Al left yesterday morning. The Saint Jude had been in the yard for much more time than we anticipated and we had already missed the April 1st King Salmon opener in Oregon before she was re-launched.
At the same time, the boat has never been more fine-tuned. Has never felt more responsive to steerage, and has never been as strong and safe. As she is now.
She will catch fish. I can feel it in my bones.
The kids spent a bit of time, yesterday morning, on board the Saint Jude in Port Angeles getting some last minute time in with Al. Our crewman came down. His father had brought him to the boat. Devin is going on his 3rd year with us. He spent time working on the boat this Spring. He is getting a feel for how important she is to our ongoing safety at sea and how her well-being is essential to our being productive.
Our crewman had attended a safety course with Al, during the off-season, and has developed a healthy respect for how vulnerable fishermen are at sea if something goes wrong.
Al in survival suit during safety drill.
Devin’s dad had also brought their 7-month-old black lab down to the boat. Lady Bird is her name. I took down the old duck call that my grandfather had given me years ago. It hangs from a hook behind the pilot seat. It was the one he had personally used and a gift to celebrate when Al and I got our first black lab, Tug. The duck call stays with the boat. I’ve given up bird hunting. I do like thinking that my grandfather, watching from above somewhere, is keeping an eye on our boat. That young pup, Lady Bird, cocked her ears when she heard the quacking produced by that old duck call. Reminding me of Tug.
Tug fished with us many years. His formal name was Ocean Tug at Dungeness. He was a Bigstone Kennels pup from Minnesota. We had him flown to Alaska, where we were fishing our boat, after having him field trial trained in Missouri. We couldn’t properly train him ourselves because we were too busy fishing. The fleet used to like to watch him retrieve bumpers. In Sitka during the closures. He’d retrieve triples right in Thomsen Harbor. We miss him.
Our boat dog, now, is a chocolate lab that the kids named Cocoa. She’s not much into swimming. Especially in cold water. She makes a nice boat dog, though. She kept our son great company on board last season.
Boat, dog, crew. Yep. the boat was ready to take off for fishing.
I’d called my mother earlier that morning. Asked she and her housemate, Billie Moore, to be on hand. They came. Both women have sent men to sea for many years. They have been to sea themselves. Commercial fishing. They are pretty much retired from that business.
My mother showed tears. Entrusting God to watch after our boat, her skipper and crew.
It is all we can ask ourselves. At some point, we have done all that is humanly possible to get the boat ready. Then we turn our well-being over to a higher power. It is absolutely, in my mind, the only way for a family to keep confident in commercial fishing. Arguably the world’s most dangerous occupation.
I have a quirk of talking, out loud, to the boat before she leaves the harbor. Telling her she is a good girl. A ritual. To ease the excitement and jitters. Like a ballplayer adjusting his cap before an opening pitch in the first game of the season in baseball. When Al put the boat into gear, we on the dock all noticed that the electric cord was still plugged into the power box. Luckily, he heard our shouts and stopped the boat just as the cord pulled tight. I unplugged the thick, yellow power cord and tossed it on board to Devin.
We all waved. Again. The boat was back in gear. Then out of gear just as she cleared the slip. Al came out of the wheelhouse and said we’d probably need the van keys which were still in his pocket. He backed the boat down toward another dock, and soon my son brought over a zip lock plastic baggy with the set of van keys inside. I was thinking that Al was enjoying backing the boat around with the newly modified rudder. We’ll have a chance to compare notes on that later, by phone. Probably days from now. The boat headed for the exit of the Port Angeles Marina, temporarily out of sight.
My mother invited the kids and I to breakfast and I had to decline because my daughter is scheduled to go shopping for Senior Ball dresses with her friends in an hour. My mom says she is glad I will be with another mother, a friend, for the day.
It is true. The company will be good for me. As a fishing wife, I tend to go into a daze right when Al takes off for fishing. Transitions can be hard.
The kids and I drive out to Ediz Hook. We watch the Saint Jude come out of the inside harbor and round the spit toward the ocean. I show the kids, again, how to do a boat wave. Not the wrist wave like princesses on parade floats do. No. Broad sweeping, entire arm waves from side to side in an arc over the head. The wave that fishermen and other mariners use. So that other mariners on boats, at a distance, can see. This is how I learned to do it, from my father, as a boat kid. He would make sure that my sister and I went out on the back deck and waved like that to all the elders in the fleet. I remember the mirrored return wave, from folks like Keane and Helen Gau, clear back when they fished the Bluejacket off of the Washington Coast. A long time ago, it seems.
I can hear the John Deere, the engine on board the Saint Jude, from where I stand on the rocks. As Billie Moore said, she sounds good.
Billie, for years, was married to a highliner. The fleet just usually called him by his last name. Some would say that my mom was married to a highliner too. These women, while they were married to fishermen, both contributed to a historical video about the West Coast Salmon Troller, called “Coming Home Was Easy”. It can be bought on DVD and through this link:
http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/coming-home-was-easy-video
I just watched that documentary video for the first time several evenings ago. With Al. We’d never seen it before. The Little Hoquiam, we’d got married on is in it. Fishing. With both Al and I on board. (The boat is named the Alharbara and we later change her name to the Karla R. eventually we sold her and bough the Saint Jude). The footage was shot from my parents boat, the Kay Angela. I had declined to be filmed for this video but one of our wedding photos is in it. The one where Al and I and our entire wedding party are on the bow of the boat. Me as a little girl on the F/V Kipling and the F/V Acadia. Relatives including my sister, a photo of her sleeping on the boat, and more of me. It brought up a lot of memories and their are other families and fishermen in that documentary that I have known well over the years.
Here is a segment of that documentary which heavily features my parents and shows our boat:
It is my dad’s voice at the beginning of that segment (“Dave Peters, Port Angeles, Washington” flashes up on the video) that speaks the words, “Coming Home was Easy”. Somehow accepting this gracefully means that I have reached a point of forgiveness. For being raised by this man did not come without pain. If I could have re-written the script, I’d have told him to not throw away the cap off of the bottle of whiskey. I would have told him, that as a kid, that a few hundred or few thousand more fish really would not have mattered all that much. I would have told him that. And maybe I did. And maybe a few other things too. And maybe that is why I don’t see him much these days. I always wish him all the best. Let him know I am living my life well.
Truth is, if we had continued to fish like my parents did, we would have probably sold our boat like they eventually did along with many of their former coding partners. After all, they were for the most part, a generation older than us. Al and I have had to make so many adaptations over the years to stay in it. Quitting drinking. Learning to freeze salmon on board. Taking advantage of every fishable day unless a kid is on board. Marketing. These changes have been intense and are not for everyone. Much of the fishing culture, as shown in that documentary, is also changing. When our daughter was a baby on board the Saint Jude, 17 years ago, there were hardly any other boat kids in the fleet around us. For her social well-being we thought it was more appropriate to raise her largely at home so she could be with peers her own age.
Now, fishing wives are banding together in fishing towns throughout the country, even across the different fisheries, to adamantly advocate for the commercial fishing industry. This has traditionally been the case but now the internet is used widely to raise consumer awareness about fishing and the seafood that is produced. For fishing families, mutual respect amongst family members is highlighted.
My father taught me to fish. I bring that to the table when I am on board with Al. My mother, Kay Peters, took care of my sister and I for years, when my dad was away at sea. She understands that being a “seasonal single parent” is not easy. Eventually, we all fished on the Kay Angela together. For awhile. My sister, my parents, and I. Until it was time for me to be on my own more.
I am healing the hurts, of any mistakes my folks made as parents. I now realize that perfect parenting is a myth. Though we may not always be close, I hope that at some level my life as a commercial fisherman and the way in which I am raising my children and the way I work with my husband, brings both of them honor. They are no longer together, but they will both always be my parents. It is from them, that I originally learned what it is to be a highliner.
Anymore, I am not sure what highliner really means. It used to be a term that was reserved for fishing boat captains that came in with a boat load of fish. Consistently. The water line of the boat was raised because the hold was full. A highliner, traditionally, garnered the most respect from everyone else in the fishing fleet.
Fishing, at least King Salmon trolling, has changed so much over the years. These days, trollers can only fish 4 days when using ice in the hold.
Now, I think highliner means a fishing boat captain that can keep producing year in and year out. One who can balance this with the affection and care that he shows his family whether they are at home or on the boat with him. Someone who does not compromise his/her integrity or worry too much about what others think just to catch a few more fish.
When my husband left the dock yesterday morning. The adults standing there watching him, were thinking out loud, “There goes a highliner”.
May God watch out for the Saint Jude and all other fishing boats this season. May the fishing boat captains and crews be blessed with good health. May He watch over the fishermen’s children and their mothers on land. May He bless our catch and all those that derive nourishment from the bounties of the sea. May He provide ongoing comfort to those that have lost loved ones at sea. Amen.
Let the 2014 Fishing Season begin.
O, God, Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat is So Small – Breton Fisherman’s Prayer
The Breton Fisherman’s Prayer was inscribed on a very small plastic ship’s wheel that my parents kept on board the Kay Angela. It had been given to my dad by a church pastor. When I was on board the Kay Angela, as a child, those words gave me great comfort when the sky would darken and the seas would turn rough. They gave me equal comfort, yesterday morning, as my children and I waved while watching the Saint Jude head for the ocean down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I knew her skipper was waving back at us.
Integration 