A Few Extra Hours

While the boat is off loading to the tramper in the harbor I am stuck with nothing to do. The crew is keeping busy moving blocks of frozen fish, but I can't do anything but stare longingly at town which is only a few hundred meters away. I was in my rack half asleep today waiting for the rumble of engines to start and let me know that we were on the way to the dock when I heard some one in the hallway say "and tell Arlen that his ride is here." I got up and changed from my sweats to some town clothes and grabbed my laptop. Up in the wheel house I found that some of the crew is changing out this trip and several had flights to Anchorage that they would have missed if they waited for the off load to finish. They had called the tug boat to come out and pick them up.

Looking over the gunwales of the Intrepid down at the Saratoga is like looking down out of a second story window.

First we crossed over to the tramper on top of a load of fish; climbing up the webbing while the crane lifted us across the gap. On the other side of the tramper there was a ladder going down. The Saratoga nosed right up to big blue wall of the tramper and we climbed down and hopped on the bow. With my laptop in hand and my camera in my pocket I was a bit concerned but managed to make it safely.

The tug took us for the short ride to the dock where we had to climb back up, but that was not nearly as bad because the ladder was fixed. In the end I gained about 3 extra hours in town.

Haul Back at Night

There is a phone next to my bunk. When it beeps I wake up and the captain will say, “we’re going to haul one back” and I say, “alright.” I put on my XtraTuf insulated boots and go down stairs through the galley to the gear room. My raingear hangs on the first hook to the left of the door way. I shove my boots through the legs of the orange pants and hook the suspenders over my shoulders, I put the jacket on and squeeze my hands through the neoprene cuffs. Then I don the lifejacket and hardhat. I take my clipboard with a blank form on it and a pencil and the tape measure.
I walk though the factory, every one knows that the only time I have to wear the hard hat is when I am going up on deck to measure the codend when it is hauled on board, but the ask any way, “Haulback?” and I tell them Yep, three or four different times as I walk to the other end of the factory. I have to go through a heavy door into the generator room with its car sized yellow CAT generators and then up a steep staircase. At the top I turn the big wheel on the hatch.
Some times the door swings open to grey clouds and occasionally I am dazzled by the sunlight, but usually it is black night. There are lights shining on the deck but over the back end of the boat is a void. There is no difference between sky and water it is all black. The void is populated by the white shadows of seagulls. It is disorienting to watch them, there is no perspective so one that is on the wing near the ship will appear to fly right underneath another one that is resting on the water farther out.
I stand with my back to a wall and there is a partial deck above my head. A steel cable is also running past above my head. Then the trawl doors come up; big, blue, bulldozer blades banging against the stern. There is a flurry of activity as the deck hands hook them in place and connect the cables from the doors to the net reels on deck. Then they stand around again while the cables and chains are dragged across the deck. Finally the net comes up. The deck hands are busy again hooking heavy ropes to the main winch so that the heavy codend can be brought out of the water.
I grab my measuring stick and take several readings of the height of codend, usually it is between one and two meters high, I find the length against tick marks I made on the side of the trawl alley with spray paint and finally one of the deck hands takes an end of the tape measure and holds it out over the fish so I can get a width measurement. The captain will come down to see what he caught and then they pull the zipper. The Zipper is a series of knots like a crochet stitch that holds the end of net closed. Every one watches the fish fall into the tank.
On my way back through the factory I will get asked about six times “How did that last tow look?” and I will shrug and say, “pretty big,” or “kinda small” as the case may be, and if I am feeling generous I might give out some additional information like, “there was quite a bit of cod in this one,” or “It was pretty clean, nothing but rock sole.”

Pictures: 1, Looking towards the stern, the trawl doors are hanging at an angle, the gate in the center of the deck will open so the fish can be hauled up the ramp behind it. 2, Looking toward the bow with a full codend on deck, That is about twenty five tons of fish in this picture.

Perpetual Motion

Last year I thought I would try to tough it out and avoid taking my sea sick pills. I could hold it at bay for about a day and a half by shear force of will, but eventually the constant rocking would get to me and I would break down and take the pills. After taking 2 pills I would make the transition to being at sea and then would not have to take any more pills until I had been on land for a day. Last year I tried to do with out the pills on every trip and every time I would end up taking them on the second day. This year I took them before we left the dock and hardly noticed that the floor was moving the next morning when I got up.
Since I have to get up and work when ever they pull in a net full of fish, I cannot keep a regular sleep pattern. There are no windows in my bunk or in the galley or factory where I spend ninety percent of my time. Days lose their meaning. When the captain or mate calls haul back I generally have no idea whether I will be coming out of the hatch into black night or bright sun. If some one says it is 7:00 I have to ask if it is am or pm. The lack of sleep combined with the rising and falling of the waves combine to bewilder my system. I eat when I am not hungry and I never really feel full after I eat, I am frequently up when I am tired and often fall asleep when I thought I was awake enough to read a book. Filling in the dates on my paperwork is the only thing that gives me some order, but some times I will get a long sleep and find out that the date hasn’t changed, sometimes the date changes when I haven’t slept, some days last for a week and others are gone before I realized they have started.


Picture: Trampers in Dutch Harbor. Most factory processor ships will off load their product directly to trampers which will carry the frozen blocks of fish to China, Japan or Korea. The Intrepid will only hit the dock for a few hours to take fuel. It's a bit frustrating to wait for 12 hours, in sight of town, while all the fish is being removed from the freezer hold.

Cold

The first several days it was cold out side. When I went up on deck to measure the codend of the net my ears would start stinging and I would have to bounce up and down on my toes to keep from shivering. But after we had our first good storm the temperatures raised enough that I am quite comfortable standing on deck in sweats and raingear. Fortunately I can stand out of the wind most of the time.
By far the worst cold that I have experienced was the one that started in the back of my throat and moved up into the back of my nose. Working through my sample of fish in the factory under the deck I keep my raingear and rubber gloves on so I don’t get covered in fish slime. Having runny nose is very annoying because there is no friendly bit of fabric to wipe my nose. I have to choose between letting the snot trail in strings off my moustache or rubbing my nose with fish slime coated rubber gloves.

U S Intrepid

185 foot Fish killing machine, we are off loading for the third time while other boats are just leaving after their second offload.