Bristol Bay Recap

June and July 2008 — It was a good year for permafrost in Bristol Bay this year, and the Bering Sea ice pack lingered longer than usual, which brought October-like (in Washington) weather to Naknek all summer.

This cold weather brought late-returning salmon as well. The cold seawater temperatures kept the run at sea a bit longer, which was fine with me because the Claude M Bristol was running late in the completion of its major preseason repairs.

Along with the late start came idle time for the fishermen, who chose to focus their attention on the price of fish, or lack thereof, and what they could do about it. As a show of solidarity, the fishermen of Nornak individually, yet collectively, decided to abstain from fishing during the free week, which ran until 9 a.m. on Sunday, June 22.

There were a couple of news reports about the effort, but nothing really came from it. Lets face it, there were no fish, so it was simply an opportunity for the fishermen to feel like they were actually doing something about the price. But they did show they have the ability to work together if need be.

We finally had our first opening on June 26, which was my brother Frankie’s birthday; he probably had a happy day because there were a few fish around. ADF&G gave us one opening a day through Saturday, June 28, and then we started fishing every tide.

At this point the Kvichak River was behind on its escapement, and the fleet was required by regulation to be put into the Naknek River Special Harvest Area (a.k.a. the River). But this didn’t happen because Slim, the Naknek area biologist, pulled a bold move and kept us fishing outside, betting the fish would show a couple days late, which has been the pattern over the past few years.

Slim’s gamble paid off for him, because in the wee hours of the morning on July 1 the fish started pushing through in a big way. By the morning tide on July 3 just about every buyer in the bay had suspended buying fish from their fleets.

The fishermen were in an uproar. Guys were calling their representatives, the governor, the FTC and probably even the FBI. The fish continued to pour by as the fleet fished with processor-imposed catch limits on July 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, which was pretty much the whole peak of the run. The limits were usually set around 6,000 or 7,000 pounds per opening, and we caught our limit almost every time.

The smaller buyers like Bay Watch Fisheries really had some harsh limits, if they fished at all. They sat out for all of July 2 and 3, while the rest of the fleet was fishing, and when they did get to fish, their limits were pathetically low — like 3,000 pounds. By July 9 the run had slowed, and the binds of the limits were lifted; but by this time the opportunity to load your boat was pretty much gone as well.

This year the fish didn’t come in over the Johnson Hill line as much as usual, but rather made a strong showing in the upper end of the district by Libbyville, Peterson Point, and the Y. I just stayed at the line and ground away, mostly because I hate driving all over hell on my slow boat, and plus Johnson Hill always pays the bills, so why mess with what works? But the fact remains that there were some really good shots of fish taken out of the northern part of the district while I was down scratching away at the line.

On July 14 they started opening the Kvichak district as well. Again, I pretty much stayed at the line, but having the larger area open made the line less crowded. On July 17 they opened up the entire district for fishing 24 hours a day. Of course there were hardly any fish around by then. Fishing got too slow for me shortly after, and I made my last delivery on July 19.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Claude M Bristol Repairs

April 15 to July 26, 2008 — My other Bristol Bay boat, the Claude M Bristol, underwent more repairs this season than I care to recall. During the 2007 season the keel was damaged, so I contracted Mike Holmes with Commercial Marine Service to do the job.

The engine had to come out of the boat so the keel could be glassed on the inside as well as the outside. While the engine was out, I figured it would be a good time to have a couple of liners replaced on the engine, since they were showing signs of wear, so I contracted someone to do the engine work.

Mike took the engine out in April and his ace glass man, Lynn, went to work on the keel as soon as the weather warmed. He ground down to fresh glass, which took a lot of grinding; in fact, the whole bottom of the keel was removed. Then he went into glassing, and glassed layer upon layer, inside and out, doing it right, until it was done. That boat’s keel is now 2 inches thick on the bottom. And Lynn had the whole job finished before Mike V and I arrived to work on the Sunlight III.

While that was going on, the engine sat around waiting for the contracted guy, who finally laid eyes on it around May 1. His diagnosis was that it needed a whole new set of liners, and the turbo was shot, and the heads were cracked, and so forth. It would have been cheaper if I just had the whole thing rebuilt, or just bought a new engine. In fact the remanufactured Cummins I put in the Sunlight III was cheaper than the repair bill on this engine.

I couldn’t believe how long it took those guys to finish that engine. First, the parts were delayed. Then some parts weren’t included in the kit; then those were delayed. Then, in the middle of the final assembly, he had to run off to Dillingham for some reason. When we heard he was back in town we drove around until we found him giving another boat a test run — and he was pissed that we were tracking him! He promised it would be done soon, and about a week later he finally delivered it, on June 10.

All the while the Claude M Bristol remained ripped apart at the Naknek Yacht Club with a bunch of people waiting for the engine — Mike Holmes to install it, Shoreline Electric to do some wiring, Josh the welder to weld the stack back in place, and Crosby and Simon so they could convert it from a job site into a fishing boat. When it finally arrived it was in the boat that afternoon, and all hooked up and ready to go the next day. THAT is fast service.

While all this was going on, especially while we were waiting for the engine, I was working on the Sunlight III, and Crosby and Simon were working on the Claude M Bristol, attacking a long list of projects on a boat with no engine, no floor, and a hole cut in the ceiling that an engine had to pass through before it could be sealed up again.

After the engine finally arrived I could afford more time to help, but it was Crosby and Simon who led the charge. Crosby’s other crew guy, the Cat Killer, was also helping out, but he was more interested in killing something than doing boat work (he did great on deck… when there were living fish that were soon to die — I never left this guy unattended around my daughter).

It was a long road bringing the Claude M Bristol up to fishable condition prior to the 2008 season, but it finally happened. The boat splashed down on Monday, June 23, and was ready for the first opening on Thursday.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Wood Boat Drama

All Season — The Sunlight III repair job was about the only thing going on around camp in the early part of the season. Each night we knocked off around 9:00 p.m. and started drinking whiskey on the job site, right there in the stern of the boat.

Ryan, the kid who fishes the Island Runner, would come and visit us while we worked, and while we unwound. He was getting his boat, which was actually owned by his father, ready to sell. This meant he would be without a boat and have to fish with his dad, which he was not looking forward to.

Naturally, we touted the attributes of a wooden boat, and eventually Ryan figured out he could buy a cheap wooden boat and run it, instead being on the back deck for his dad. He searched around and found a fully functional beater for only $250 — with a spare engine! He walked around for a couple days contemplating if he should buy it, and by the time he decided he should, somebody else had ponied up the money, and that deal was history.

Undaunted by that setback, and now more schooled in the timing of opportunity, Ryan revisited other boats he had looked at and decided on one for $5,000, and the gal was willing to let it go with only 10 percent down, with the balance PAF (pay after fishing)!

Somehow he found a permit to lease (which is tough to do without $$), but his biggest challenge was finding a market to buy his fish. When he asked Peter Pan Seafoods for a market, the answer was a flat-out NO! One reason was because Ryan, who is now 20, had been at the Peter Pan camp since he was 17, and when a kid enjoys those years there might a bit of partying, and he might seem irresponsible.

The other contributing factor was kind of my fault, since there was already the issue of my outlandish wood boat repair fresh in the minds of the company heads, and Peter Pan didn’t want to run the risk of damaging another “rotten old wood boat” with their equipment.

Ryan wound up fishing for Bay Watch, but he didn’t have a very good season because he toasted his engine at the peak of the run. He found and installed a replacement engine, but by the time the boat was up and running again the fish had gone by, and Ryan was left picking shit with the chickens at the end of the season.

The whole wood boat thing really ate at the gals in the office. They had enough of wood boats, and there I was getting everybody on the wood boat bandwagon! A few years back I had encouraged another fisherman with his wood boat endeavors, and he turned out to be a thorn in the side of the office gals, and to other fishermen as well, including me.

Being a vocal supporter of Ryan buying and fishing a wood boat didn’t ease their angst, and all while I was working with my imported repair crew fixing the colossal repair on my own wooden boat. At one point my crew guy Dave was told the word “wood” was forbidden to be uttered in the office; just take the subject outside, please.

The anxiety continued for the office gals after the preseason, when I dropped Dave off after the peak of the run to follow up on his idea of buying a wood boat. He wound up buying the Redman from the Bumble Bee plant, and I instructed the gals in the office to advance him the money from his settlement. They caused no interference to the cash flow, but I know they were just rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at yet another wood boat owner being sprung from the Matt Marinkovich operation.

And then Mike, a longtime Peter Pan fisherman, who I longline for on the Discovery and who was definitely NOT swayed by my opinion, wound up buying an old wood boat and had it shipped down to his home in Port Townsend, Wash., and totally rebuilt the thing. He even installed a bow thruster and refrigeration system, making it on par with my own high-tech, cutting-edge wood boat. This story was so intriguing I wrote a story about it, and it made the cover of National Fisherman in July 2009 (“A bold step backward” p. 24).

What can I say? I am an advocate of reduce, reuse, recycle. And I say if a wood boat is just sitting there… FISH IT!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Wood Boat Reconnaissance

Saturday, June 7, 2009 — As the Coastal Heritage Alliance team worked diligently on the Sunlight III, there was talk about CHA having an outpost in Naknek, providing repairs to the remaining wood boats in service, and perhaps pulling a few out of mothballs and getting them back out on the water, as well. The big dream was to restore to fishable condition the old sailboat that shared the warehouse with the Sunlight III, lease a permit, and fish competitively amongst the modern fleet.

To help make these ideas more than just a bunch of talk, we decided to go across the Naknek River on Saturday, May 31, and take a look at the wood boats that are hiding in the warehouses of Trident South and the old Bumble Bee cannery. The tides didn’t agree with taking a skiff, so Simon, Nellie, Dave, Edward, Mike V, Anthony, and I hired a plane from King Flying Service to the South Naknek “International” Airport (that’s what the sign says). It was a wild ride in the small plane on a windy day, and everyone agreed it was worth the price of admission right there.

Shortly after we landed a guy came by to see who was on the plane. It was just us jokers, but he gave us a ride to the Trident plant nonetheless. Our “taxi” driver told us how Trident has been cutting old wood boats up and sending them to the burn pile to make room in their warehouse for the active fishing fleet. This news gave a heightened intensity to the CHA mission, which is to preserve the heritage of fishing by preserving the old equipment with which the fishery evolved. If they could make maintaining a wood boat in Bristol Bay as simple as a fiberglass or aluminum boat, maybe people wouldn’t be sending these beauties to the incinerator.

At Trident we saw a few beautifully maintained boats, like the Joann, but most of them showed quite a bit of wear and tear, and ultimately lack of maintenance, that made them more of a liability than an asset. One boat was so thrashed I was convinced the owner had a heart attack and had to be flown out in an emergency, so his boat never got put away properly, or even scrubbed. Nope — it turned out his boat always looked like that. We checked out the carpenter shop as well, and those wood boat freaks were drooling at the thought of fixing these old boats out of this shop.

After taking full inventory of Trident’s fleet of wood boats, we walked over to the Bumble Bee cannery about a mile downstream. We met up with Leroy, who bought the entire plant for around $250,000 in the middle of the salmon slump a few years back. The cannery came with a number of old company-owned boats, of which Leroy took ownership as well. And just like everything else around the place, those boats were for sale.

This is where Dave first laid his eyes on the Redman, an early-1960s Bumble Bee boat that was set up quite well to fish competitively. It had an articulating net reel and upgraded power roller, and was for sale for $11,000. Right in front of it was the BB-43, which was the boat Mike, who I fish for on the Discovery, bought at the end of the season.

Leroy gave us a tour of the plant, and there’s a lot more than old boats lying around. There’s a huge net loft, where probably 60 fishermen kept their gear, and miles of pipe stashed here and there, and giant galvanized bolts, nails, nuts, screws and you name it. There are empty bunkhouses, outbuildings, the old office and mess hall, and of course the old canning line, freezer, and machine and carpenter shops. It is a huge facility, and Leroy is the only guy there. It’s kind of weird, really.

We also looked at boats on the north side of the river. There are a ton of wood boats at the Red Salmon cannery, which is now owned by Yardarm Knot. I saw the sistership to my brother’s old boat, the Annie-M, which was the first boat I fished on in Bristol Bay. Later in the year I heard somebody had chopped the whole cabin off to access the engine, which was easier than taking a panel off the back of the cabin.

YAK doesn’t have any interest in seeing the old relics come back to life — they would just as soon leave them where they lie, tucked way back in an unused warehouse. It’s more work for them to pull one out than they would care to put into the task. So there they sit, not being used, until… The CHA team comes to the rescue?

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Sunlight III Repairs

May 25-June 1, 2008 — A terrible thing happened when I hauled out my old wood boat, the Sunlight III on the Peter Pan Seafoods trailer during the 2007 season. The trailer wasn’t properly rigged and the supports cracked a bunch of frames on either side of the stern, leaving two depressing-looking depressions where the supports had imposed themselves into the integrity of the hull. The resilient planks gave enough so the boat held water, so I managed to finish the season, but my boat was in need of serious repair.

Once again Mike Vlahovich and his organization, the Coastal Heritage Alliance, came up and did the repair. To accomplish this daunting task in just a week’s time, he brought two apprentices, Simon and Nellie, a young husband-and-wife team that had been working with him on skipjack restoration projects in St. Michaels, Md.

Mike V. and I traveled on the same day, Sunday, May 25, up to Naknek, Alaska. Upon our arrival we discovered the bunkhouse room had been ransacked by squirrels over the long winter, and empty peanut and chip wrappers were strewn all over the room. Simon and Nellie came up a couple days later, and my crew guys Anthony and Dave came up around the 28th, with Edward showing up on June 1.

The project consisted of removing the back deck; taking out the fuel tanks; cutting, prying, and chiseling out the existing damaged sister frames and the old original frames, which has since rotted through. We had to remove the old frames because they occupied the space in which we would lay the new ones. After the frames were removed every screw had to be backed out, then the holes plugged with wooden plugs. There were so many plugs sticking out of the hull of the Sunlight III’s stern it looked like a porcupine.

The new frames were cut from a piece of fairly green oak I shipped up especially for the occasion. We boiled them in a steel pipe, took them out of the boiler steaming hot, clamped the inboard end to the bottom of the boat with a boat jack, then pushed upward with sheer human strength with the assistance of ropes, levers, wedges, and more boat-jacks. A few of the frames split in the process, but there were still enough to do the job.

After they cooled in place we removed them from their jig, which was bottom of the boat, and placed them inside the hull above where the frame had just memorized its shape. Even with this steam-bending trick, they still had to be through-bolted to the planks to pull them down tight to the planking, and then they were screwed through the planks and into the frames with wood screws, just as they should be.

That was a lot easier to write down than it was to accomplish in real life. And I must say, I did just a fraction of the work. Mike V. is a grinder, and his apprentices know they are not there to dilly-dally; everyone worked a full day, and everyone had good reason to unwind and relax with a glass of whiskey or two (or three sometimes) at the day’s end.

The funnest part of the job was when we poured the pitch in the bottom of the boat to displace any water that would puddle on the uphill side of the frames. This was a material I neglected to ship up for the job, so I ordered a keg of roofing tar from Anchorage, which cost less than $50 for the material, but the express shipping cost another $100. The guy thought I was crazy, but he didn’t have a wood boat to get ready for the season.

We cooked the tar up in the fish-smoking shack, using my propane cook stove from the Sunlight III. When it was molten hot, Mike took the pot and carefully ran up the ladder to the newly installed frames, started in the highest part of the stern, and poured it in. It found its own way into all the low spots, then overflowed to the next set of frames, filling in all the “puddles” and replacing it with a solid chunk of impermeable tar.

It didn’t take much to refit the fuel tanks and reassemble the deck, and we were pretty much done with everything on Friday, May 30. It took Mike and his CHA team a full work week, and I can guarantee it would have taken me and a couple of helpers more than two full weeks, and it really wouldn’t have been done right. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without Mike V. and the CHA.

***see photo: It was no small project rebuilding the stern of the Sunlight III—simon pictured

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Fish for Teeth

Last year before the longline season a longtime back-burner project became a reality. I created Fish for Teeth, an IRS-recognized 501-c-3 corporation that seeks opportunities to extract money from the commercial fishing industry and use it to fix kids’ teeth.

At this time Fish for Teeth is just starting up, and will begin fixing kids’ teeth in San Juan County. I designed the organization so other communities can set up a Fish for Teeth chapter and start fixing teeth in their neck of the woods. After we fix a handful of teeth, the idea is to solicit grant funding to provide dental care on a larger scale, all in the name of commercial fishing.

The initial target for funds was from over-limit fish revenues from the Bristol Bay fishery. I realized the over-limit catch of rockfish from the longline fishery could also produce some income. Last year, from rockfish donated from the Discovery’s catch then filleted and frozen from Seafood Producers Cooperative in Sitka, Fish for Teeth grossed over $1,500 while using these rockfish as bait for donations.

This year I managed to assemble a pack of more rockfish fillets than last year at the SPC plant during the first part of the season. They shipped them down to Bellingham while we completed our fishing, so the fillets were waiting for us in the cold storage when we arrived in Bellingham at 4 p.m. on Thursday.

I didn’t load the rockfish fillets into my truck until after we delivered on Friday, May 2. There were four 80-pound wet-lock boxes that fit perfectly into one of the totes. Next I went to a place that sold dry-ice in bulk and loaded it up with 60 pounds of dry ice to keep it frozen until I got home, which wouldn’t be until Saturday morning, because I still had to run to Port Townsend to take the fishing gear off the Discovery.

The fish made it home just fine, and it took some fancy stuffing and arranging to make it all fit into the two chest freezers I keep in my garage. Once contained, I put them out of my mind for a week until I gathered the gumption to host the donation day. I put the word out on my Fish List that Fish for Teeth had premium rockfish fillets for FREE — with a $6 per pound suggested donation.

I set the donation day to be May 10, 2008. As usual I was late, and had a small crowd waiting for me (I LOVE those crowds!) when I pulled into my spot at Printonyx. I had a couple dentists talking up the program while I was handing out the fish. We got rid of almost all of the fish in less than four hours’ time, and landed nearly $2,200 in donations!

At our Fish for Teeth annual meeting on Wednesday, May 21, we decided to move forward with fixing teeth, since that is the purpose of our being. We figured out the forms and a rough idea of how to process the kids through the system. The nice thing is that there is no red tape. All we need is enough paperwork to document where the money is going for whom and how, and we are ready to start fixing teeth!

At this point it is pretty much in the hands of the dentists, because I am off to the land of Bristol Bay. Hopefully after this season there will be a couple of kids with fixed-up teeth so we can show the fish companies that we really mean business. Then we can really justify asking them for money so we can fix more teeth! Ultimately the goal is to encourage other communities to set up a program in their town under the Fish for Teeth organization.

Its all about fixing teeth, and FISH and TEETH!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Home at Last!

April 27-May 3, 2008 — We had never been so happy to see Cape Spencer than on Sunday, April 27, after surviving the beating we endured on the second day of crossing the Gulf of Alaska. We were done with fishing, the last load of halibut were in the hatch, and we were steaming for Bellingham to deliver.

The whole rest of the trip was beautiful. We had a bit of weather in a couple spots, but it was nothing compared to what we went through in the gulf, so we really didn’t even notice.

Queen Charlotte Sound was so calm it was like we never left the inside channels. And we seemed to have the current in our favor all the way home, which seems impossible, but nobody recalls ever going slower than 8 knots. We hit the tide at Seymour Narrows perfectly, and flew through at 17.5 knots!

We arrived in Bellingham at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 1. My first order of business was to drive down to Seattle to pick up my totes so I could transport the Fish for Teeth fish back to San Juan Island.

Since I was heading south and everybody else either needed to grab their cars or wanted to see their wives, I was the southbound transit vehicle for the Discovery crew. I dropped Brett, George, and Roald off at three different spots along I-5, then proceeded to Seattle Marine & Fishing Supply where my totes were waiting for me.

I met with Fawn John in West Seattle and we did some Bristol Bay planning (a.k.a., bull session) for this upcoming season, and I was back in Bellingham, sacked out on the Discovery by 2 a.m.

I was up at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, ready for the delivery-day scramble. I was in the hold pitching off halibut until the last fish was off, which was around 10 a.m. It didn’t take long to finish up the paperwork, and the Discovery left the dock around noon. It was the fastest delivery we had ever done. I’m not sure of the exact price, but we got around $4.75 per pound for the load.

Now the plan was to meet in Port Townsend to off-load all the gear off the Discovery. I still had to load up the Fish for Teeth fish into the totes, get dry ice to keep them frozen until I get home, then grab a few items to ship north on the final barge to Naknek. I buzzed all over Bellingham doing my errands, then realized time was getting late, so I zipped down to the Keystone ferry terminal on Whidbey Island, and caught the 4:30 p.m. ferry to Port Townsend.

I arrived just after 5 p.m., which was a few minutes after the boat reached the dock, but it wasn’t so late as to catch hell from the rest of the crew. We had the gear off the boat and stored away in record time, and everybody had vacated the boat and was on their way by 8:30 p.m. It was the only time ever we had delivered and taken the gear off in the same day.

I remained on the Discovery until 11:30 p.m., cleaning out the refrigerator and removing any old groceries or produce, and removing all my stuff from every crevice on the boat, which it somehow seems to make its way during the season. I loaded up three garbage bags full of trash and a big box of extra groceries for the workers at the fish plant at the top of the dock. I loaded up the truck, and I was outta there!

I drove around down to the Kingston ferry, crossed over to Edmonds, then headed up to Anacortes to wait in line for the first ferry to San Juan Island. After a restless sleep in the cab of my truck, boarded the 6:10 a.m. ferry on Saturday, May 3, and by 7:30 a.m. I was home at last!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Bad Weather

April 26-27, 2008 — All day Saturday, April 26, was more of the same, but worse. The wind had shifted more directly onto our bow so we were heading straight into it, plus the wind had picked up.

It must have been blowing at least 40 knots sustained, and gusting beyond 60 knots, and I am not one to exaggerate; we were eating shit. We were making only 2.5 knots through the water for about 10 hours, which advanced us only 25 miles toward Cape Spencer.

Our bodies were battered and abused. There is no comfortable place on the Discovery in the first place, but when the tormenting swells turn your bunk into a surreal hang-gliding crash simulator, it seems totally senseless to camp out down in that hole. I felt like I was taped to the blade of an eggbeater as it spun around and around and around.

Up in the wheelhouse, the seats have zero back support; Mike salvaged them from the Goodwill’s garbage pile of old office furniture, and then bolted them into place in the wheelhouse. After already suffering from the enhanced bedsores of our acrobatic bunks, it really adds insult to injury to sit on those chairs during wheelwatch. But the boat rocks back and forth so violently, wedging yourself into them is about the only way to stay put while on watch, else you would be tossed across the wheelhouse like a catapulted stone by the heaving, side-to-side motion of the Discovery.

I found solace in my usual spot, sprawled out on the galley bench, wedged between the bench and the table. It is a much better ride there, since it is situated more toward the center of the boat, but it is not a very accommodating resting surface.

The lip around the edge of the seats that hold the cushion in place is not exactly posturepedic, and the corner of the table gets in the way; but on the contrary both of those things help hold me in place. In the final hours of our hell-ride across the gulf, I resorted to laying the bench cushion on the floor in front of the table and sleeping sprawled out in the middle of the walkway.

On my last watch I took the boat from 30 to almost 20 miles from Cape Spencer. Since the weather was from offshore, the giant swell had reduced somewhat and we managed to bump up the throttle, speeding the engine up 50 rpm to 1,180 rpm, and bringing our speed up to almost 4.5 knots.

After my watch, I knew the end was near. In the past 24 hours I had eaten cheese and crackers just twice, and puked them up both times. I returned to my somewhat comfortable spot on the galley floor, and crashed out dreaming of eating a Costco salmon patty, and drinking lots of water. When I awoke at 4 a.m. on Sunday, the seas were calm and we were at the Cape Spencer entrance. Breakfast was served as fast as I could cook the salmon patties.

Once again, we had survived a shitty crossing. It wasn’t the first abusive crossing, and I don’t think it will be the last. It’s all a part of the long run home.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Good Weather, Bad Weather

April 21-26, 2008 — The most memorable part of this halibut trip was the weather, which was just beautiful to start with. It was nice on the run out from Seward on Monday, April 21; it was nice when we started hauling on Tuesday morning; and it stayed nice all the way through until we were hauling for home on Thursday.

Fishing wasn’t red-hot, but we weren’t complaining because we caught our 40,000 pounds of halibut in three days of fishing. Last year we did it in seven strings; this year it took us 12.

And falling in line with the theme of the trip was nearly flat calm weather as we began steaming across the Gulf of Alaska, headed for Salisbury Sound, and then to Bellingham via the Inside Passage.

We ran the Discovery at 1,500 rpm, which is harder than usual because there was talk of a storm on Friday and Saturday, so we wanted to make time while we could. We were traveling at about 8.5 knots, which is pretty good with a load of halibut aboard. We had 400 miles of open ocean until we reached Salisbury Sound.

All was well the first day of traveling. I took advantage of the flat-calm weather and went to work overhauling halibut gear. I did five skates the first day, Thursday evening, then 10 skates on Friday.

The other guys joined in, but none were so ambitious as I, because I like to get all my gearwork out of the way before we enter inside waters where I can spend my spare time writing or playing the accordion, and other such things that are difficult to do while the boat is rolling around.

All day Friday the weather was deteriorating, but I kept working at overhauling those skates. It was blowing from the south mostly, and we were taking the weather primarily on the side and a bit on the starboard bow as we headed eastward across the gulf. We were still making better than 7 knots.

When I went back out after dinner, the swells were kicking the stern around quite violently, and while standing in the baiting station farthest aft, I was having a heck of a time just hanging on, not to mention working on the gear. The willingness was there, but my eyes started going screwball on those big swells, and it became more hassle than benefit for me to keep overhauling skates of gear.

When I took my watch at 1 a.m. on Saturday, I saw why I was having so much trouble; it was downright shitty out there. The wind turned more to the bow, and our speed had slowed to 5.5 knots. Roald altered our course to head for Cape Spencer, which was a shorter distance, and left the seas slightly more to our starboard bow quarter. Nonetheless, it was a very uncomfortable ride, and all we could do was hang on and battle through it. We had just over 100 miles of open, stormy seas until we reached Cape Spencer.

I woke up later that morning because I was having trouble sleeping. It wasn’t from restlessness; it was more from trouble being grounded, one could say. As the bow whipped back and forth at the top of the bigger swells, and there were many of those, I was being tossed through the air from side to side in my bunk.

The forward lurching of the boat drove my head back into the aft reaches of my bunk (I sleep with my feet forward), so my body pivoted around my head from where it was wedged in the corner amongst its bedding of pillows. It was a real claustrophobic experience, one I do not recommend anyone sample as a life experience. We now had 85 miles until we reached Cape Spencer.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Blackcod Wrap-up

April 17-21, 2008 — As we charged out for our final blackcod trip on Thursday, April 17, the weather outside of Seward was great — hardly a breeze and hardly a swell, which was surprising after such a powerful blow the day before; but it was an offshore breeze so there was no residual swell, I suppose.

We arrived at our blackcod spot in the middle of the night (early morning) on Friday. We set out two blackcod strings, then waited until daybreak and set one long (19 skates) string of blackcod gear set on the halibut ground. We waited four hours so the “halibut” gear had a enough soak time, and around 11 a.m. we finally started hauling back the halibut string.

It was sort of a surreal experience with all the time spent waiting. I slept at each opportunity; three times total. I had never been so well rested. I usually can’t sleep, but on this occasion I was a bit fed up with just being here, so I found it easy to nap — to take my mind off the fact that I was even on the boat; this is Brett’s trick — he sleeps the time away, and therefore his fishing trips seem shorter to him.

When we finally started hauling, fishing was good. Lots of halibut kept flopping over the roller — 7,000 pounds, to be exact. And the blackcod fishing was good as well — three strings of around 4,500 pounds, and one of just 3,000 pounds — a far cry from the 500- to 1,500-pound strings we had the previous week, and that was a good thing!

We wrapped up the blackcod fishing in just four strings (we only needed 18,000 pounds), and a day-and-a-half’s time. We were headed for Seward on the evening of Saturday, April 19, looking for a quick turn-around so we could get back out and enjoy the nice weather to finish off our halibut for the season and run that last load home to Bellingham.

With our short trip we had the advantage of being the only boat in while the rest of the fleet was still fishing, so we didn’t have to wait for any services like delivery time or ice.

We delivered first thing in the morning on Sunda, and were all cleaned up and back at the boat harbor by 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon. We started baiting right away, and baited 24 blackcod skates on Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning, April 21, George and Mike started the day off early, standing on deck cutting bait at 7 a.m. We all joined in shortly after and had all 56 halibut skates finished by 11 a.m.

We were just finishing up the last skates when we headed over to RBS and filled our hatch with ice for our final trip of the season. With our ice aboard, all the gear baited, a full freshwater tank and groceries aboard, we were ready to head back out after one of the fastest turn-arounds on record. We were ready to catch the last of our halibut, and after the long south our next stop would be Bellingham. And then home.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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