Stresses of the Season

May and Early June, 2006 — My 2006 Bristol Bay season was a year in which I took on too much. Too much financial burden, too many projects, and too much stress.

As always, if I were to just be satisfied with fishing my own gillnetter, the Sunlight III, I would have enough to keep me busy. But I have effectively doubled my boat maintenance burden with another boat, the Mirage, which this year, because of its essential rebirth because of all the work we did to it, I chose to rename it the Claude M. Bristol.

The rebirthing of the Claude M. Bristol was essentially my decision to install a $40,000 refrigeration system in the boat. That is $40K of just parts and minimal labor, with Matt and my man Crosby doing most of the work, along with the Claude M. Bristol crew.

It was an absurd amount of work; so much, in fact, that I am not going to list even the major components to the job, for fear I might pass out from the shock of the mere recollection of the task. I was overwhelmed, and really freaked out about the cost of everything, and I’ll tell you, even now that it is all said and done, I wish I hadn’t installed the system last year.

The problem we encountered was that we spent so much time installing the new system into the old boat that we didn’t have time to focus on the old systems in the old boat. We addressed quite a few of them, like relocating the electrical panel, and fixing the stove, and necessary functional creature-features like that, but we never took a close look at the existing deck hydraulics, which blew a few hoses during the season, or the charging system, which stopped doing its job during the season and lead to a couple of alternator replacements, the first one leading to a small but expensive fire, which necessitated the second alternator replacement, etc.

Yes, if I would have simply stuck with my single boat, I would have had more than enough to keep me busy. I totally reconfigured my hatches into six equal bins with 12 bags between the two sides, with nice new fiberglass dividers and aluminum caps, which the hatch covers rest on (it’s a really nice job — the complete opposite of how the Claude M. Bristol hatches turned out).

The other big stressor to me was the fact that Crosby was now the skipper of the Claude M. Bristol, instead of Harpo, who had run the boat for the three prior seasons. Crosby had never run a boat before, but he had fished with me for the last five years. He knew enough about catching fish, which is half the game, but I found out he was a bit lacking in the arena of keeping a boat running when the thing throws a curve-ball in his direction.

Through this learning curve, we had an unusual group of observers with us through most of the season: PSG Films, the film crew contracted by the National Geographic Channel to shoot a documentary special about the Bristol Bay fishery. They showed up in the Peter Pan Seafoods camp one day, and it was a no-brainer for me to invite them aboard for our sure-to-be chaotic seasons.

The cameral crews, for me anyway, proved to be the least of the seasons stressors; in fact it was a great stress release. I always had a commentary running in my head as I was fishing, sort of like a play-by-play, calling my every move, and adding color during the lapses in action. Well, now my mocked up world was a reality, and there I was with a camera poked in my face, just a part of the show for the whole nation to see this fall.

By the end of the season, Crosby and I were so burned out we could failed to optimize on the late run of fish. We had enough, and vowed to solve all the Claude M. Bristol’s problems in the 2007 preseason.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Delivery Day

Friday, April 28, 2006 — Our delivery was scheduled for 7 a.m. on Friday, April 28, at the Arrowac dock in Bellingham, Wash. Instead of simply enjoying the easy task of pitching off tens of thousands of pounds of halibut, I lined up a bunch of work for myself.

I arranged with my neighbors to sell 1,000+ pounds of halibut at their farm stand on San Juan Island. I woke up at 6 a.m. to finalize things with the guys at the plant, because no matter what I had planned, I still had to be on the boat to help with the offloading.

My first SNAFU of the morning came when I discovered my truck had a bad case of dead batteries. I scrambled around for a battery charger, and then hooked it up and prayed.

I was on a really tight schedule and didn’t have time to run off and buy new batteries, let alone spare the time it would take to change them out. I needed to drive my truckload of halibut to my neighbor’s house on San Juan Island, then swap trucks and drive my beater blue truck off the island so I could meet up with the Discovery in Port Townsend at 5 the next morning to offload the gear (we were starting early to make the high tide).

The hang-up was the ferry schedule. Port Townsend is on the other side of Puget Sound, and although it can be seen from San Juan Island on a clear day, it takes at least two ferry rides to get there.

Because there was no early ferry that could get me there by 5 a.m., I had to get there that evening, which meant I needed to connect with the last Keystone ferry by 9:15 p.m., or I’d have bust balls to drive to Edmonds in order to catch that last ferry across.

The delivery went really well. The halibut were off by 11:15, and I had clearance to be on my way by noon, which gave me plenty of time to catch the 2:40 ferry to Friday Harbor, which was good because that was the only one that would give me time to run back to my house and grab my beater truck.

It was really too bad for me that my non-beater truck batteries would not charge, so I had to drive to Costco and grab two new ones. That trip took an hour, and it took another hour to change the damned things. Once the truck was running I still had to load the totes of halibut in the back.

By the time I was on my way I had zero chance of catching the 2:40 ferry, which meant I had to catch the 5:05, but that didn’t give me enough time to drive out to my house to swap trucks and make the 6:45 ferry off the island.

I called Jim, my neighbor and fish-selling partner, and asked if he could fire up beater-blue, drive it to the ferry landing, and put it in line for the 6:45 ferry to Anacortes. That way I could drive my halibut-loaded truck off the ferry, hand it over to Jim to drive to his house, where we are selling the halibut, and then hop directly into my truck and get on the 6:45 ferry to Anacortes.

Maureen and the kids were waiting for me at the ferry landing when I drove off with the halibut. It was strange seeing them for such a short visit. Fifteen minutes is all I got, then I had to be off again.

I took my dog Ginger with me for the ride. She would be confused if I just came and went so quickly, and we wouldn’t want that because she is confused enough as it is. Because of Jim’s help I connected with the Keystone ferry with no problem, and was on the Discovery in Port Townsend by 10 p.m.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Discovery gets Sirius

Longlining 2006 — Music has always been a difficult luxury to obtain on the Discovery. We have tried many different set-ups over the years, but none has proven to last. The boom-box in the galley wired to the back deck seemed to work the best, but after it got trashed, it never got replaced; today its old bracket holds the Brita water filter by the galley table. Our MO is to have an old beater boom-box and keep it out on deck.

One year I had it out on deck so Brett and I could hear it while we were hauling blackcod gear, and the weather breezed up and sent a big wave crashing into the side of the boat, knocking the radio off the top shelf of the shelter-deck rack, and slamming it down on the deck so hard it spit out George’s Santana CD, breaking it in half on impact.

This year the quest for the optimum music listening system continued with the Sirius Satellite Network. That’s right, the Discovery was hooked up to the sky! Not only do we now have a satellite phone on the boat, but we have satellite radio! We are becoming so high tech, it’s scary.

Brett and I bought speakers in Bellingham on the day we left, and Mike installed them, one on the back deck and one in the bait house. All through the Sitka trips we were happily listening to tunes.

Unfortunately for me, one of the favorite channels was country. All country, and with no commercials. During the country-music sessions I would think of more pleasant things, like getting my teeth drilled by the dentist without Novocain, or being attacked by a swarm of killer bees.

Things improved when Brett installed the new speakers in the wheelhouse. I’m not sure what he did, but he made it so the audible volume in the wheelhouse caused the deck speakers to be so quiet we couldn’t hear it if we put our ear right next to the speaker. It took the guys about five days to figure out how to work the Front-Back FADE control on the wheelhouse stereo. It was a pleasant five days, and then it was back to country.

During our stint in the Gulf of Alaska, the Sirius Satellite Network didn’t work for us. That was good in eliminating the no-commercial country barrage, but it didn’t keep the Norwegian Cowboy from plugging it full of his country favorites. It was almost worse because the CD player was set on auto-repeat, so the same old country junk just repeated itself. It was back to the dentist for me.

I did manage to insert an assortment of music, and when we returned to the Sirius coverage area I introduced them to some channels offering them a variety of options, so there is hope.

The one thing for which I am very grateful is that nobody had an interest in talk radio, which can totally dampen one’s mood. At least with country I can tune it out — like a white noise; you know, static. But talk radio can really drive a person bananas. Plus, I like to be totally out of touch with what is going on in the world when I am up fishing. It makes life much less stressful when you don’t know what there is to stress out about.

So now the Discovery is wired for sound, and we can all rock out, or pretend we’re at the dentist!

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Crab Feed

March 30-31, 2006 — This year, I dined on one of the most fabulous meals I have indulged in in years. It was a king crab — two to be exact. They were brown king crab, caught in Chatham Sound by one of the local Sitka fishermen. He was selling them off his boat at the loading dock in the big boat harbor on the north side of town.

I picked them out myself. Last year, he sold me one good-sized one for $5 per pound — it was missing a leg. The total was about $60, and it made a fine meal, but there just wasn’t quite enough to stuff ourselves, to the point that we felt truly satisfied.

So this year I pointed out the biggest one I saw crawling around in their live tank/tote on deck. He was a dandy, weighing in at 11 pounds. But just to be sure I had enough to finish us all off, I picked out another smaller one. The total was just over 20 pounds of living, crawling king crab, and the bill came to $120.

We eat good on the Discovery, there is no doubt about it. I am the cook, and I like being the cook because I like to eat my own cooking, and I like to cook good food. I don’t bother with top sirloin steaks or rump roast. We start out every season with a round of fillet mignon as our first meal, then we step it down a notch for the rest of the season with rib-eye steak and prime rib.

I counter these more spendy menu items by eating as much fish as possible, and by avoiding any processed foods; I’d rather eat my own lasagna than Costco’s. In the end we spend only about $15 per day per man on groceries, which is really a miserly rate.

So this spendy little taste treat was welcome aboard without so much as a bat of an eye. I immediately put a kettle of salty seawater on the stove, which took its time building to a boil. I had to cook the buggars in two batches because, even though I was using the biggest pan we had on the boat, I could barely fit one crab at a time in the pot.

I butchered them out in the bait house by centering their bodies over the 1/8-inch aluminum plate that Mike built the baiting benches out of, then clubbed them with one of the rocks we snap onto the groundline for weight. Then I ripped the leg-and-shoulder sections free of the shell and scraped off the gills with a butcher knife.

After the water had reached the boiling point on the oil stove, I moved it to the electric Jenn-Air cooktop to speed up the cooking procedure without turning the galley into a kiln by cranking up the stove. I cooked the crab for 15 minutes after the water began to boil after I added the crab, which was just over 20 minutes total in the pot. I served the crab with boiled potatoes, a green salad, warmed French bread and melted butter.

I slipped up to the wheelhouse while the boys feasted on the first wave of crab, then finished them off with the second panload. Shortly after, Roald came up to the wheelhouse to relieve me, rubbing his belly.

“Oh hey, that was GOOOOOOOD!” He said, as he has said a thousand times before, but this time it sounded like he really meant it.

I went down and sat in Roald’s seat at the head of the table with the remains of three-quarters of a freshly cooked king crab right in front of me. I saw that one half of the granddaddy was there untouched, so I started in on him, breaking his shoulder apart and selecting the biggest leg on the biggest crab I had found crawling in the tote a few hours earlier.

I peeled away the shell on the shoulder and exposed a shock of steaming crab meat about the size of a lobster tail. I ate it straight — without butter or anything — so I could taste it naked. It had a rich, sweet, salty taste with its own buttery flavor bursting through. The taste filled my mouth and caused an involuntary mmmmmmmmmmmmm as I chowed my first bite.

I used to fish these things in the Bering Sea, and this bite tasted every bit as good as any other king crab I had eaten all those years before. The best part was I didn’t have to spend two months in the Bering Sea ice pack chasing after the thing. My share of the $120 this added to the board bill was well worth the price.

The second bite was just as astounding, and the third was even more tasty since I dipped it in butter and ate it with the warm bread. A couple bites later I cracked open the main leg section, which slid out of the tube of shell intact.

There I held in my hand an 8-inch-long chunk of crab leg, about as thick as a thin cucumber. I dipped that thing in the butter like one would a piece of celery into the ranch dressing at a wedding party, and brought it dripping to my mouth. I chomped an oversized bite of this seafood sensation, and my God, it was delicious.

This orgasmic eating experience kept up until I could hardly move. You should have seen how full the claw was when cracked it open. And there was still enough left over for an outstanding seafood cioppino the next day.

If you ever get the chance to dine on a freshly cooked brown or red king crab, spare no expense; pay the price and enjoy one of the most memorable meals of your life.

TO BE CONTINUED…