Rouge Wave! Part III

The Crab Season is finally over and we are now working to get all of our crab pots off the fishing grounds onto shore for winter storage. A huge gale is blowing. At this time,  Mill and I have left the stern of the deck while Dave and Chris finish buttoning up the lazarette hatch while we run to another string of gear to stack on deck.

As I watched in the partial protection of the deck house, I watched as Chris and Dave put the hatch cover back on the lazarette opening and tried to ‘dog’ it securely into place. The wrench they used was specially made for the purpose, but as I watched, Chris was having trouble with the latch. After a couple of hard smacks with the palm of his hand, Chris took the hatch off and turned it upside down on the deck to see what was wrong with the dog mechanism.

Ohh, that’s not good, I thought to myself. Most fishermen, including me, get superstitious about certain things, and putting any hatch cover upside-down is extremely bad luck. You just don’t do it. But there it was, an upside-down hatch cover with Chris beating on the deadbolt dog latch to free it up. There, he finally got it, I thought to myself after Chris finally freed up the latch.

As I was watching Chris and Dave work near the stern, up against a wall of crab pots, the sky and water had a certain look to them; the sea was green and the sky was grey – a little lighter than the green sea. Then, in an instant, from the corner of my eye, everything got green  – very green, very fast. I turned my head to see what was happening and saw a wall of water higher than the boat with a breaking sea on top of it. It was a colossal ground swell which had to be 50 feet tall – or taller. Huge rogue waves like this travel rapidly and this one was about to hit the Marcy J square on our starboard side.

I screamed to the guys as loud as I could: ROGUE WAVE!!! – and then the mighty sea engulfed us and washed over the entire vessel. Because it came onto us from a quarterly direction, I was shielded from the main blow of this monstrous sea. The Marcy J listed way, way over to port, and for a minute, I wasn’t sure if she would be able to right herself.

Chris and Dave were completely exposed to this maelstrom and unable to get away from the thunderous swell that had engulfed us. They disappeared from sight as I was washed with water over my head. I grabbed for the shrimp wenches as the sea pushed me past them and held on for dear life. For what seemed an eternity. Both arms were hugging the huge line cleats on these wenches and I was glad I had something solid to hold on to.

At last the water subsided enough for me to breathe, and I was able to get my feet back onto the deck as the boat lost the dangerous list and the water washed back over the rails and through the scuppers. I immediately started slogging my way back to where I had last seen Chris and Dave, but I didn’t see them; the water was too high. When it finally got down to about 3 feet deep, I saw both their heads; they had been smashed up against the netting of the crab pots and been ‘pasted’ there for the duration of the event.

Wow. Good thing we had those pots on deck or they would have been washed overboard for sure, I thought to myself – at first. Then I saw the look on Chris’s face; he was ashen grey and writhing in pain. Oh no, I thought as I trudged toward them. Chris is hurt.

I rushed to them as fast as I could. Dave seemed OK, but Chris melted down to the deck, and he was trying to hold his lower leg. Before I could get there, Dave stood up and helped Chris to his feet. I watched in horror as the bottom half of Chris’s leg was swinging free around in the swirling water. It was obvious that the bottom part of his leg was broken in half. Blood colored the water as it leaked over his boots and down the inside of his oilskin pants.

“God damn it Dave. What happened to Chris?” I cried as I reached them.

“I think that hatch cover got pasted into his shin bone and broke it off” Dave yelled to me over the din of the wind and water. Chris couldn’t talk. Although tears were streaking down his salt crusted cheeks, no sound emerged. He just kept holding on to what was left of his leg, just below the knee.

“Come on Dave” I shouted. ”Let’s get him into the galley”. As gently as we could, Dave and I carried Chris across the deck, through the entryway, down the passageway and into the galley. Chris was gasping in pain. Mill came to help and we laid Chris on the galley table.

I ran up the latterway to the wheelhouse and yelled to Harold (Chris’s dad), “Harold, Chris has a broken leg. We have to Medivac him off the boat!” What that meant was that a Coast Guard helicopter would fly out and lift the wounded man off the boat, into the helicopter and fly him to a hospital.

“Take the wheel John”, Harold said as he flew down the latterway to the galley to his son. As I stood by the wheel, the guys stripped off Chris’s oilskins and cut his pant leg up past the break. It was bad; the skin and muscle of the back of Chris’s shin bone area was the only thing holding the bottom part of his let together.

Harold returned to the wheelhouse and called the Coast Guard. No matter Harold’s urgent plea’s, the Coast Guard said there was zero possibility they could go out in this gale and lift Chris off in the middle of the Bering Sea. No way. We would have to get to the Port Moller Cannery. They would take him to an Anchorage Hospital from there. Major bummer!

All we had onboard for pain killers was aspirin, and as we fought our way through the monstrous seas, each crash into a new swell would throw the boat off and Chris would flinch. We had tied a tourniquet around Chris’s leg and changed it every 15 minutes or so. This was the longest 20 hour trip of my fishing career; my best buddy Chris was writhing in pain the whole way. None of us could sleep. We nursed Chris as best we could the whole way.

We finally arrived at Port Moller, and lifted him onto the cannery dock with our ‘picking boom’ on a makeshift stretcher Mill and I had fashioned. We gently lowered him in the bed of the old cannery pickup truck and drove a quarter mile or so to where the helicopter was waiting. Harold, Dave, Mill and I said goodbye to Chris with tearful eyes.

The only good part of this story was that Harold’s boat insurance paid a buggered up crewman a full crew’s share while the man couldn’t fish, so Chris and his family wouldn’t struggle financially while he healed. It took about 15 months before Chris was back on deck, but he had recovered to almost 100%. Whew.

So, short one man, Mill, Dave, Harold and I returned to the fishing grounds and finished picking up all our pots in 2 ½ more loads. Another week of work. The mood on deck was subdued. We just wanted to go home and see our families.

We finally made our last trip to Dutch Harbor, unloaded our pots and made the 5 day return trip to Kodiak. I spent a day or so in town visiting my buddies while waiting for a plane to Anchorage.

Then, finally after not seeing my family for months, I arrived back in Minnesota. I was tired, but healthy and had about $50,000 in my pocket. And boy, was it ever nice to see my wife!

*  *  *  *  *

Although I haven’t seen Dave or Mill for years, I still see Chris and Harold and Chris’s brother Tony. The four of us are lifelong friends that have had more adventures together than I can shake a stick at. Whenever we all get together, we tell, and retell, all of our favorite tales into the dead of night…

Rouge Wave: Part II

In this tale of King Crab Fishing during the 1979 Bering Sea Crab Season, we had finally gotten all but one load of crab pots on the fishing grounds.

September 15^th finally arrived, and at exactly the stroke of noon, we started baiting all of our pots. The last load of crab pots was still on deck with the intention of dropping them in strings alongside the best of our pots that were already in the water. This meant that we had to pick and bait nearly 250 pots to even begin to catch any crab.

“Those crabs won’t crawl into our pots without any bait in them” Harold would yell down to us over the deck intercom. “Come on guys, let’s get going!” He didn’t really need to give us much encouragement at this time of the season, as we were well rested and plenty ready to make some money.

We worked for 36 hours straight baiting all the pots in the water before starting to ‘pick’ pots. Most of our strings of crab pots did pretty well, and after we’d picked about half our gear (pots) we found a good enough string to drop the last deckload of 75 pots in the water –  in strings parallel to our best string. Finally, after 48 hours all our gear was in the water, baited and ‘fishing’. Whew!

“Let’s get a few hours sleep you guys and let these pots soak for awhile before we pick the rest of them. What do you think?” We were dead on our feet and too worn out to do any more anyway. “OK”, I shouted up through the deck intercom. “Let’s shut ‘er down for awhile”.

But, you can’t just drift around in a boat at sea without anyone on watch, so each deckhand had to take a turn ‘watching the wheel’ while the others rested. The first and last watches were the best because these guys were able to sleep through without being awakened for their ‘watch’ in the middle of a deep slumber. Of course the last watch was the best because not only did you get to hit your bunk right away, but you also were able to sleep through the other 3 men’s’ watches. As the Captain, the skipper never has to stand watch – one of the many advantages of being the skipper.

The season went pretty well, but it could have been better. Each man on deck earned about $10,000 a trip and the trips were taking about a week each. Some of the other boats were loading up in 2-3 days, but they also had a crew and a half on board and these boats never shut down, ever. They might fish for a week straight without ever stopping. On the Marcy J we never worked more than 48 hours straight without getting at least 4 hours sleep. This was the one thing I didn’t like about crab fishing. We never got enough sleep while on the fishing grounds.

And this was tough work – the toughest of my life. We were constantly fighting the crab pots which weighed 500 pounds each – without any crab in them. When they were full, they could weigh 1,000 pounds or more. And there was always weather. 8 foot seas made a nice day. Most days the wind would whip up to 25 – 35 knots and pick the seas up to 15 feet or more - with a chilling cold, wet wind. It was brutal.

The cold water of the Bering Sea would come over the rail in wind-swept sheets and pummel us constantly. If you can imagine being hit right in the chest with a full, 5 gallon bucket of water, you can get the idea. But it was more than that and constant. And LOUD! The wind through the rigging was shrieking, the seas crashing

into the hull were constant and the screaming hydraulics all combined into a constant, energy draining roar. I don’t know any old time crab fishermen that are not hard of hearing. None of us can hear well anymore, including me.

And the raging sea; it works like this:

The ripples turn into chop. Then the chop turns into waves, 3 or 4 feet high. Then after awhile the waves turn into ‘seas’ that can mount to 10-15 feet. But after a day or two of wind in the same direction, ground swells form that can mount to 25 feet and more. Let me tell you what; when a 15 foot sea climbs to the top of a 25 foot ground swell, and the boat hits it at that precise time, there is more energy involved than you can imagine. It is awesome.

For many, this weather is dreaded. And for me, while on the grounds fishing, it really slows down the operation. But I loved this kind of weather and drew energy from it. There is nothing in the world like being a healthy 28 year old man in perfect physical condition working in sync with good friends in frightful conditions. I loved it! The bonds I have with these guys have lived a lifetime.

We delivered our catch to an old WW II Liberty Ship, the All Alaskan, which had been converted into a cannery. It was anchored up in the bay at Port Moller and had a fleet of about a dozen crab boats delivering to it. Sometimes we had to wait a day or so to unload if our timing was off, but most times Harold timed it so we could unload immediately. Sometimes we delivered some percentage short of a full load so we wouldn’t waste a day waiting to unload our catch.

We all called the All Alaskan the Blue Zoo – for good reason. First of all, every inch of the ship, was painted a very strong blue. And besides the professional crew that managed her, all the ‘cannery workers’ were young kids in their early ‘20’s looking for an adventure. There were about 75 young men and women aboard and they were aboard for the better part of 5 months – never able to leave. After all, where would they go? There was an abandoned Salmon Cannery at Port Moller, but otherwise it was just wilderness, and the Captain didn’t allow anyone to leave for fear of someone getting lost or killed somehow. Port Moller is on the Alaskan Peninsula and one could run into half dozen or more Brown Bears around the creeks and rivers eating spawning salmon.

Although the Marcy J was a ‘dry’ boat, there was plenty of beer on the Blue Zoo, and when the cannery workers were off duty, the parties began – actually the party never really stopped. As for our crew, there was always plenty of work to do while the crab were being unloaded. We needed to take on fuel, do maintenance to the engines, get fresh bait, purchase provisions, mend crab pots, repair broken machinery… There was never enough time to get everything done. We worked steady until we headed out to the fishing grounds. The trips back and forth to the grounds were when we slept.

This Season lasted almost 90 days during which time we never set a foot on solid ground. We were tired and beat up. Although we didn’t have much weight to lose in the first place, we all were down to bone and muscle and sinew by the end of the season. When the final day of fishing was announced, we were jubilant and all ready to go home. None of us had seen our wives for a very long time! All of my children were conceived upon arrival from a fishing season.

But of course we still had to bring in all our crab pots – 4 big loads of them. And now it was December and the weather continued to deteriorate. Every day now was some kind of a storm – it was just a matter of degree.

When we store pots, we need to take all the buoys and ‘shots of line’ out of them to store until the next season. Each shot of line is 66 fathoms long – almost 400 feet of heavy 3/4” hard lay poly or nylon. They were heavy. Our system was to lash down the first layer of 6’ pots on deck with a narrow path back to the lazarette, the compartment in the stern that housed the rudder post. We could get a lot of shots of line in there which made for more deck space on which to stack more crab pots.

On our second load, the weather was bad, real bad. There was a 45 knot wind blowing pushing 25’ ground swells. The first string of gear we were picking was running in a direction so that the seas were quartering in from just starboard of our bow. This meant that the spray was constantly washing over the deck and we were fighting every single pot into position on deck before lashing it down. And of course we were tired. Dead tired. But we had to get the gear put away. We didn’t have any other choice.

After this first string of gear, we had 21 pots secured to the deck, leaving a path back to the lazarette. “OK boys”, came the call from Harold over the intercom. “We have about a half hour run to the next string of gear. Let’s get the shots of line down into the lazarette”.

“Got it Harold” I shouted back over the din of the storm. “I’ll let you know when we’re finished and secure”.

Then the 4 of us, Mill, Dave, Chris and I started hauling these heavy shots of line across the pitching deck under the grey stormy sky. The lazarette hatch was a heavy ‘flush hatch’ made from a 1” thick sheet of steel that was oval, about 15 inches by 2 feet. It was heavy and hard to handle. It opened up a hatch just large enough for a small man to go through to whom we would then pass each shot of line. Dave and Chris went down the hatch as Mill and I handed shot after shot to them.

After a few minutes, all the line was safely stowed and Mill and I walked back across the deck to behind the deck house, leaving space for Chris and Dave to emerge from the lazarette through the hatch. The wind was screaming and sheets of water washed over the deck constantly as we quartered into the huge, boiling seas. Mill went into the deck house to make a pot of coffee for us and I waited behind the Deck House, out of the wind and water, and lit a cigarette. What a day, I thought to myself. It seems like the weather is getting even worse…

End of Part II

With the weather continuing to deteriorate, the danger mounts. What is going to happen? Watch for the conclusion of this story in next weeks’ Newsletter.