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…

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…

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…

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…