The Importance of Boatyards, Friends, and Pi Day (3/14/15)

Pi Day of the century happens at 3:14:15 9:26:53, today, exactly as I am writing this sentence. It will happen again, this evening in the PM, and then not happen for another 100 years.

Numbers: Rational. Irrational.

Kind of like the states of mind.

Getting a fishing boat up to Port Angeles, Washington from Astoria, Oregon in January, as we did this year, produced mixed reactions for my husband and I. Irrational thinking peppered in with the, mostly, rational thought that prevailed. In retrospect, it needed to be done. We had pole work to do, a repaired generator and a new muffler to install. It is eminently easier to do boat work in a yard where the boat and owners are well-known by the trades people who work on boats. It is also nice to go home at night.

The Port Angeles boatyard has been a home to me since my parents moved our family from Westport, WA, during the Spring that I was in 1st Grade in 1971, to Port Angeles, WA. Along with the move, came our wood fishing boat, the Kipling. She would be moored in the Port Angeles boat basin until the mid-1970’s.

As I became older, I loved to ride my bike downhill toward the working waterfront from our house on 10th Street on Pine Hill to the marina, after school, so I could help out on the boat. The Kipling eventually gave way to the Kay Angela. The boat named after my mother, the Kay Angela, was a 46′ fiberglass Little Hoquiam that my parents had built in 1975. One of my jobs was to sand and varnish the ironwood caps and guards.

These days I am a mother. My kids have fished and it appears they may both continue to fish (off and on) aboard our family fishing boat, the Saint Jude. Both my kids (a daughter and a son) have helped paint the red boot stripe and blue bottom, helped with fishing gear, have sea time.

It has not been easy. Many families got out of salmon trolling. Back when my parents owned a fishing boat, Port Angeles had a fleet of over 100 trollers. That has dwindled down to little more than a handful.

Still, hanging on has been worth it! Oh my, the stories. Those glorious sea stories. That alone, the adventures of roaming the West Coast from California to Southeast Alaska, is a reflection of a life well-lived.

Plus, catching King Salmon for a living has got to be one of the greatest gifts bestowed to a born fisherman!

The Saint Jude is nearly ready for an April 1st King Salmon opener that we expect to participate in this Spring. Her skipper, my husband, will be ready. Our fishing family will be ready.

 

The Saint Jude hauled out in the Port of Port Angeles Boatyard on March, 12, 2015. My husband is in Grundens rain gear working on painting the bottom while our son, a third generation commercial fisherman, heads up the ladder.

The Port of Port Angeles Boatyard and the hard-working craftsmen that work there have been good to our family over the years. We are grateful.

We are also advocates of the Port of Astoria keeping their boatyard open for boat owners of all types. A good working boatyard, anywhere on the coast, is a life-line in our business.

A petition to keep the Astoria Boatyard open can be found at Change.org Keep the Port of Astoria Boatyard Open. Here is a link where you can sign the petition and share it with others:

https://www.change.org/p/port-of-astoria-oregon-state-legislature-keep-the-port-of-astoria-boatyard-open

On this Pi Day (the one that will not happen again for another century), my husband and son are at the Port Angeles Farmer’s Market today selling some of our fish.

Direct marketing is how our fishing family has stayed afloat during some tough times throughout our commercial fishing career.

Relating with the public has become an even greater gift than catching King Salmon, and other species of fish, for a living. Connecting with people and forming warm, caring relationships within our local and broader fishing communities is reward beyond any other. Gold dust.

To celebrate Pi Day, my husband and son are planning to bring a pie home from the Port Angeles Farmer’s Market.

I expect that when they stop by the Saint Jude today, where she is still hauled out in the Port Angeles Boatyard, that they will also have a gift (perhaps pie or perhaps a piece of Alderwood smoked King Salmon) for the master welder scheduled to install our new muffler for the generator today.

The numbers a master welder works with are precise. Commercial fishing, often, is not. Along with a good boatyard, a fishing boat and her family depends on both the rational and irrational. Unmeasurable gut feelings and measurable components that keep the boat and fishing business afloat. A good fisherman is instinctive.

Finding the balance is the trick. Best done with friends and a good piece of pie!

Pi = 3.14

Pi is an irrational number.

Here is a link that further explains Pi

Did you know that the hostess of The Pi Episode is Danica McKellan that played Winnie in “The Wonder Years” television series? Did you know she has a degree in mathematics from UCLA and has written several books on mathematics?

Did you know that both men and women can be good at math and, if they choose to do so, they can also both be good at commercial fishing?

Can you describe what is so cool about 3:14:15 9:26:53?

The Saint Jude and the Port Angeles Boat Yard: A True Tale

Notes from the fish wife:

Capt. Al just left for the boat yard. Pissed. He’d been in touch with our welder, Brian. I heard bits and pieces of their phone conversation – “not happy”, “play in the shoulder arm”, “doesn’t seem to be their best work”, and “apprentice”.

My husband looked over at me as he got off the phone, before he left, before putting on his sun-faded Hoonah Cold Storage ball cap and completely metamorphosing into Capt. Al. He took one last wistful glance out our kid-and-dog-smudged slider window door toward his unfinished deck rebuilding project. Home stuff. Never a priority when the boat is hauled out.

We had a short chat. He said, “Brian’s not happy with it”.

Now, I must admit right here that a lot of the boat jargon is not something I have ever book studied or had a formal education in. I have not served as an apprentice in any of the boat building trades. Hell, I have not even fished a boat on my own. Here’s the thing: I barely remember a time in my life, when I was a baby and a toddler, when trolling salmon was not a part of who I am. My essence. But back when I was that little, I was already spending time out at Peters Neah Bay Resort. Where sport-fishermen liked to play. That’s my maiden name. Peters. My grandparents owned that resort.

King Salmon fishing is my heritage. I love it well.

What I bring to the table in our current fishing family business is a lifetime of experience. A troller entered my life when I was about 4-years-old in Westport. Her name was the Acadia. That is when my commercial fishing education began.

I can tell you at around 10-years-old, my son’s current age, that my favorite place to be on the planet earth was the Little Hoquiam Boat Shop. I was especially fond of the steam box which bent the curved pieces that would become part of the wood cap and guards on the stern of the Kay Angela. Our family fishing boat that would become my summer home for a number of years.

I have a newspaper clipping of my uncle’s boat when it was built. Not my Uncle Keith, who had the Jaeger built – another Little Hoquiam. No. This article is about my Uncle Wally who had a Hansen built. He had a short bunk installed for my cousin Raechel who was a baby at the time. She and her husband now seine their own boat in Chignik, AK. With their two beautiful young daughters sometimes on board.

The Saint Jude is my boat. Well, I actually share her with Capt. Al and, really, she belongs to our company – Dungeness Seaworks (to learn more about our fishing family business by clicking here – https://www.facebook.com/DungenessSeaworks?hc_location=timeline). She is aluminum. We are bonded. In the troll fleet, she is a one-of-a-kind. Reportedly, it cost over $300,000 to build her. In 1989. We bought her for around a quarter of a million dollars. She was paid for the first year we owned her after our first season with her.

I call it the season from hell.

To make that boat payment, in the Fall, after struggling learning how to freeze salmon all summer and catching a dismal number of cohos to compensate for our inexperience, we long-lined halibut.

In SE Alaska. Just Al and I.

By October, we were still short the money for that boat payment. So we caught a weather window and headed for Spencer Spit off-shore near Cross Sound.

I told this story to Brian in the Port Angeles boat yard yesterday. He was complimenting us, again, on how well-built the Saint Jude is. Irreplaceable, we agreed.

I told him, for the first time, about the gale force winds that came up while we had about 3,000 pounds of uncleaned halibut on the deck. How we dogged-down the door and the wheel-house hatches.

The green water on the front windows was nothing. Not that day. It was the green water on the side windows that scared us. I had never seen it there before. Never. Haven’t since.

Boats have gone down right there where we were that day. Vince Cameron’s last boat – renamed the Becca Dawn – that’s where she rests. Her crew on board, did not all make it.
I told Brian I thought of that as the Saint Jude struggled to make 2 Knots. Headed for Sitka.

Al hit the bunk. Sometimes even seasoned captains get scared. He let me drive. He thought we were going to die. On the Hoquiam we had owned before, I am convinced we would have rolled and sunk. The halibut would have blocked the scuppers and water would not have been able to have cleared off the deck.

I told Brian yesterday, “Every single fucking time a quartering wave hit, that boat righted herself”. He looked at Al who said nothing. Because it was so. I don’t swear a lot. It is how I feel about that boat.

Irreplaceable. Al and I left the yard knowing the Saint Jude was in good hands. Brian has worked on her since the first season we owned her. Back in 1995. He is old-school. It took awhile to earn his respect. I know we have it. Now. More recently, Brian’s son, Jeremy, has worked on our boat whenever we have needed it. He is a better welder, now, than Brian. Maybe the best in the business. Ask Tom Pope, the surveyor, he’ll tell you that.

So when Brian is on the phone and he’s not happy, I’m not happy. My life has depended on that boat. She got us out of a bad spot. More than once. She got us across Queen Charlotte Sound, during a storm warning. That is another story in and of itself. How a Canadian native in Namu, B.C., came on board and told us how and where to tie to a tree if a storm wind were to come up in Queen Charlotte Sound. I was pregnant with our first-born at the time but didn’t know it. It was late November and our daughter would be born that upcoming August. Guess where she was conceived. Somewhere between a gale and a storm. Al and I never slept on shore during that first long fishing season that we owned the Saint Jude.

When it comes to the lives of my kids, we take many less chances. My son was 100 miles off-shore albacore fishing last summer. The boat did her job. Caught fish and took care of her captain and crew.

It’s my turn. I do not need “play” in some boat part that is not made well. It is unacceptable.

So Capt. Al told Brian to take the rudder assembly back apart. He called the shop and he told them in exacting terms that he expected them to get the job done to meet our specifications. He was mumbling, “micrometer” as he went out the door.

This decision may mean more days in the yard. It may or may not mean more money spent on the boat this Spring. What I know to be truth, is that when the boat work is done right, it may mean it saves our lives.

Before we took the Saint Jude out on our first season with her, we had Brian reinforce her stiff arms. There had been “play” in the way they had been assembled before. That one day in October on Spencer Spit, in gale force winds, Brian’s recommendation and work undoubtedly saved our lives. The rigging held. The next season I fished aboard her in California. While pregnant. The season after that, we long-lined in the Gulf of Alaska, once again, that time with our 8-month-old daughter on board. The boat was happy and so were we.

When Brian is working on our boat and is not happy with something, the Saint Jude is not happy. I listen to that. Hard.

The Saint Jude has caught a lot of fish for us over the years. Capt. Al will probably never say numbers. He is old-school. However, as a fish wife I can say he had the best King Salmon season of his career last year.

We will do our best to keep the Saint Jude strong, to make her systems right, so that she is sea-worthy. So she can do her best, to get everyone home safe.

In the end, that is all that really matters.

The Highliner Code (dedicated to my shipmate Kyne)

Dear Readers: please forgive the spacing issues. During the original draft, I was home “seasonally single-parenting” as we fish wives like to say. Multi-tasking, parenting and editing can be problematic. Someday I will get to fixing this 🙂 Also, this was an emotional piece.  When you read about the packer that sunk, bear in mind that many of the trollers that were fishing in Yakutat after that sinking, after learning about the tragedy, remained anchored for two days. The weather was flat calm and fishing had been very good. It was a blow, though, reminding us that we are not invincible. In fact, we are actually very vulnerable. As you may already know, commercial fishing is one of the world’s most dangerous occupations. It is a risky sort of business and this is not the only sinking you will read about in this piece. There are two others. When the charter boat went down, Al did not go out for a couple of days fishing afterward. That tragedy shook us to the core. May peace be upon all the survivors of these sinkings and may those that were lost Rest In Peace.

I am at home having a hard time getting my mind off of the boat. Flashbacks of harbor days and time at sea compete with the everyday needs and tasks vying for my attention in my more laid-back landlubber role. I see the kitchen counter, now accumulating magazines, boxes of food, and other clutter. Half-heartedly, I call out to   the kids to tidy the family room. They have been playing video games today. Way beyond the amount  of daily time recommended by the experts. I promise to take my son to the park and  begin arranging play dates for him. My daughter takes off for swim practise. She is a co-captain for her team and does not want to be late.

Flashback

My son is in the wheelhouse of the Saint Jude in his survival suit. His father and I are encouraging him during a pretend Mayday call while conducting a safety drill. Tears sting my eyes as I hear our boy’s 9-year-old voice saying with only a slight waver, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, this is Fishing Vessel Saint Jude, Fishing Vessel Saint Jude, Fishing Vessel Saint Jude. We are at Latitude ________ and Longitude ________. We are a 46′ aluminum troller…”.

It is our crewman’s turn and his voice catches as his tries to remember the sequence. I hear myself telling him, as I have done many times  before, “It’s okay. This is just a drill. This is a safe boat. But if anything happens, you will know what to do and it can save your life”. On the galley table is a newspaper, with a photo of the F/V Sea Princess, going down. Everyone including the two cats got off safely even thought the boat was lost. The skipper attributes this to U.S. Coast Guard training.

Flashback

The Pacific Lady comes to mind, and the young man who went down with her. I was one of the last people to see this boat and her crew. She was an SPC packer and we, for all eternity, were the last boat to unload fish to her in Yakutat Bay. I took a photo of the grinning crew surrounding the hatch. Full load. She went down in Cross Sound on the way  down to Sitka. Except for the young man who owned the camera, the rest of the crew was rescued in their survival suits. I spoke with one of the survivors in Sitka a few years later. The faraway look in her eyes as she told the story, was haunting. After that conversation, the survival suits on our boat came out from the focsle and would remain in the wheelhouse close to hand. As it is to this day. The photo I took, it would never be developed.

Flashback

I answer the door at home. My now seventeen-year-old daughter was in preschool at the time. I had been in the basement writing a paper for my Human Services program at Western Washington University. It is summer and hot upstairs on this day in the year 2000. The woman at the door has an ashen face and tells me the Coast Guard called. She is the emergency back-up contact for our EPIRB (Emergency Positioning Indicator Radio Beacon). She hands me a slip of paper with a phone number. The adrenaline surges and I pick up the phone and call the number. The Commander on the other end tells me a signal was picked up by the EPIRB on the Saint Jude. My head feels like it is floating off of my shoulders and co-existing in a corner of the room near the ceiling. I can hear myself saying that I just spoke to my husband a few hours ago and he was in Newport and was not planning on going out. Then I called Al’s cell phone number. He answered immediately, rather unconcerned. Said he’d been running a safety drill and testing the EPIRB. Must have forgotten to turn it off. I give him the Coast Guard number on the slip of paper in my hand and tell him to call it immediately. We disconnect.

The woman who brought me the number goes home with her husband. I sit down, and slowly, my mind begins to feel like it is returning to my body.

Flashback

I am on the Saint Jude, cleaning out a galley drawer. There is a baby spoon with a worn plastic handle. I wonder how many meals it was used for when our daughter was little. By the time she was four-years-old she had spent half of her life on the boat, most of the days at sea fishing. Her first four birthdays were spent on the boat in Southeast Alaska. She was not conceived on dry land and it is somewhat baffling to me that she hates fishing. Someday, that may change.

Flashback

I am in the troll cockpit on the Saint Jude. On the Starboard side. Traditionally, this is the captain’s side. I have not turned a gurdey handle or landed a King Salmon in 13 years. I have been home raising kids, and puppies, and kittens. There is a King on the line, and the thrill of watching him bite is as it was in the old days. Exhilarating! I put the clutch in and turn the valve on. We are a power troller and the hydraulics are working well. Up the snaps come and  I watch my gloved hands coil the leaders. Here comes the spread with the fish! I unsnap the leader from the troll wire and attach it to the boat. The line is tight  and I am careful to make sure my arm flexes to give the fish play. In a corner of my eye, I see Al with the camera. I start pulling in the fish and see that the hook is clear through his lower jaw. He is hooked solid. It would be hard to lose him. I grab the gaff hook, and proceed to hit the stern of the boat three times with a decided metallic clank.  I can hear Al say that I need a longer gaff.  I know he is right. My swing is the same as it has always been but on this day we have no ice in the boat and no fish so  the stern is up further out of the water.  I have not landed a fish in 13 years! So finally, I connect with the exact top of the fish’s head. It stuns him. He’s mine. The gaff hook slides easily  under his gill plate and I two-hand him aboard the boat. I cut the gill so the blood can flow free. He will be worked on, babied, until every vein in his body is free of blood. I admire his colors. Briefly.

First commercially caught King Salmon in 13 years. Oregon. F/V Saint Jude. Photo Credit – Allan Richardson

Flashback

I am on the Kay Angela. A brand-new Little Hoquiam that my family had just built. It is 1975. The boat is named after my mother. I admire the curved cap guard on the stern and remember seeing it in the steambox in Howard Moe’s boat shop.  I am 12-years-old. We are fishing off of Washington State. I am told to run the gear on the Starboard side. Fishing is slow. Up comes a King, maybe 10 pounds. Not well hooked. I lose him. He would have been my first troll-caught King Salmon. The rest of my time on board that season, I am allowed to land cohos but not King Salmon. When a large King Salmon is landed, I admire the colors for a long time. Green, gold, purple. The scales of a freshly landed King Salmon are hypnotic, breath-taking. I feel sorry for the fish. I slice through the sheet of congealing blood in the fish checker and think scientific thoughts.

Flashback

My son is in the troll cockpit of the Saint Jude. It is August, 2013. He is running the gear  on the Starboard side of the boat. His dad is right beside him. Up comes a coho. My son hands the flasher to his dad, and my husband gently releases the fish. Coho are listed as an endangered species and we are not allowed to retain them. The fish swims off.

I am home now.

I hear my son’s Lightning McQueen video game. I need to fix dinner. Just three days ago we drove up the coast to Sequim from Newport. Every port we went through had meaning for me.  Many, many  flashbacks. Depoe Bay. The first time going under the bridge on the Kay Angela. It was starting to blow. I have not been in there, on a boat, in maybe over 25 years. Garibaldi. Al has been in there, on the Saint Jude, in recent years. A few years back was memorable, and sad. Al had got up in the morning and listened to the bar report on the VHF radio. Rough bar on the ebb. The Saint Jude stayed tied to the boards. A charter boat capsized, soon after on the same day, trying to cross that bar. Eleven lives were lost. The sea can be a cruel mistress.

My mind wanders further back to sea. To fishing seasons past. Then back to the present on the tide of memory.

On my drive home, from my nearly two-week stint on the Saint Jude this summer, I passed through Montesano, Washington. This is where my sister lives. She is my only sibling and fished on the Kay Angela, too, when we were kids. She also went on to be a deckhand on the F/V Pioneer, a freezer boat that at the time, was well-known in the troll fleet. Once, she even spent a short time on Al’s and my boat not long after we had been married. It was just the three of us, that trip, on the  Little Hoquiam that Al had built in 1979.  I remember docking my sister’s pay for not being able to help unload the trip of coho that we delivered in Yakutat, AK. No grudges held, she knew the code. If a deckhand can’t finish a trip or help clean the boat after a trip or can’t help unload, they have not finished their job. She had to fly home to go to college. Her summer earnings would go toward tuition, and she was aiming to be a school teacher.

 

 

My sister Kyne (Peters) Jensen. Circa 1984. SE Alaska. F/V Kay Angela. Photo Credit – Karla (Peters) Richardson

 

Of all the deckhands I have ever fished with, my sister Kyne was the best. I miss her fiercely.

 

So, in Montesano I find my way to my sister’s house. Her son and one of her two  daughters answers the door. My sister’s boy is strapping.  He is a local sports hero.  The previous Fall he had quarterbacked the Montesano Bulldogs to the State Championship. His father, my sister’s husband, was head coach. My nephew gives me a hug.  I ask for my sister and he says she is working. I follow him in my dented mini-van as he drives to the new school where she works. I play a mind-game with myself because it is reassuring to think that a dented van is less easy to vandalize when it is parked in port parking lots for lengthy periods of time. That is not the absolute truth of why we own it. We drive an older van because the boat and fishing business absorb most of our proceeds from fishing. That is how it is for many fishing families, and I am teaching my kids that in this, there is no shame. Money is not where it’s at. Finding a way to get paid for doing that which is a passion is way more important. It is an incredible gift to get paid for fishing. Ask my husband. He thinks so too.

 

At the school, after easily clearing the office, my nephew takes me and my boy to my sister’s brand-new classroom. She is not there and we wait while her son goes to find her. On her front desk she has neatly laid out her outline for the first day. I find a pen and write, “Your sister was here”. My son spins a globe, most of the surface blue, representing the world’s oceans. Soon my sister comes in, and we embrace. I know I smell slightly of boat and sweat from the drive. I know she will not care.

My sister listens, intently, while my son shares his sea stories. He has been on board for the better part of two months, away from home. They have a brief conversation on the importance of a deckhand finishing the job on a boat. Not leaving until the work is done. It is the code, and my son is learning it well. Part of his education is being taught, in that brand new classroom, from an esteemed teacher. His eyes are the color of the ocean. I see the blue of my sister’s eyes. She asked how my husband’s fishing season is going. I told her it is not uncommon for him to have 100 King Salmon days. He has had the best season of his 42 year career.

On that day, my sister is the only person outside of my husband and myself that knows exactly how many King Salmon he has landed this year. It is the highliner code. We know it well. I told my sister that when we docked the Saint Jude soon before I was getting ready to go home, that three fishing boat captains were there to grab the tie-up lines. She and I both know how rare this is. (We know the code).  Usually, it is the deckhands that go help tie up a boat. That is why they are often called “boat pullers”. Captains have more important business to attend to.

Respect

My sister says she should probably get back to her meeting. I am slightly stunned. She had the seniority to leave it for my visit? It is rich with meaning. I vaguely regret tossing all those fish hearts down the front of her Helly Hansens when we were kids.  She has become much more than a deckhand. In this classroom, she is a captain.

As I said, Captains rarely will be on the dock to help tie up a boat. There are  exceptions. Such as when they  are welcoming one of their own back into the fleet. Or paying their respects to a skipper. Or both.

That is the code. I know it well. My son will fish. I will follow him, as I did my daughter on land. Like the tide, my life has shifted from land-to-sea-to-land and I can feel my spirit moving back toward the sea once again. My dream is that my husband, children, and I will all fish together as a family for at least awhile.

There are  women I know who follow the call of the sea. Tele Aadsen, Heather Sears, Kim Brown. Kim and Heather are both fishing boat captains. Tele fishes with her husband and writes about commercial fishing as if she is one with the spirit of the fish, the soul of the boat, the essence of the sea. With few exceptions, these women have the respect of the fleet and they have earned it. There are many other women involved in the fisheries that I have known that are  too numerous to mention. Many would believe that commercial fishing is a “man’s world”.  I have never believed this to be so, as the best  fishing operations that I have known had a woman strongly involved, holding the fort down at home, and/or working on board the boat. My mother, Kay Angela, was one of these women. Whether at home or at sea, I believe these women deserve the same amount of respect as the men in the commercial fishing business. This is how Capt. Al and I are raising our kids. Our boat kids. We are a commercial fishing family and mutual respect for one another is our highliner code. We will stay to the code, and honor our heritage, because this is the future of fishing.

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