tom Hanks. He soon realized the situation and became serious as we lifted the semi-conscious engineer into th
e skiff and whined the outboard back to the boat. The captain who had seen the bear and saw the engineer on the shore but not in the water assumed the bear attacked and was surprised not to see blood. I told him he had been in the water for nearly a half hour. The captain hopped into a bunk with the engineer and we covered them with what blankets and sleeping bags we could find. Eventually the engineer regained this coherent ness and before me and the other deckhand had returned from the creek again with the fish we had left he was outside smoking a cigarette waiting to gut his catch. A scary scene and definitely a clear memory for years to come, the fisherman showed up with their fish. I worked all night moving fish with the crane and vacuum until the fishing boats were empty. We delivered our fish and quickly we’re sent back up to Bristol Bay.
After receiving no fish at the Nushagak River we were told to head out to Dutch Harbor (Unalaska Island) in the Aleutian Islands. Immediately following the call for Dutch Harbor the anchor was pulled and a course across the Bering Sea was scribbled into the log book.
Looking at the weathered sea charts it was easy to determine that we were further out in the Bering Sea then the King
Crabbers go. With that in mind I was a little nervous as I tried to climb into my bunk as the floor moved back and forth. I awoke for my shift of driving the boat to find we were headed in the wrong direction. Apparently in the night another call was placed and we were sent back to King Cove. Arriving in King Cove we were handed a few boxes of gear and sent back out towards Dutch Harbor. Unimak Pass is nestled between Unimak Island and the rest of the true Aleutian Islands and is where the warmer Pacific Ocean butts up against the frigid Bering Sea. This is where our only obstacle lays; Unimak Pass. With a little wind a froth of waves and irregular currents often turn deadly. This is where the weather captain says, “...is sometimes so bad that you can not tell if you are going forwards or backwards.” We passed the last smoking volcano on the Alaskan peninsula and started our voyage into the Aleutian Islands. The glossy water swirled as we headed into the pass but not even a single gust of wind jutted out from any of the volcano’s and our pass was uneventful. The dolphins raced the boat until their boredom ended the show. We settle down in the wheel house smelling the cooking turkey in the oven and watched the humpback whales breech off in the distance blowing water high into the sky. Occasionally a pod of killer whales would appear and show their massive 5 foot long drooping dorsal fins only to dive again.
Dutch Harbor’s night lights were more inviting than the water as the diesels engines were cut down to move up to the dock. We tied up to the same dock that during WW II the Japanese sunk one our large Navy ships. WWII unfortunately is not the only event that sunk ships in the area. Routine storms pound in from the Bering Sea crushing sturdy boats with winds pressing 100mph and 50 foot waves. The shore lines show all over the Aleutians, the importance of paying close attention to weather patterns. The skeletons of boats that never came back to the harbor are seen occasionally, rusting away the bunks that once held a hard working crew.
Morning came and showed exactly why I have grown to love this land. The beyond green hills with hill mountainsides sparsely covered with snow even during these summer month of July The eerie island still sports machine gun dugouts throughout the town of Unalaska and scattered around its green hills. A true fisherman’s town, Unalaska and its surrounding water has arguably the best halibut fishing in the world. Dutch Harbor, the hub of commercial fishing in Alaska and is home to the infamous Elbow Room. The bar caters too many of the sea going men who pass through this center community, waving the pockets full of money, hard earned from pulling their crab pots and surviving the season. The bar is properly named for the many rough and rowdy men who want to get in a little fun before taking on the Bering Sea once more.
We awaited the call as the small planes circled around the bay in attempt to find the enormous schools of fish coming to spawn. With a clear go, all the boats cluttering the bay no longer idled. Nets littered the harbor and the fisherman started the daunting task of pulling their catch back to the boat. The disappointed look of the warn fisherman’s face is saddening. Some of them even came thousands of miles for the 15 minutes of Dutch Harbor
herring fishing for nothing. A pile of jellyfish and other useless sea dwelling critters filled the bottoms of many of held the sad faces they will carry home. There were however, the few out of the bunch who hit the big leagues and had well over a hundred thousand pounds of herring, so much that they could not pull their nets on board. Our diesel kicked into gear and we pulled up to a boat with a net so heavy that the edge of the boat is only mere centimeters of going under water. (Above: Makushin Bay, a halibut fishermans dream) I lift the huge vacuum tube with the crane lowering one end into the net to the adjacent boat and turn on the Trans Vac pumping herring strait out of the water into our tanks filled with chilled water. Fishing boats waited and one by one as the Tender boats wondered around and vacuumed up there fish for them and started to head back home. The skies, most places filled with seagulls where littered with Bald Eagles swooping down picking up missed herring with their talons. We started back for King Cove, our heavy 
load lowering the boat into the water making the ride in the building wave’s bearable smoother. Arriving back in King Cove as the weather deteriorated, I happily climbed on shore and called my girlfriend. Over the next few days our herring load was emptied and we retreated off the dock in the bay and anchored up.
A horrid fishing season was leaving many people edgy about further contracts and the potential of being dropped from their current one. Standing on the deck of company’s favorite boat was soothing. After nearly a week of sitting on anchor staring at land we got a call and were told to report to Prince William Sound.
It was blowing hard when we left gusting well into the gale status but, luckily it was at our tail and made for a faster and smoother ride. Within a day we were working our way behind Kodiak Island. It is nice to get into the land of trees once more. The shore lines cluttered with trees and small creeks
(I'll Put Pictures In When I get Around To It. This was written when I was 20 years old) If there was one thing I learned from spending six months traveling around Alaska on a Crabbing boat was what a hard days work really entails... 9-5 .. pish posh.. thats nothing.. We sometimes worked 40 hours straight.. When the fishing is good, you work until its not good anymore. Makes me realize just how easy I got these days now that I set my own hours.
A small warn yellow duffle bag slid down the shoot following an Alpine Lowe backpack. Pushing through the herd of people I grabbed by bags and headed out to the white Chevy Z71 in the parking lot. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, my captain drove me to his Seattle house explaining that he filled the positions for the remaining crew with
a kid from Oregon and the same engineer as the previous summer. I crashed on the couch of the captain’s house in Seattle for the night. Captain is an interesting fellow. Having to keep everything in order constantly he was nearly obsessive compulsive, but it worked well for him because of what he does for a living. Owning two houses and playing in the stock market, he diligently keeps himself busy with either construction or fishing. His little poodle of a dog is the one thing that made my head turn. It just didn’t fit. Here was a man, a construction worker, a commercial fishing boat captain, yelling “here Ginger” at his rabbit sized poodle. (Above, the crabbers lined up at Seattle's Fishermans Terminal, I worked on the Norseman II, a 120' crabbing boat). He obviously was a man who was willing to take chances to get ahead in life; this is where my respect for him came from. In the boom years of the crabbing industry, Captain was out there in the ferocious Bering Sea in the ill-equipped boats of the time. Sometimes working the near constant launching and hauling of crab pots for all but the holidays. He gave me a chance, a New Mexican boy who had seen waves in National Geographic articles about the surf.The morning rolled around and a quick walk several houses down the steep street provided excellent Danish’s at their local market. The three of us loaded the Chevy with rakes, shovels and wheel barrow and drove a couple miles down to Fisherman’s Terminal. We pulled along a small seining boat tied neatly to the wooden dock. In the middle of a serious overhaul, the boat had little paint and tools sprawled acros
s the deck. A kid jumped out of the boat and hopped into the bed of the truck wedging himself between the wheel barrow and cab. I asked what was going on and he replied since he was letting me stay at his house until we were ready to leave on our voyage, I was going to help him move some wood chips to landscape his other suburban home. Fair enough I suppose. (To the left is a plane wreck we came across in the Aleutian Islands) Driving through Seattle, Captain pointed out buildings he did construction on during the winter months. Half an hour passed as we weaved through the horrid Seattle traffic until we arrived at his second home.Captain built this house. Its long gravel driveway passed a large pile of woodchips and neatly mowed grass as it led to his dream home. This house was the one he was supposed to grow old in with his woman. Things obviously didn’t work out for whatever reason since this house was rented out and he lived as a single in his other home. Moving a little wood wasn’t a bad price to pay but this was a pile high enough to consider mountaineering.
We all hopped out of the truck and I met the guy who jumped on at the dock. Lars, A muscular kid about my age, was from Denmark. He had heard about the vast abundance of money available in the fishing industry and was in the United States on a work visa for the summer. Having lived in various countries around the world Lars was intriguing because of his wealth of knowledge and captivating stories. I tried to remember what he said as we started tell jokes and stories as we started to spread out the wet smelly wood chips. Near the summit of the chip pile a yellow dump truck moved along with its load of chips. Pushing the overloaded truck along a young boy, who lived in the house was attempting to help but, was getting in the way. Somewhere around 30 yards of damp heavy woodchips were spread out in a manner of hours and we headed back to his other home for the evening. After I showered, we baked some sockeye on a propane grill. Eating the fish, we sat on the back deck of his house watching the sun set. Night came pretty quick with a full stomach of salmon and I crashed quietly on the couch nudging the rather vocal white poodle out of my spot.
The next day came and again the little walked provided several freshly made pudding filled donuts. We sat around the living room watching the morning news while the Australian read previous day’s Wall Street Journal.
The boat slammed down on wave, waking me in the middle of a gale. What day is it? How long have I been l
aying here? Four days have past since we left Seattle’s Fisherman’s Terminal. My bunk, one of four crammed into a room most people wouldn’t consider large enough for a bathroom is drenched in sweat. Dehydrated and groggy I wrestled out my nest of sweat and stumbled out into the dining area. A pan tightly fastened to the stove was filling the boat with the smell of onions, black pepper and meat. My stomach quenches and I grab onto the wall for balance as we head into yet another wave. The diesel caterpillar engine and generators whine and fill the air with noise. Where is everyone? I smell cigarette smoke--I bet the engineer is smoking under the protected deck. I work my way up to the narrow stairs into wheel house where I find the other deck hand and captain laughing as the bow of the boat pounded down into another wave sending water screaming at the thick windows of the forward house. They were enjoying the gale. Captain smiles and says “well guess who woke up”? How long have I been out? I mutter. For nearly four days I hadn’t moved an inch. Feeling a little better I retreated back down stairs and followed the smell of smoke outside. The engineer was right where I thought he was. I longed for a cigarette but was satisfied with the mist from the broken waves filling my lungs and soothing my face. Another big wave hit and I grabbed onto a bar to keep me from loosing my balance. I ask myself why on earth would I get a job on fishing boat when I knowingly get seasick; again nonetheless. A painful dry heaving session left me weak, but remarkably, I felt better.Eight days had pa
ssed since we had left Seattle and vomiting was all but a memory as I stood out on the bow looking with enthusiasm as we approach the land which I have grown to love, Alaska. Over the sky-scraping mountains the sun turned the clouds endless shades of pink and red. Night fell and I would awake at our destination, King Cove, Alaska.I leaped out of bed after the captain called up and throw on my shoes and headed out on the deck. Tying up the 120 foot boat is not very difficult but the trick is to handle the three inch thick rope without having your hand ripped off by the boats momentum. With the captain yelling from the wheel house the boat docked and I jumped down to the dock to stand on land. Lightly swaying as I walked to the pay phone to call my girlfriend and let her know I made it back to Alaska.
Our emergency getaway craft was something of a joke. A hole was put into the floor of the 12' LUND skiff by forklift leaving the aluminum hull with a baseball sized hole. With a few screws and plate, the hole was carefully sealed and our vintage smoking 2 stroke outboard attached. A strike began as opening day started and lasted for nearly a week as fisherman negotiated their price with the large companies. A restless felling set in and we all went exploring on the nearby Unga Island. I fished for halibut off the boat and for dollies in the creeks the flowed from the volcano. We eventually were put on contract as the fisherman started to settle and were sent to Bristol Bay. The Bering Sea was quiet this time, thankfully, because it has ability to become some of the deadliest water in the world. For several seemingly endless weeks of crane driving and making trips to and from the bay area and even making trip back up the peninsula a good day to take fish in the shadow of the smoking Pavlof Volcano; which turned out to be more than we bargained for.
Arriving early at volcano, the lone two fishing boats hadn’t caught anything yet so it was a day off in the shade. With the binoculars we spotted a small creek running into the ocean about a half mile off. The engineer and I decided to take our barely floating skiff in for a fishing trip seeking the delicious relative to the Arctic Char, the Dollie. We pulled up onto the shore and walked up the little beach to the top of the little hill to take a look at the creek and its origins. A massive Coastal Brown Bear stood out against shrubbery 200yards off and looked at us nonchalantly and turned its head walking up the steep hill out of sight. The engineer said he will be back but for now, its time to go fishing. Our captain watching the bear in the binoculars from the boat had tried to radio us the sighting, but to no avail since our radio was left neatly packed in the skiff. I put on a little spinner and threw out a cast. Retrieving the large Pink Salmon with the small light weight rod proved time consuming and fun, but I wanted the Dollies. The little creek swarmed with salmon and with every cast I either snagged a salmon or one aggressively tried to swallow my spinner whole. Discouraged thinking there were no Dollies I moved into in the faster water and immediately had a nice little Dollie hooked. The grass, near shoulder height was hard to move around in so I kept to the shore of the creek where I stepped in bears tracks wherever I moved. Looking up stream at the engineer to see how he was doing a large brown head popped up out of the grass a mere 100 yards behind him and then disappeared. I motioned to him that the bear was on the creek up ahead of him so the engineer retreated back towards me. I am weary of such a potentially dangerous invisible animal near I constantly looked around while I cast for the Dollies. Every ten minutes or so the large bear would stand on its hind legs and look around, it was then that we would spot him and then move around accordingly; during the ten minutes in between sightings we had no idea where he was. After not sighting our friend for a shot while we stepped up on the little hill we originally climbed over to try to spot our large advancing invisible bear. We could not see him, but when we turned and looked out at our boat, it was not where we left it. The tide had come in and dislodged our boat from its position up on the rocks and was floating out in the water several hundred feet offshore. Quickly grabbing my fishing rod we ran down to the shore closest to our floating skiff. I waded out waist deep and started casting out to the boat trying snagging something in hopes of reeling it back in. The spinner was too light and I could not cast the distance that was required. While stripping down to his underwear the engineer told me to get him a fire going because when he got back he would be cold. I immediately went on a search for wood while trying to keep an eye out for out friend and the engineer. A daunting task considering there is not a single tree naturally growing in this environment. With several small pieces of drift wood and a portion of my pants the fire was started. The engineer had gained ground on our drifting skiff. The riptide was not only moving our boat further out to sea but down the shore line and I quickly found fire in the wrong location. I ran down the beach several hundred yards and started the fire building task once more. Ten minutes had passed and I could see the 40 degree water had the engineer slowing down. The skiff clearly was clearly out of reach. I yelled to the engineer to come back and he stopped swimming and treaded water facing me. I could barely hear his weak voice but the message was clear, “I can’t make it, come get me”. The biggest decision of my life is right before my eyes. If I swim out I could reach him but could I make it back? I decided that if I swam for him I would be in the exact same predicament that he was in, so I encouraged him to swim in on his own. For whatever reason confused or disoriented he started swimming further out. I kept yelling and eventually coaxed him in to the point where I new I could safely get out and back. With the engineer curled up around the little fire, I noticed the anchored on our main boat had been pulled and the remaining two on board maneuvering their way to the skiff. I ran back up the beech and got the engineers clothes and put them on. His body was like that on an ice burg, light blue and cold. After having to wait for the skiff to float into deep water before safely perusing, the two had the skiff in hand. Vintage as the outboard was, with the throttle wide open the skiff bounced from wave to wave towards shore. The deckhand smiled and said “Ugh! I made fire!” pertaining to the movie watched the night before with Tom Hanks. He soon realized the situation and became serious as we lifted the semi-conscious engineer into th
e skiff and whined the outboard back to the boat. The captain who had seen the bear and saw the engineer on the shore but not in the water assumed the bear attacked and was surprised not to see blood. I told him he had been in the water for nearly a half hour. The captain hopped into a bunk with the engineer and we covered them with what blankets and sleeping bags we could find. Eventually the engineer regained this coherent ness and before me and the other deckhand had returned from the creek again with the fish we had left he was outside smoking a cigarette waiting to gut his catch. A scary scene and definitely a clear memory for years to come, the fisherman showed up with their fish. I worked all night moving fish with the crane and vacuum until the fishing boats were empty. We delivered our fish and quickly we’re sent back up to Bristol Bay.After receiving no fish at the Nushagak River we were told to head out to Dutch Harbor (Unalaska Island) in the Aleutian Islands. Immediately following the call for Dutch Harbor the anchor was pulled and a course across the Bering Sea was scribbled into the log book.
Looking at the weathered sea charts it was easy to determine that we were further out in the Bering Sea then the King
Crabbers go. With that in mind I was a little nervous as I tried to climb into my bunk as the floor moved back and forth. I awoke for my shift of driving the boat to find we were headed in the wrong direction. Apparently in the night another call was placed and we were sent back to King Cove. Arriving in King Cove we were handed a few boxes of gear and sent back out towards Dutch Harbor. Unimak Pass is nestled between Unimak Island and the rest of the true Aleutian Islands and is where the warmer Pacific Ocean butts up against the frigid Bering Sea. This is where our only obstacle lays; Unimak Pass. With a little wind a froth of waves and irregular currents often turn deadly. This is where the weather captain says, “...is sometimes so bad that you can not tell if you are going forwards or backwards.” We passed the last smoking volcano on the Alaskan peninsula and started our voyage into the Aleutian Islands. The glossy water swirled as we headed into the pass but not even a single gust of wind jutted out from any of the volcano’s and our pass was uneventful. The dolphins raced the boat until their boredom ended the show. We settle down in the wheel house smelling the cooking turkey in the oven and watched the humpback whales breech off in the distance blowing water high into the sky. Occasionally a pod of killer whales would appear and show their massive 5 foot long drooping dorsal fins only to dive again.
Dutch Harbor’s night lights were more inviting than the water as the diesels engines were cut down to move up to the dock. We tied up to the same dock that during WW II the Japanese sunk one our large Navy ships. WWII unfortunately is not the only event that sunk ships in the area. Routine storms pound in from the Bering Sea crushing sturdy boats with winds pressing 100mph and 50 foot waves. The shore lines show all over the Aleutians, the importance of paying close attention to weather patterns. The skeletons of boats that never came back to the harbor are seen occasionally, rusting away the bunks that once held a hard working crew.Morning came and showed exactly why I have grown to love this land. The beyond green hills with hill mountainsides sparsely covered with snow even during these summer month of July The eerie island still sports machine gun dugouts throughout the town of Unalaska and scattered around its green hills. A true fisherman’s town, Unalaska and its surrounding water has arguably the best halibut fishing in the world. Dutch Harbor, the hub of commercial fishing in Alaska and is home to the infamous Elbow Room. The bar caters too many of the sea going men who pass through this center community, waving the pockets full of money, hard earned from pulling their crab pots and surviving the season. The bar is properly named for the many rough and rowdy men who want to get in a little fun before taking on the Bering Sea once more.
We awaited the call as the small planes circled around the bay in attempt to find the enormous schools of fish coming to spawn. With a clear go, all the boats cluttering the bay no longer idled. Nets littered the harbor and the fisherman started the daunting task of pulling their catch back to the boat. The disappointed look of the warn fisherman’s face is saddening. Some of them even came thousands of miles for the 15 minutes of Dutch Harbor
herring fishing for nothing. A pile of jellyfish and other useless sea dwelling critters filled the bottoms of many of held the sad faces they will carry home. There were however, the few out of the bunch who hit the big leagues and had well over a hundred thousand pounds of herring, so much that they could not pull their nets on board. Our diesel kicked into gear and we pulled up to a boat with a net so heavy that the edge of the boat is only mere centimeters of going under water. (Above: Makushin Bay, a halibut fishermans dream) I lift the huge vacuum tube with the crane lowering one end into the net to the adjacent boat and turn on the Trans Vac pumping herring strait out of the water into our tanks filled with chilled water. Fishing boats waited and one by one as the Tender boats wondered around and vacuumed up there fish for them and started to head back home. The skies, most places filled with seagulls where littered with Bald Eagles swooping down picking up missed herring with their talons. We started back for King Cove, our heavy 
load lowering the boat into the water making the ride in the building wave’s bearable smoother. Arriving back in King Cove as the weather deteriorated, I happily climbed on shore and called my girlfriend. Over the next few days our herring load was emptied and we retreated off the dock in the bay and anchored up.A horrid fishing season was leaving many people edgy about further contracts and the potential of being dropped from their current one. Standing on the deck of company’s favorite boat was soothing. After nearly a week of sitting on anchor staring at land we got a call and were told to report to Prince William Sound.
It was blowing hard when we left gusting well into the gale status but, luckily it was at our tail and made for a faster and smoother ride. Within a day we were working our way behind Kodiak Island. It is nice to get into the land of trees once more. The shore lines cluttered with trees and small creeks
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