In
part II, we were running down the coast of Kodiak, AK toward the shrimp fishing
grounds at the south end of the island, on a dark, stormy night. George the
skipper had relieved me from my late night wheel watch and I went below to my
bunk to get some sleep.
I
awakened the next morning, and was surprised that the engine was shut down and,
with the exception of our smaller, quiet diesel generator, the boat was
completely still. Weird. I put my boots on and walked through the crew's
quarters to the galley. George slept topside
behind the Wheelhouse and I could hear him gently snoring. I wonder where we are; it's breezy, but calm as a mill pond? WHERE ARE WE?
As
I started making coffee on the old diesel fuel, wood-burning style cook stove,
I looked out the galley porthole and all I could see was pea-soup fog - thicker
than I had ever seen fog in my life. Hmmm, kind'a spooky. After I got the
coffee going, I lit up a cigarette and went out on deck to see what I could see. Being
still breezy, we must be way up inside of some bay 'cause the water had barely
a ripple on it. Where are we? All though
I couldn't see through the fog at all, I sensed that we were closed in somehow. I wonder where we are?
As
the cook, I'm not supposed to wake up anyone until the coffee is made, and
making a big, full pot on the old griddle-topped stove always took about 25
minutes from a luke warm stove. I started making some drop-biscuits. When the
coffee and biscuits were ready, I woke the guys up and they slowly meandered
into the galley scowling and scratching their bellies - but glad to see the pot
of fresh coffee on the galley table along with the fresh, hot biscuits, canned butter
and Nabob strawberry jam.
After
both of them had guzzled down a sip or two of coffee, I asked, "So where
the hell are we, you guys? And how come you didn't wake me up to drop the Pick (anchor)?"
(The low man on the boat (me), always had to drop anchor, and raise it.)
George
looked at me with bloodshot eyes. "Well, old Ron here couldn't sleep
through the gale last night after we went around Cape Trinity, so he came up to
the Wheelhouse. It was a rough ride; seas to 20 feet. We got around the corner
(of Cape Trinity) and we had to run into Alitak Bay. No way we could get to the
west side of the island, and even if we could, there is no way we can fish Long
Bay today. Too rough."
Then
Ron chimed in, "So I was looking at the charts as George was looking for a
place to anchor up in the bay, and I looked at the detailed chart for Alitak
and Deadmans' Bays. We decided to run up into Deadmans Bay to anchor up".
"Deadmans
Bay", I spurted out. "Deadmans Bay is up there over 30 miles.
Couldn't you guys find a closer spot for an anchorage?" A 30 mile run in
the Sogn would take over 3 hours each way, 6 hours total, and we had to pay for the fuel
ourselves.
"Well
yeah", George replied. "But look at the chart John. The bottom looks
like it could have some shrimp in it. I've never, ever, heard of anyone fishing
up here, and since we can't find any shrimp anywhere else, and the weather is
so tough, I decided to give it a try". On any vessel, the Captain made the
decisions; life on a fishboat, or any vessel for that matter, is not a
democracy.
"Hmmmm.
So you guys really had a late night. Do you want to have breakfast first or
drop the net first?", I asked. They both wanted to eat before getting
started for the day. Nice...
After
eating, Ron dropped through the narrow hatch, about 3 feet square, to the
engine room and fired up the main engine. After it warmed up, I went up to the
bow to hoist the anchor. That done, Ron and I prepared the deck for a day of
dragging the bottom for shrimp, as George determined the best route to take to
fish in this unexplored, possibly virgin, narrow shrimp grounds. We used the
Wench Head to lift the huge, steel 'doors' off of their stanchions. Each of the
two doors are about 10 feet square with a half-round pipe welded around the
edges. When fishing, and when the rigging is right and the skipper has the boat
at the correct speed, the doors on each side of the afterdeck are lowered into
the water. As the water rushes past the doors, they pull away from the boat,
spreading the net as they do so. It all has to be done in an exacting manner or
the doors will spin over and over, tangling the net into a huge rat's nest - a
big problem.
Deadmans
Bay is very long and narrow with barely enough room to turn around at its head while
dragging a shrimp net (Otter Trawl). It was still so foggy that, even though we
were in this narrow bay, we couldn't see the coast on either side. All the
edges of the bay are lined with sharp, volcanic rock - like teeth. We needed to
be careful in here. Thank goodness for radar. It was still very breezy and the
wind seemed to be picking up a little every time I took notice of it. With the
temperature hovering at about 50 degrees, this biting wind kept us moving to
keep warm.
George
finally picked the spot at which he wanted to drop the net, and gave us the
word over our deck intercom system to drop the net. In perfect unison, Ron and
I first ran the net out off the reel over the stern, then dropped our doors
into the water. The doors spread the net, the buoys on the Headrope lifted the
net as high as it could go, and the 'lead-line' and 'tickler chains' on the
Footrope weighed down the bottom of the net. As we lowered the net into the bay,
it opened up into a huge mouth to receive whatever we scooped up. In this case,
hopefully shrimp.
George
told us how much cable he wanted let out so that the net would 'fish' properly
as we trawled along. During the first 'tow' of the day (usually an hour and
half to two hours), the Deckhands, Ron and me, had some free time to catch up
on chores, play cribbage/chess or catch some zzzzz's. Ron took a short nap to
digest his breakfast while I tidied up the galley and started another pot of
coffee.
However,
after only about 45 minutes, George called down to us that we must have caught
a snag on some sea debris because he could hardly keep the boat moving - even
under a full throttle. "Let's bring up the net and see what the problem
is", George yelled down from the Wheelhouse. He wasn't mad. He had to yell
to be heard over the thundering howl of our 450 horsepower, Caterpillar engine
under full throttle.
Ron
crawled out of his bunk, and I put the finishing touches on the galley cleaning
project (a clean boat is a happy boat - George reminded me daily). We emerged
onto the deck, still socked in by the thick fog. However, through the mist I
could see the windward shore of the narrow bay. The wind had continued to pick
up, and was now blowing at about 25 knots, right here in the bay. That meant
that white-capped waves were forming before they crashed into the windward
shore. At 25 knots, the sound of the wind in the rigging is remarkable, and
when combined with the thundering main engine and screaming hydraulics, all
communications need to be yelled. In their waning years, most fishermen have
pretty poor hearing.
Ron
and I assumed our positions at each of the 2 huge wenches which lift each side
of the net, and after advising George that we were ready to go, we started the
huge wench drums reeling up the cable, slowly bringing the net toward the boat.
In
all my shrimp fishing experience, the net always came toward the boat. However,
this time the boat was being pulled backward toward the net?! Weird. Ron and I
wondered out loud to each other as to what the problem could be, and George,
powerless to control the boat as it was being pulled backward toward the net,
exited the Wheelhouse and walked across the roof of the Deckhouse to watch this
strange occurrence.
After
a few long minutes, the cables that led to the net stopped pointing off the
stern and began pointing straight down from the stanchions which are mounted on
each side of the stern. Straight down. And as we lifted the net up off the
bottom of the bay, our stern began to sink lower in the water. "Holy
Smokes, you guys. Whatever's in that net is pulling the boat down. I wonder
what we caught?", I yelled over the noisy din, including the now growling hydraulic
wenches, which had slowed down to a crawl due to the heavy load being brought
to the surface. The one inch thick cables were tight as a fiddle-strings and
the levelwind which kept the cable tracking properly onto each the wench drums,
had a hard time tracking at the far ends of each layer of cable.
At
long last we lifted the doors out of the water at which time we could always
see the Headrope buoy's popping to the surface; but not today. The net was
still tracking straight down. After racking the doors on their respective
stanchions, we began rolling the net cabling, and then the net onto the net
reel. Soon we were to see what the problem was; the net had over 30,000 pounds
of shrimp in it!!! Since our typical 'tow' yielded only 3,000 - 6,000 pounds of
shrimp, 30,000 pounds was unimaginable.
It
took almost an hour to get all this shrimp on deck including the time it took
to wash all the mud out of it. An awesome task, but we were on top of the
world; in just the one tow we had caught almost a half a load of shrimp. Since
I usually made about $1,000 per trip, this one tow meant almost $500 to me -
more money than I had ever made in my life. Far out!
As
soon as we could, we dropped the net back into the water so it could start
fishing again, and Ron and I began the hard work at getting 30,000 pounds of
shrimp into the hold. We worked at a feverish pace because we knew that we couldn't
get another big tow like that last one on deck until the first tow was in the
hold. George kept coming back from the Wheelhouse, on top of the Deckhouse and
yelling at us to go faster; we had to get the net back on deck pretty soon or
we would get too much shrimp in the net!
Just
as we finished getting the last of the shrimp into the hold, the Sogn stopped dead
in the water. George couldn't get the boat to move forward anymore. We all
suspected the same thing; we had caught too many shrimp and the engine didn't
have enough power to pull the net forward anymore.
Once
again, Ron and I manned the huge hydraulic wenches, and once again, the boat
was being pulled backward toward the net. Although we all wanted to get another
big tow, I was really worried that this tow was, for some reason, going to be
too big. I didn't know what kind of problems too big a tow could cause, but I
knew that all our machinery was geared for a certain size catch - and this was
way over the limit of the gear.
When
the boat was pulled back to just above the net, the heavy hydraulic wenches
began their job of pulling net off of the bottom of the bay. The cables were
singing tight, and the stern section of the Sogn sank deeper and deeper in the
water. By the time the net came off of the bottom, the wenches were groaning
and going so slow that they actually stopped when the waves lifted the boat up;
as each swell dropped the Sogn back down, we would make a little headway with
getting more cable on the drums, thus lifting the net higher off of the bottom.
All
the gear was staining so hard that I leaned back from the cables, worried that
one would break and snap back and maybe rip off my head. This was scary. The
cable was barely creeping onto the drums if it was moving at all. The engine
was straining under the stress and putrid, black smoke began coming out of the
stack. Something had to break but none of us knew what, but we still had to try
to get this mighty load of shrimp on deck. What else could be do???
As
all our gear groaned under the strain, the wind was still screaming and now
with the net off the bottom, we were being blown toward the windward shore of
Deadmans Bay. George went back into the Wheelhouse and turned the boat toward
the middle of the bay to give us room to maneuver. Suddenly, both wenches
abruptly stopped and Ron and I had to apply the heavy brakes to keep the cable
from spinning off the reels. "What the hell, Ron. What's wrong?", I
asked him.
"I
don't know, but it isn't good", Ron replied as he backed away from the
wenches toward the middle of the deck. I followed suit so I could see George in
the Wheelhouse above the Deckhouse.
End of Part III. Do you wonder what the problem was? It was a
BIG problem. To find out, watch for next weeks edition (Part IV) of ‘Deadmans Bay’.
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