8/13/12
If you’ve been on a boat long enough, you identify what equipment is being used without having to see it. Each function carried out on a vessel has a specific sound: hydraulics turning on and off, anchor dropping, etc. When the main engine is off you can hear most everything that happens on the Middleton. For example, the other night we were anchored up by the coast, dinner eaten, teeth brushed, Dexter watched, it was bunktime at its quietest. Suddenly I heard a vibration. This was a sound more suited for a high school classroom during an exam. A cell phone buzzing! Who has reception out here? Do I? Excitement reeled through every fiber of my body as I searched my blanket for my trusty iPhone. Then it hit me. A smell that can only be born of Leif’s foul bowels, in other words a flatulation occurred. This ghost vibration was not caused by machine; it was the result of onions and dirty rice.
I have mixed pride in the fact that even on the tail end of the season, I still haven’t gotten used to the odors. Boat life goes on and there are many other things one has to adapt to, like a lack of sunshine. We had about three solid weeks of clouds and rain that was recently broken by a streak of bright and sunny days. The product of the UV overdose was a fleet of red-faced fishermen in orange suits catching pink salmon. Skippers squinted as the screaming ball of gas radiated down onto the salty rollers of the Pacific. For a short while it almost felt like we weren’t even working, piling gear is nearly a perfunctory process by now.
So much sun for 15-hour a day back to back will lull you into a false sense of something. Not exactly security, maybe just a sustainable dehydration or unwelcome lethargy. Whichever it is can be shattered easily by a very uncommon occurrence. I may have mentioned that shootouts are the most exciting thing that can happen on a seiner, but I lied because equipment failure is the pinnacle of action. When you fish with a pole in a river or lake, there is a chance you will snag your hook, the same goes for a quarter mile of sein net on the coast. We hit a nasty snag at the tide’s peak and long story short, we had some equipment let us down. To explain exactly what happened would take longer than I want for you land lovers but the point is that we’re all safe and were able to repair said equipment that night and fish the following day. There are many kinds of captains on the water, many types don’t do well when the feces hit the fan but ours kept his cool and orchestrated a clean recovery.
The coast is a gnarly place to fish and lots of unexpected things happen, last year we caught a wolf eel, yesterday we brought two sharks aboard in our net, both on our final set of the opener. What kind of sharks I have no clue, but the bigger one was maybe six feet in length? Shit might as well call it a 12-footer if I want to tell the story like a true fisherman. So there we were, nastiest squall God’s ever sent this far south of Anchorage, and two great whites jump on deck wielding harpoons, “THIS IS FOR MOBY,” they screamed…I swear that’s the amount of accuracy you get from some guys, mostly just to hear their own voice and see what they can get away with. So believe me or not, we caught some sharks but they didn’t break any second amendment laws so we let them off with a warning.
Have a great week,
Mac
