The Ritual Of Sending A Man To Sea (a fishing family celebrates Easter)

My husband left this morning. For the new fishing season.

The kids opted to stay home from the send-off this year.

Easter is tomorrow.

Our fishing family celebrated with a pork roast dinner and key lime pie last evening. For commercial fishing families, the actual dates for holidays have no meaning depending on the fishery and the dates of the fishing seasons.

It is never easy.

Saying good-bye at the beginning of a fishing season. So we don’t.

We say, “I’ll miss you”.

Still, tears come. Every year. Every Spring. At the start of the King Salmon season.

Not for me. My dad fished too. I took pride in not showing tears growing up.

Childhood folly. A mistake. Tears are healing.

The kids were comforted before bed. Small gifts left in Easter baskets for the morning. Colorful, plastic eggs hidden in the grass outside.

Foil wrapped egg shaped chocolates here and there.

The toughest fishermen can make the tenderest of Easter bunnies.

Even grown children need the rituals sometimes. The comforts. Parents need them too.

The boat rounds Ediz Hook heading West. My black lab, on a leash, waited patiently by my side.

Closer now. There’s the Saint Jude. She looks tiny next to a large cargo ship.

The Saint Jude in the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the outside of Ediz Hook heading for the fishing grounds. Fishing Season 2015.

There he is. My husband. On the back deck. Waving. I wave back.

The tears do come after all.

O, God, Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat Is So Small (Breton Fisherman’s Prayer)

The F/V Saint Jude And Her Fishing Family (a symbiotic relationship)

The boat is nearly ready. For the new fishing season.

The Saint Jude is the basis of our livelihood.

She is a member of the family.

As is the case with fishing boats and their fishing families everywhere.

Today a brand new generator is being installed in the engine room of the Saint Jude. Rewinding the old generator did not work. For reasons yet undetermined.

Tomorrow the season starts where we want to be fishing our boat.
For now, though, the Saint Jude is in port close to home. It is blowing Westerly gale in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It is small craft on the coast.

Fishing is like that. Getting off course happens. A generator, freshly rewound, fails to work properly.

Decisions need to be made.

Go fishing with the boat as it is. Using a hand pump for any accumulated ice melt in the hold?

Or get a new generator installed before the start of the season?

We need the generator to power the on-board blast freezer. Which allows us to process premium quality salmon and produce sashimi grade albacore on board. Many of which will be direct marketed to our customers.

(To learn more about our fishing family business, please feel free to check out our web-site: http://www.freshfrozenfish.net )

Fishermen tend to get impatient. Their fishing/business partner wives, not so much.

We want to have the family back together safely at the end of the season.

An experienced fisherman’s wife looks at the big picture. Not the day to day fishing. Not the trip to trip fishing. Not even the season to season fishing.

An experienced fisherman’s wife looks at the occupation of being a commercial fishing family in terms of survival.

Decade to decade.

It is a challenge. A monetary challenge. A lifestyle challenge. An exercise in patience.

A commercial fisherman is called to the sea.

It is important to understand this in relating to commercial fishermen.

When the boat is ready, the fisherman’s wife knows it often before the fisherman. For it is the boat that will care for her husband while she is on shore caring for children still attending school.

The boat is expensive. Demanding.

A fisherman’s wife accepts this. Jewels and exotic vacations are less important than new equipment for the boat.

It is not a sacrifice, being a fisherman’s wife, for the pay-off is great.

Fishermen’s wives and fishing families eat the finest seafood available!

There is satisfaction, also, in pursuing an occupation that one is born to.

When the boat is ready for the season, everyone in the family will feel it.

We will know when the wind backs off.

Until then, we are test driving four wheel drive pick-up trucks to replace the old fish truck we recently lost to an engine fire. We are enjoying Spring Break with the kids out of school, exploring museums, enjoying a little leisure time as a family.

Perhaps the Saint Jude knew we needed this.

F/V Saint Jude in Port Angeles Harbor.

In a small fishing family operation, a fisherman’s wife pays attention to the boat as much as the fisherman does. The livelihood of her family depends on this.

The Saint Jude is part of our family. I will do everything in my power to take care of her so she can help to take care of our family safely!

The Things That Really Matter

A decidedly scary thing happened last Friday. My husband was on his way to work on the Saint Jude, our family fishing boat, in Port Angeles.

Our home phone rang, and I skipped over to answer it expecting to hear that he had got the generator on the boat running.

Something had gone wrong. In somewhat halting words, my husband said that the truck had caught fire but that he was okay.

The Sequim Fire Department putting out the fire that started under the hood of our classic 1972 Ford F-250. No one was hurt and the fire was put out safely!

How grateful we are, that no one was hurt!

My husband had noticed the fire, after returning an item in a store. The truck was off the road and parked away from any crowd of people. A passing good Samaritan had called the Sequim Fire Department and two fire trucks showed up, sirens blaring. Tools were needed to cut and pry open the hood so the fire could be completely extinguished.

A neighbor had been shopping at the store and had given my husband  a ride home. AAA towed the injured truck to a nearby auto repair shop.

Within a couple of hours, it was time to pick up our pre-teen son from school. We considered how to break the news to him. We decided to let him know we would be getting a newer truck. As much as my husband and I had come to appreciate our classic Ford truck, that we used for our fishing business, it was our son that expressed the passion that many people have for collector vehicles. He loved that truck!

He and I had driven by the truck many times, when it sat in a row of  cars for sale. It had a presence about it. Most of one Spring we drove by it every day during school drop-off and pick-up.  It was, overlooking Highway 101, patiently waiting for new owners.

One day, later into summer, my son and I pulled into that parking lot. Kicked at the tires of all the vehicles lined up in that little row. Came back to the truck.

It was old. No airbags. No power mirrors, doors, or locks. Old.

Over 40 years old.

In 1972, when the truck was new, my husband had barely started his commercial fishing career, and I was in second grade. About the same age as my son when he and I  took a first, serious look at the truck.

The truck, as it turned out, was on consignment. The person consigning the Grabber Blue  Ford, gave me a spec sheet. Balanced 390 engine. Thorley headers. The list went on.

With the spec sheet tightly grasped in my boy’s fist, after our visit, my son and I drove home in the slightly battered 2001 Honda Odyssey mini-van. In my mind, the greige-colored mini-van is about the least cool vehicle on the street and, admittedly, ever so practical.

In the Fall, near the end of that fishing season, my husband came home.  He’d been commercially fishing King Salmon, mostly, off of the coast of Oregon. We were in financial recovery from the recession, unprecedented fishing closures in Washington, Oregon, and California and from a family member having dealt with a serious illness.

Spending money, even contemplating spending money, required very careful calculation.

We decided we needed a truck for our fishing business. Renting U-hauls was getting expensive. The yard work was getting  way behind. Junk was accumulating in the garage.

And that 1972 Grabber Blue Ford F-250 truck was pulling at our heart-strings. It fit our needs.  And our budget.

We drove it to my Uncle Dave’s house. He was a retired master mechanic. It was the second truck we had brought to him. With the 1972, he just said not to worry too much about gas mileage. He told us not to put a locking gas cap on it because it would just get broken into. He suggested a theft alarm instead.

(My Uncle Dave passed away a couple of months ago. We miss him very much).

Bolstered by my Uncle Dave’s suggestion, we wrote a check out for the 1972 Ford F-250 truck. Paying for it in full. The previous owner had sold it to us for $4,500.

I drove it out of the parking lot toward home. Gave it a little throttle as I prepared to merge into traffic on Highway 101. Gravel spun out from under the back tires. Back at home, my husband laughed good-naturedly. The 390 had serious vroom.

The truck was a  beast!

Not many weeks later, as the leaves were turning yellow and orange, my husband and I drove out along the Dungeness River toward Nash’s new Farm Store in Dungeness while in that truck. By happenstance, it was during the opening celebration. We spoke briefly with Huber Nash, then with his wife Patty McManus. They both  told us to call their marketing manager, Mary. We drove off with folks waving at us, and we at them, as we went  by the front doors. The re-built, balanced, 390 giving a throaty, low rumble.

That 1972 Ford F-250 is a classic in every way.

It fit right into Farmer’s Markets, where we sell our fish, and on the back roads meandering through the rural farm land of Sequim.  It packed kayaks to Sequim Bay. With the alarm armed, it patiently waited in marina parking lots while the skipper of the Saint Jude, my husband, was working off-shore catching albacore and salmon. The truck waiting to get him home to see his family again.

In photos, the truck looks straight and true parked next to our fishing boat, the Saint Jude, in the Port Angeles Boatyard during Spring boat work. With a freshly cut Christmas tree in the bed, it made a a great back-drop for our red-headed family during impromptu holiday photo sessions.

That truck would be our go to vehicle for delivering frozen albacore and picking it up, hand-packed, from artisanal canneries. It would pack frozen salmon back to the Olympic Peninsula for our local customers. It would also help us deliver fish to Nash’s and other local grocery stores.

It was a work horse.

Tenderly, too, that truck would wait patiently in the school parking lot for our son. With a chocolate lab on the bench seat and his daddy at the wheel, home from fishing on the coast, that truck represented the image of our family healing.

It was cool, it was real, it was authentic.

That truck was also inexpensive to insure. No renewal tabs are needed for a collector vehicle. Comprehensive insurance on an older work truck did not fit our budget well. So we just carried liability.

Our fish truck, like our boat, is a tool.

An object.

These days, our fish truck is also part of the face of our fishing family business.

The safety of our family is a priority. It is time for us to make a change.

Our young son cried when he learned about the truck fire. His grandmother, visiting us at our home at the time,  comforted him. We took he and his older sister out to dinner and bought him an old-fashioned milkshake  before he would meet up with his troop for his first Boy Scout camp-out since he had crossed over from being a Cub Scout earlier this year.

For the week-end, he would be  amongst friends. That was the important part.

My husband and I left Friday evening for a planned business trip to Seattle. To pick up our life raft for the Saint Jude. To walk the loop in the Arboretum while the cherry trees were still blossoming. To dine at Lark restaurant and congratulate Chef Sundstrom on all of his current success including being a James Beard award winner. To buy Chef Sundstrom’s  new cookbook, “Lark: Against The Grain”.

To get ready for the new fishing season.

While in Seattle, I received a message from a facebook friend. She mentioned that an instructor who works with the Sequim Fire Department, and had helped fight the truck fire, was interested in owning our truck.

We spoke with him last evening. It feels right. We will sign the title over to him. He knows how to talk Ford. It is easy to tell.  It is in the voice. In the low, throaty rumble.

His plan is to bring the truck back to life. 

Our plan, is to find a replacement truck. Another Ford F-250.

Word is out. Friends have been calling. A 1972 Ford F-250 is on Craigslist in our area, mentioned one friend. Another sent a  message about an upcoming auction.

Fishermen up and down the coast expressed sympathy.

The loss of a classic old truck is painful. Especially one wearing Grabber Blue paint.

When our old fish truck got wrecked in that fire,  new friends suddenly became old friends in the making.

“How much do you want for it?”, the firefighter instructor asked.

“Pay it forward,” the fishing couple let him know. ” We are just grateful to the Sequim Fire Department and that everyone is safe. The truck served us well and we loved having her. It is time for us to  move on. We are glad the two of you have found each other. It feels right”.

That is the way it is with classic, old trucks.

Our next fish truck may not be quite as old. In 1998, Ford F-250 trucks came with airbags. We’d like to have those.  A long bed for sure. 4 x 4 and an extended cab would be ideal.

We will miss our old blue fish truck. 

What matters most, though, is the story. The story of a family being well and gaining strength. The story of being strong enough to let go for the sake of growth. The story of friendship. The story of gratitude.

In the end, these are the things that really matter.

 

Side note.  If you would like, you can learn more about our fishing family on our business web-site for  Dungeness Seaworks: http://www.freshfrozenfish.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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?

The Saint Jude Goes Home

Last night I dreamt that my husband drowned.

In fact, about the time I had the dream, my husband was skippering the Saint Jude somewhere off of the Washington coast in the dead of night. Solo. Al and I had driven our van down to Astoria two days before. Stayed two nights in a nice hotel overlooking the Columbia River. Waiting. Waiting…

For better weather.

The first look we had at our boat was with a mixture of pride and some sadness. She has new battle scars on the starboard side. Scratches from a cleat that had broke off the dock in a storm a couple months before. The Port of Astoria harbor master had called with the news. After that incident, the boat had been moved to a berth right in from of the harbor office. Waiting…waiting…to go home.

The Saint Jude leaving Astoria, Oregon to cross the Columbia River Bar on her way to Port Angeles, Washington on January 12, 2015

Winter can be a tough time to get a small fishing boat up the coast. From Astoria, Oregon to Port Angeles, Washington

In Winter storms, weather buoys break their moorings and get washed ashore. Wind can come up unexpectedly. For the Saint Jude, it is about a 28 hour run, depending on wind, tides, and currents. Straight through without stopping.

My job is to take care of the kids at home. Try not to show the anxiety. It showed up in my sleep.

Our kids

Shaking off the dream of a drowned husband I got out of bed this morning and checked for text messages from my man, the skipper of the Saint Jude. There were none. Then a bit later, in real time, one appears.

Him: At Tatoosh (with a time stamp of 6:44 AM).

Me:  (immensely grateful my husband is alive!) Did you sleep?

Him:  Slowed down and ran 5 knots for 2 1/2 hours off of LaPush. Out deep without having to drift in trough. Cat napped. With radar watch alarm set. South current pushed the  boat along at 1200 rpm.

At this point, my husband has been at the wheel for 19 hours. He untied the Saint Jude from the dock at the Port of Astoria about noon the day before (January 12, 2015).  

Him: See the lights of Neah Bay

Me:  Are u planning to sleep more once in the strait? Anchored I mean?

Him: Have flood tide till 9 am.

Me:  What I mean is do u plan to sleep anchored  somewhere?

Him: Bucking E wind here a bit. I will let you know after listening to Canadian Wx for strait.

Me: Okay, are u inside the strait yet?

Him: Yes.

Me: Good!  Can u send some morning photos  – our fans will love those!

Him:  Wind in strait increasing 20 after noon. I will keep coming and take some pics.

Me:  I see. ETA to PA?

Him:  S.E. winds increasing today off S coast Vancouver Island. E 8 this morning at Race Rocks. Making 8 knots with current now, ETA around 2 PM.

Me:  Yes. Photos of Sunrise?

Him:  Probably closer to 3. Will take sunrise pics when it gets here.

Me:  Okay. I will come to PA when Cody gets out of school.

Him:  U.S. Wx calls for light E winds in straight. Canadian Wx has gale warnings on S coast this morning. Will see you and Cody after school.

Me:  Yeah – we know how to pick our weather windows don’t we?

Him:  Yes. We do.

Photos from the boat follow. Images of the radar and the depth sounder. Slightly blurry because it is still dark in the wheelhouse. Still, the image on the radar clearly shows the outline of the breakwater in front of the Makah Marina. A photo  is sent that was taken right around day break. It a a darker image and I ask my husband if it is Waadah Island.

Him:  Must be big lings on the sounder back there.

Me: Oh, Seal Rock!

The meaning is rich. Seal Rock is at the mouth of the Sail River, near Neah Bay, Washington. The site where my paternal grandparents, Willard and Hazel Peters, owned a fishing resort from the 1940’s to the mid-1970’s. One gorgeous summer day, I caught my first fish on my own – a ling cod – off of the end of a floating dock there. King Salmon were weighed at the base of that dock by sportsmen from all over the country. It is one of my earliest memories of life. King Salmon.

Several more photos follow. Sail Rock. Propeller wash from the stern.

No more words.

I take my son to school. Return home to start laundry, make the bed, and wash the dishes. To care for the six family pets. To write.

My daughter comes home from school  and I tell her that her dad will be home this evening. That we need to be very kind as he will be very tired. I tell her it is dangerous to bring a boat home from the Columbia River, the Graveyard of the Pacific, to Port Angeles in Winter. It is a calculated risk. One that was instigated by the skipper of the Saint Jude having a tooth break below the gum line while on the tuna grounds in September. I tell her it would have been even more dangerous for a skipper to drive a boat with an abscessed tooth. So the Saint Jude stayed put in Astoria while her skipper waited for his tooth to be pulled and the infection to clear. By then, Winter storms were back to back with only tiny weather windows. I tell my daughter that her father beat a gale.

It is close to noon. 24 hours since the Saint Jude left the Port of Astoria yesterday afternoon.

Her skipper will be very tired when he gets to the dock today. When I pick him up, I will help him check the tie-up lines. Make sure the power cord is secure. Make sure the electrical panel switches are off. That the radios are off. That the battery switch is in the proper position. That the auto pilot, radar and fathometer are off. Make sure that the heat lamp is on.

My son will be with me. A third generation salmon troller. I will explain to  him, as I did my daughter, why we brought the boat up from Astoria, in the middle of Winter for Spring boat work. I will tell him that it is so his father can spend more time with the family while he works on the boat. It is so his dad can be home to watch him crossing over from being a Cub Scout to being a Boy Scout. It is so he can be at home when our son works on his go-cart project that will help him earn a Supernova award in Cub Scouts.  It is so our son can see the boat work getting done, to help paint the bottom, to maybe be on hand when the zincs get welded. He has the fishing in his bones, our son does.  Some boat kids do. Like me. Having the boat home soothes my soul.

Commercial fishing is not the kind of profession that is taught in a classroom or from a textbook. Time at the boat yard and on the ocean is the best way to learn about boats…and fishing. Our son’s education, in the ways of the sea, has begun. As our daughter’s high school education is ending. She will graduate this Spring. Both of her parents will be nearby as she gets ready for the next major transition in her life. Truth is, I asked my husband to bring the boat home. For our family, for all of us. Our favorite welder has already been contacted about the scratches on the Starboard side of the Saint Jude. He has reassured us that it can all be fixed. We are already pre-scheduled to have work done on the stiff arms and to have the repaired generator put back in the engine room.

The Saint Jude will have the best of care. She is part of our family. It will be good to have her home.

At 1:25 PM another text appears.

Him: Am 2 hours out from Ediz Hook Bouy, 12 miles out.

Me:  Awesome!

Him:  Love u.

Me:  Love you too. More photos follow from the boat.

Him:  That is Tongue Point.

Me:  Thank-you for bringing our boat home.

Him:  Thank you and Kendra and Cody. And the Glass Family.

Note: While Al and I were in Astoria waiting for a good weather window so Al could get the boat home, our son stayed two nights with the Glass family. They took him to see a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter at the Coast Guard air station on Ediz Hook and texted photos to of us of our son in the pilot’s seat, grinning from ear to ear.  Zach Glass is a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot and we are eternally grateful to he and his family for his service.

O, God, Thy Sea Is So Great And My Boat Is So Small – Breton Fisherman’s Prayer

Turning 50! (Celebrate with me)

50! Milestone birthday for sure.

For years, I was fishing on a boat somewhere on my birthday. I was lucky when friends planned a celebration for me.

This year, I am home. With my now adult daughter. Getting ready to switch things up a bit. It is time to get the party started!

50, baby, and I ain’t sitting on my hands this year doing nothing!

Our family fishing boat, the Saint Jude, is heading in and it looks like my husband and son will be home tomorrow too. I have not seen either of them for weeks. That is the nature of us being a commercial fishing family. They will not only be able to celebrate my 50th birthday with me tomorrow, on August 23, but my daughter’s 18th birthday too!

As a fishing family, our important events tend to get celebrated in a cluster fashion. When everyone is together.

Today, truth be told, I started off wanting to get the house cleaned up more for my husband’s arrival. Boring. Conventional. I chose to write instead. I told my husband this on the phone today and he gave his blessing. He said he’d pitch in around home when he got here. I like that. It seems to mean our marriage is in a good place. That we have both learned that there is much more to life than a perfectly clean house.

I also want to spoil myself, one last day, before my son is home to get ready for the school year. When my husband goes back fishing, when the weather settles down, I will be seasonally single-parenting once again. Granted, it is much easier now than when the kids were younger and a big outing was a trip to the grocery store to buy diapers.

These days, I have a lot more time to myself. It is a transitional time, ripe with possibility.

I want to live the rest of my life with little or no regret.

Turning 50 gives me a chance to reflect on how to go about this.

Things I regret NOT doing in my first fifty years of life:

1. Not working as a Registered Nurse for at least awhile. Why? 2 years of pre-nursing college classes and 2 years of Nursing School is a lot of time commitment to have never worked in a field. The money was good, for that stage of my life when I was in my early 20’s, and it would have built confidence. I also learned it is not good to let myself get talked out of doing something that is in my best interests. It is a trap for letting resentment build. About 11 years ago, I took a refresher course to try to renew my license. The field had changed so much, by then, that I could not do this. So I will remain mandatorily retired from professional nursing and lose the resentment.

2. Not paying automobile insurance for 6 months while commercial fishing when first married. Why? Insurance companies frown on this even when a car is not being used and it is tricky getting reinsured.

3. Not hiring a housekeeper more when the kids were younger? Why? I would have had more quality time to do more with the children when they were younger and have been way less tired. The quality of our life would have been better and we would have had more people over to the house. I could also have used other skills I possess for doing things that would have had a more positive impact in my life and that of others. Like writing.

Things I don’t regret:

1. Supporting my husband with his passion of commercial salmon trolling. Why? It makes him happy.

2. Having a family home built before the kids were born. 27 years ago. Why? At one time the 2,500 sq. feet and over an acre of property seemed too small. We have used every inch of space in the house. We have had lovely celebrations. Even through tough times during the recession, while dealing with some expensive medical issues when salmon seasons were drastically cut back for 5 years in WA, CA, and ORE, the house provided sanctuary. I was 22-years-old when we had our home built. It is fun to share.

3. Owning the Saint Jude with my husband. Why? Taking a baby fishing on a commercial fishing boat for 5-6 months is challenging. The Saint Jude has seen us through some tough weather and tough times. She is all aluminum and easy to maintain. She is also lot of fun and I can tell our son enjoys her a lot.

4. Having pets. Why? They keep me humble. We will also remember them long after the objects we own, including our boat and home, become no longer useful to us.

5. Having kids. Why? They keep me humble. They also, just by their very existence, force me to grow. To live better, learn more, be more. I want for them to be happy.

6. Raising kids in Sequim, WA. Why? We are rural and there is an abundant amount of natural beauty here. A lot of people at the stores and other places know my kids, remember them when they were in preschool, ask me how Al is doing when he is away fishing. Folks trade us for fish sometimes. This is how we get our Christmas tree, some professional services, sometimes other food for our table. There is a lot of heart in our small community and it is close to my hometown, Port Angeles.

7. Getting help when needed. Why?  I have been fortunate to find out fairly early in  life that is important to not get run down too far. Not good for self to do that, not good for family. Self-care is important.

8. Listening to others. Why? My current world is fairly small. I still stay at home a lot with the kids especially when Al is away fishing. This is changing once again as they are growing older and getting more independent. I want to broaden my world view through more travel, reading, education, physical activity, socializing.

We are all different. Some things we all have in common. I like getting to know people and trying to find the common ground.

To get started, on my Facebook page today, I asked folks to share the title of a favorite book they have read, and/or favorite place they have traveled, and/or their favorite swimming pool or ocean they have swam in, and/or the most radically silly thing they have ever done.

Here is what I have to share with you so far:

My favorite book: Trinity by Leon Uris

Best place I’ve visited: Alaska and traveling by boat up and down the Inside Passage

Best Swim: Lituya Bay, Alaska

Most radically silly thing I’ve done: Swam in Lituya Bay, Alaska – more than once on different days – it’s really cold!

What is your favorite book? Most awesome place you have ever visited? The favorite pool or ocean in which you have ever swam?

What is the most radically silly thing you have ever done?

Are you living the life you want to be living? I’d love to hear!

 

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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.