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 Thanksgiving Table

The Thanksgiving Table.

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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.

Thanksgiving

Feasting and celebrating

Thanksgiving Day 2013 at home in Sequim with my husband Allan and our kids Kendra and Cody. Spent over an hour wondering what to write on our facebook page, “Dungeness Seaworks” (you can link to this FB page and learn more about our fishing family by clicking https://www.facebook.com/DungenessSeaworks ) . Photos? Inspirational quote about the sea? A picure of our fishing boat, the Saint Jude? Nothing seemed right. Taking ego out of it, we went to the default setting of, “Have a Happy Thanksgiving from the crew of F/V Saint Jude”.

It seemed enough.

Then the inside wave of emotions. Memories. Some painful. Many lonely.

The first year Al and I owned the Saint Jude was in 1995. We fished the season in Alaska. Had a substantial boat payment to make the following fall. Our first year freezing salmon on board. We sucked at it. Inefficient, slow, and miserable most of the time. It would not be easy, as the season progressed, to remember the highlights.

A visit by a father and daughter who presented us with two brass Superiors. The really old, heavy ones. A present for the new boat, they said. Those spoons caught fish for us that year. It was a great gift and we had no idea then how much it would come to mean to us later, their generosity of spirit.

The folks at the co-op who showed us how to cut a head off of our fish. Told us to practice. These folks encouraged us as did many others. We remember their kindness.

Bruce Gore who came down to our boat and offered to let us take out his deckhand so he could show us how to freeze fish on board. Oh my heavens, how egotistical was it of us to say, “No”, to this suggestion from a man who helped pioneer freezing salmon at sea.  We struggled for months, if not years, after that in learning to perfect the technique. Not seeing the gift for what it was. Bruce kept an eye on us and eventually offered to buy our fish. We became one of an elite group of trollers that produce some of the finest seafood on the planet.

Before that, though, we almost lost our lives. That, is what this story is mostly about.

Making a boat payment can be tough. Damned coho in SE AK start to get scarce in September. And the weather.  We’d heard our entire career about how the weather can turn ferociously wicked in the Fall in SE Alaska. Al had, in fact, spent a Winter trolling out of Sitka earlier in his career. He knew. Sort of.  How bad it could get. But we were reckless, felt desperate, and had a boat payment. So we fished the coho extension that went until Sept. 30^th in 1995. Anchored a good portion of those days behind St. Lazaria Island and in Gilmer Bay. The sea turning darker and more ominous looking by the day. Malicious. Winter water is a deadly force to be reckoned with.

Our plan was to fish until the end of the coho extension and then mop up our halibut quota in 3A. Great plan! Only on paper.

We pointed the Saint Jude North heading out of Olga and Neva Strait. Protected waters, relatively speaking. Guys had told us there were still halibut out on Spencer Spit. A fishing spot about 20 miles off-shore out from Cross Sound. Our plan was to anchor in Graves, catch a weather window, and get the halibut. In one set.

We made it to Graves. Steadily baiting the 1,500 circle hooks attached to the gangions coiled on the back deck. The bait did not smell much. Nothing on the back deck smelled much. It was too cold. We did not even need to put the tubs of baited hooks back into the ice hold. We sat in Graves for 3 days. Blowing. Blowing. Steadily blowing. Gale force winds. Dark and cold and boring sitting on the pick.

Then a break. A 24 hour weather window with winds coming down to 10-20 SE. We left the protected anchorage and headed straight out off-shore. First flagged pole went overboard and Al and I alternated snapping on gangions from the cockpit. We set about 3 miles of ground line. By the end, the weather was changing. Quickly.

Usually, it is good practice to let a long-line set soak awhile for fish to bite. Waves started slapping against the hull. The ocean felt jumpy and the sky was darkening rapidly. We headed straight back to the start of our set and started pulling. The boat started pitching around. Al was hanging on by one hand to the boat while unsnapping the gangions from the ground line coming aboard. A few halibut came and we tied them off to rails on the Port side of the boat. Water started washing across the deck through the rails on the far side. Al put on a safety vest and tied a line around his waist to the boat. When a halibut came over the side, I would haul it over and tie it to the other side. It was getting too rough to clean a fish.

At one point, we may have contemplated buoeying off the line to retrieve it later. Not much chance we would have recovered it that time of year. And we wanted to get home. To Sequim. About 800 nautical miles away. As the crow flies.

So the gear kept coming aboard, and the boat was constantly awash with sea water. Two hours later we grabbed the flagpole and bag and hauled it aboard. Ducked into the wheelhouse and dogged down the door. Only then realizing we were in serious trouble.

The throttle was put forward into our normal running speed position. Boom! A wave crashed over the bow, over the top of the bridge. Forcing us to back off the throttle. Late October. It occurred to us, belatedly, that Spencer Spit was not a good place for us to be that time of year. Our boat was too small and too slow.

We could not stand. Could not hold on long enough to any of the numerous handholds in the wheelhouse to get anything to eat. Our black lab, Tug, and gray tabby, Gremlin were both literally quivering. Have you ever heard of the expression, “Hanging on for dear life?” Yep. That was us. When we were not slowing down for oncoming waves, our fastest speed on the Echotec plotter was 3 Knots.

Night came fast. It does that in SE Alaska in the Fall. In the gulf of Alaska. By then, waves were completely obliterating the side windows. Al thought, out loud, that we were not going to make it. My thought, out loud, was “We are not going to die. Not on this night.” Al hit the bunk while I took over the helm. 3 Knots. Slow down while a wave crashes over the bow. Repeat. All night long. Somewhere along the line we made it past Cape Cross. Something changed. Ever so slowly. We picked up speed. 4 Knots. Then 5.  A CD found its way into the player. Elton John came along for the ride.

“And I think it’s going to be a long, long time…Rocket Man…”. A cup of tea was made. The black lab started snoring softly in his accustomed spot under the galley table.  He had spent most of the night cowering against my brown Xtra-tuff boot clad feet braced against the pipe under the stainless steel wheel at the helm.

Mast lights on the horizon! Black-codders fishing outside of Yakobi. An immensely welcoming sight. Like a small city afloat carrying the message of hope. We were going to live! Al got up and took wheel watch. He was so tired that we nearly missed the opening into Squid Bay which is where we planned to clean the halibut. We double-checked the paper chart against what the green radar screen was showing us through blurry vision and readjusted our course. So tired. The C-Map plotter helping us to stay on course as our minds buzzed with the need for sleep. Fear has a way of doing that. Sapping strength and mental acuity.

Squid Bay had never looked so amazing. Flat water, still, quiet. The pesky mosquitos that had tortured us all summer were not a problem that gray October day. We cleaned halibut. And cleaned and cleaned. Backs aching. Close to 3,000 lbs.  No one remembers who iced the fish. It got done. We washed the knives, deck, and hatch cover. Pulled the anchor and went back out on the ocean toward Sitka.

The halibut on board would help to be enough for us to make our boat payment that year.  With enough to spare for a trip to Hawaii. Those thoughts kept us upbeat for what would be the beginning of the next part of a perilous adventure.

Not many Washington State trollers talk about the Inside Passage in November. A few. We should have listened better, in hindsight.

Ketchikan. Oddly, while tied up there, I could no longer stand the smell of coffee. We were there for 4 days. Bought a small carved paddle. Tglingit made. An eagle painted on the surface. The clan of the artist who made it. It fit , beautifully, on the wheelhouse wall between the two book racks. I wanted to fly home.

Snow Passage was behind us by then. It had been blowing up to 100 Knots of wind. We relied on tug boat captain reports on the VHF to know when to move. It was pretty much how it would go the rest of our way home. We got across Dixon Entrance and it started to snow. We anchored that night at Lewis Isand, below Prince Rupert, and it snowed more. The radar screen was snowed out the next morning and we could not rely on it for navigation. We needed to stay anchored to avoid ship traffic.  Eventually, the seemingly innocuous falling snow, stopped drifting down on our boat. So beautiful and cleanly white. We were able to make way.

Namu ahead.

F/V Saint Jude in Namu, BC. November 15, 1995.

Canadian soil and were not supposed to get off of the boat as we had not cleared customs. Being around people seemed a difficult job. Still, they came to visit. Most noteably the gill-netters. They told us about a native. Told us to listen to him. He came on board too. Showed us on the paper chart where to tie to a tree on Egg Island if the wind came up when we went across Queen  Charlotte Sound. He said it would hold in a hurricane.

When we left Namu in the morning, 3 days later, several gill-netters were standing on the dock getting their boats ready for a day of fishing. They gave us a hand salute. That time of year, mariners become as one. No matter the country of origin.

Finn Bay. The wind howling overhead. Storm warning on the coast. In the morning, we started across Queen Charlotte Sound. The weatherman calling for a storm warning there too. He missed, seemingly. It was variable winds. Not for long though. About mid-way across a Canadian Coast Guard cutter dropped a rubber raft full of coast guardsmen that started heading our way. The waves were stacking and they turned back for the safety of the cutter. The water started hissing. Ominously. By the time we made it to Port Hardy, green water was going over the bow. Again. We were starting to get used to it.

The next part of the journey was marked by a lot of logs and other debris in the water. We started to relax.  A little. The wind was not much of a problem by then and that was a relief. By Alert Bay, we knew we’d be home by Thankgiving.

Getting across the Strait of Juan de Fuca can be scary. That was not the case for us that particular  year. The boat knew she was close to home and we got across at 9 knots heading straight for John Wayne Marina. We’d been married there 9 years before. We tied the Saint Jude to the boards, thanked her and put Tug on a  leash. We all three walked the 4 miles home. Then drove back to the marina to get our boat cat, Gremlin.

It was 4 days before Thanksgiving.

We did not know it that day, but suspected it when turkey on Thanksgiving did not hold the same appeal as usual.  Not once had I been seasick all that long fishing season so at first thought I was landsick. It was apparent a doctor visit was in order to confirm what was going on.

It was with great celebration that we visited Hawaii after Thanksgiving that year. We knew that we were going to have a baby! She would be born of love, a splash of the sea, and moments of greatness.

1995 was a  year of much difficulty. It was also one of the best of our lives. For within those difficult times confidence was forged and the beginning of us having our own family!

It is on this Thanksgiving Day, 2013 that we share this story with our children. Thanking the universe for our lives…and for theirs.

Namaste and Happy Thanksgiving!