Gut Feelings, Salt Water and The Port Angeles Fishing Fleet (past and present)

Pink petals from the ornamental plum tree floated by on a Southwest breeze outside the window, catching the eye of the fisherman’s wife inside. The grass was still damp, water droplets on the ends of the waving emerald grass blades glistening in the sun.

The fisherman had already left for the marina, dropping the boy off at school on the way. He was busy tracking down the reason for why the generator, freshly rewound, was producing too much voltage. The cell phone was a constant companion.

The generator issue would get sorted. The fisherman’s wife knew that. She knew to focus on mowing the lawn. Focus on keeping home life stable for the family.

It was transition time.

The fisherman expected to be starting the season in about two weeks. He’d be gone from home then. For possibly weeks at a time. He’d be away from the family, mostly, til the boy was out of school for the summer and able to go fishing. The fisherman’s wife expected to be back on the boat then also. The daughter was now an adult. Old enough to take care of herself either on the boat or at home on land. It was her responsibility to choose where to spend her time.

The boat haul-out had gone well.

All the troubles from a SE Alaska grounding in Icy Bay, a number of fishing seasons before, had finally been completely resolved over the past few Springs in the boat yard.

It was a relief, to the fisherman and his wife, that things were back to the way they should be.

A quick haul-out.

A new stern bearing zinc and fresh blue bottom paint. The red boot stripe giving a nod to the past.

The master welder in the Port of Port Angeles Boatyard had been enlisted to repair a hole in the hull. The one which had happened in a head-on collision, in fog, in California two summers before. The new aluminum pole work brightly reflected the sun. Holes in the generator exhaust pipe had been found in the engine room.

Serious business. Life-threatening.

Holes in exhaust pipe, especially in an engine room, are very bad. Potentially deadly. A local fisherman that the fishing couple had known years before, had died due to carbon monoxide poisoning in an enclosed wheelhouse of a boat. It was why a carbon monoxide detector had been installed on their boat.

The fisherman’s wife had known, earlier that year, that the boat needed to be home for Spring boat work. A gut feeling. She did not know why until she saw the holes in the old exhaust pipe.

Those gut feelings. Any fisherman, any parent, any master craftsman responsible for repairing a working boat – pays attention to them.

In the commercial fishing industry, gut feelings are often the difference between life and death.

After the exhaust pipe had been replaced, there had been a very short impromptu meeting in the boatyard the day that the fisherman and his wife watched their boat being re-launched. For the fisherman, it would be the 45th consecutive Spring that he had been involved in putting a commercial fishing boat in the water. As for his wife, she did not know any different. She had been raised in the fleet.

The master welder was at the small gathering. Also, a newer commercial fisherman that made most of his money in a white collar trade. The new guy had just hauled his boat and was getting ready to pressure hose the bottom. His coding partner was there too.

It was the coding partner that the fisherman’s wife had the most respect for when it came to trolling. He was one of the last. One of the last commercial salmon trollers left in the Port Angeles fleet. He said so himself. He was also one of the last to get into fishing having started as a partner with a brother, and also learning the trade as a deckhand.

It was a near impossible task anymore.

Good boats and permits had become too expensive for most young folks to break into the trade. He had done it the hard way, the old way, the traditional way. That is why the fisherman’s wife respected him so much.

He had crewed for one of the greatest salmon trolling highliners that the West Coast would ever produce. His former captain was one of the “Royal Family”. At 91-years-old, this skipper had passed away just a few weeks before.

The “Royal Family” of the West Coast troll fleet.

The last one of the foursome still living, out of the four highliners in the West Coast troll fleet that comprised “The Royal Family”, was the main subject during that mucky muck meeting in the Port Angeles Boatyard that day. He was an icon, this now 93-year-old master fisherman, all agreed.

The best of the best.

There was no one in the Port Angeles fishing fleet, past or present, that did not look up to him. No one.

A week before the fisherman’s wife made it a point to go with her man and her young son, to meet him, where he was currently residing in a nursing home.

To thank him.

She did not have much of a chance, to extend gratitude. The wise mentor was still teaching. Without missing a beat from their last visit,  the retired master fisherman  asked her husband what he did when he wasn’t working on the boat.  He talked about how he himself had cleared property for a Girl Scout camp out at Lake Sutherland because his two daughters were Girl Scouts.

The mentor said, “You can’t work on the boat every day”.

In that moment, the fisherman’s wife had a strong gut feeling that she and her husband would grow old together.

Moving forward a week, back into the boat yard. A plan was made, in the Port Angeles Boatyard that day, to visit the retired fleet elder. How to support his wife. As often as possible. All agreed, there was a need to give back.

A copy of the historical West Coast trolling documentary, “Coming Home Was Easy”, was handed to the new guy in the fleet, now getting ready for his third fishing season. A Jimmi Hendrix hoochie along with it.

Another copy of the commercial fishing  documentary would be put on the hatch cover of a 47′ wood troller tied up in the Port Angeles boat basin within the next few days. For the fellow that fished the boat. One of the best salmon trollers that the West Coast fishing fleet would likely ever produce. His former skipper was interviewed in that documentary.

The title of that West Coast fishing documentary, “Coming Home Was Easy”, were words that belonged to the father of the fisherman’s wife.

She typed on the laptop keyboard the Oregon State University web-address of where the video could be purchased:

http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/coming-home-was-easy-video

In the video, she knew, was video footage of a cherry tree. It represented the cherry tree in the backyard of the Port Angeles home where she grew up.

The fisherman’s wife looked out the window. The breeze had backed off and the blossoms from the plum tree in the backyard had quit falling. The grass was drying and she needed to mow the lawn.

She hoped her daughter would fish with her husband that upcoming season. At least for a trip. Everyone in the boatyard agreed, that would be good. Living on the boat would come back to her first-born. The fisherman’s wife felt that in her gut. She knew. The fishing couple had taken their  daughter up the Inside Passage, from Port Angeles, when she was an 8-month-old baby.  Their girl would fish the entire season with them that year, in SE Alaska for 5 1/2 months, away from their house in Sequim, WA.

The fisherman’s wife hoped her son would have a chance to fish a boat on his own before the Port Angeles fishing fleet disappeared entirely. She hoped it never would. Disappear entirely. That future, however, was not for her to know.

My husband and son with an ocean-caught King Salmon aboard the Saint Jude. Fishing Season 2013.

She had kids to think about. Boat kids.

Fishing is in the blood. Once a boat kid, always a boat kid.

The fisherman’s wife had that very conversation with the master welder that had fixed the boat. He had been a fisherman in Canada, near the Yukultas, decades before. A salmon troller. His boys had spent time fishing on his boat when they were very young. Once again, the trust the fisherman and his wife had placed in him to make the boat right, would quite possibly mean the difference between a good fishing season and a poor fishing season. His work, the difference between life and death.

The master welder, too, had been given a copy of “Coming Home Was Easy”.

Salt Water

As she observed the last remaining shimmering water drops on the green blades of grass outside, tears sprang into the eyes of the fisherman’s wife. The hue of her tears held exactly the same rainbow colors, reflecting in the light, as that on the scales of a fresh ocean-caught King Salmon.

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?

Fishermen’s Buzz

Al’s been gone from home a week. He had a smooth trip getting the Saint Jude to the fishing grounds in Oregon from Port Angeles, WA. He and crewman, Devin, were even  able to catch some King Salmon. King Salmon. In early April. Boom! For anyone who has ever been a King Salmon troller or is a King Salmon troller, this is nirvana!

Even though we missed the Oregon April 1st King Salmon opener, due to yard work, it is still the earliest either Al or I can remember a King Salmon troll season opening in the history of our fishing careers. That’s saying a lot as Al is on his 43rd consecutive year of King Salmon trolling. My mom cannot remember the season ever opening that early either and her memory in trolling goes back further than mine since our family had purchased a wood troller when I was a kid, in 1968!

This early opener, oh my, what a tremendous contrast from the unprecedented King Salmon troll closures that affected fishermen in WA, ORE, & CA from 2005-2010.

Those years, Al worked as a bus washer/mail delivery person for the Sequim School District. I pitched in, selling items on Ebay.

During those short fishing seasons, we had halibut long-line quota and Al fished in SE AK for King Salmon and coho for two months. Those were tough years for us financially, as they were for many folks. Many trollers sold their boats and got out of fishing. Lots of people struggled during the recession that hit our country during that time also. A tough situation all the way around.

It was also an amazing time for our family. We had Springs and Falls together at home. Many of our children’s milestones, during that time, were witnessed by Al. We planted flower gardens and went to the park. We played outside in the green grass and had warm weather picnics on the deck. Often. As a family.

Still, it wasn’t easy. The boat was kept in Alaska. To save money on fuel costs it would have taken to get her down to Washington. It is tough on boats, to be away from their owners for long. We’ve been making it up to the Saint Jude over the last couple of off-seasons while she has been moored in Port Angeles. Home. With her family. This year she is sporting a newly painted wheelhouse floor and a newly modified rudder for fuel efficiency. She is thriving with the attention. Al is happier, too, these days.

It was tough on Al to be away from the boat during the off-season. Those shortened seasons were damned tough on him all the way around.  He was making the same amount during an entire Winter, 8 hours a day, that he had been used to making in one fishing trip. In the 1980’s. However, we had full benefits and that was a huge plus. Dental, medical, vision, retirement. Those things can really add up. Especially if a family member needs extensive medical care. In some ways, our family had never had a better safety net. Self-employment, in commercial fishing, is challenging when contemplating the “what if’s.”

These days, I don’t worry so much about the
“what if’s”. I think, mostly, that Al and I are just so grateful to have the opportunity to continue trolling for King Salmon. I think this is infectious and that our kids pick up on it.

There is a buzz in the air for the West Coast Salmon Troller Fleet!

Celebrating the Saint Jude landing her first King Salmon, in early April of this year, has been really special. Like relief, gratitude, excitement, joy, and a feeling of awe all rolled into one emotion! A feeling of “Wow! We’ve made it through the dark years. There is light on the other side.

Our fishing family and the crew of F/V Saint Jude are looking forward to a great Fishing Season in 2014!

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.