Seaworthy Page 5
Mid-September is not the optimum time to begin the Grand Banks season. Swordfish fall into the category of “highly migratory,” and typically they split from the Grand Banks when the Gulf Stream begins to pull offshore. This happens quickly and without notice, usually by the end of October. So we didn’t have the luxury of time. And the moon had been full two nights before. Again, not optimum. I wished that we had reached the fishing grounds a week earlier, rather than having five days yet to go. Trips should ideally be in sync with the lunar cycle—steaming and dock time were best done when things were on the dark side and in the new-moon phase. I had always been most successful from the first quarter of the moon through the full and up to the last quarter. We were 100 percent off of my desired schedule. But the weather was beautiful. And that counts for a lot when you are getting your sea legs aboard a boat that is unknown to you. Besides, I recalled that Scotty, John Caldwell, and Jim Budi had all confirmed that fishing had recently been good off-moon. So, they said, don’t worry about it. Ignore it, don’t fret … I couldn’t recall receiving such casual advice upon departing for a fishing trip in the past. I felt more relaxed and confident than I ever had in my years of captaining, and I attributed that to my age.
Far from worrying, I didn’t have a care in the world as the Seahawk glided effortlessly along, bobbing slightly as if nodding her head or tapping a foot to some unheard music. This many hours into our steam and with the boat purring contentedly, my confidence level in the Seahawk was growing. I wandered around the boat and found Archie in the galley cooking oatmeal. He sang while he stirred. The other guys were in the three-sided steel structure on the stern called the setting house, where they were working on gear. There was a satisfaction about their work, I thought. These guys seemed genuinely happy to be here. And now they took pleasure in doing something that had a direct correlation to catching fish. All the sweaty, dirty chores we did at the dock served no purpose other than getting the boat offshore. Of course, getting off the dock is necessary, but making gear is more pertinent to what we all had a passion for—catching fish. In the past I had to get on the crew a bit to be meticulous about how the gear went together, as they often hurried through the job and the results could be sloppy. With Timmy’s sportfishing experience, I knew that he would be anal about the gear—to a greater degree than even I was. As the greenhorn, Hiltzie would follow the lead set by the others. Dave Hiltz was bent on doing a good job, which was refreshing.
Machado measured four-hundred-pound-test monofilament fishing line in two-fathom lengths and crimped a snap—a small clothespin-type gadget that functions to secure leaders to the main line—onto one end. Over and over he made the “tops” of leaders while Tim cut “tails”—three-fathom pieces of the same mono onto which he attached hooks using crimps. In this case they were D crimps, sized to fix this gauge of monofilament—half-inch sections of tube-shaped aluminum into which the newly cut ends of monofilament are shoved and mashed together with a tool called a crimper. The two sections of leaders are crimped together, joined by a small lead swivel. Hook-to-snap assemblies are called leaders, and the men would be busy making them until all three hook boxes were full—approximately three thousand leaders. It was enough work to keep them employed the entire length of the transit to our destination.
While Machado and Tim made leaders, Dave Hiltz worked on ball drops. During fishing, the main line is suspended by flotation that keeps it relatively close to the surface of the ocean. The bullet-shaped Styrofoam floats—or dobs, as some fishermen refer to them—are attached to the main line using snaps, which are fixed to five-fathom pieces of monofilament that act to allow the main line to sink to that depth. The main line needs to be some depth below the surface to avoid some of the part-offs that are often encountered and the spin-ups that can occur when the gear is in the turbulence of waves. Spin-ups, which happen when the leaders and ball drops curl tightly around the main line rather than dangling freely from it, are a time-consuming nightmare. And a part-off, the breaking of the main line in midstring, occurs when the line is crossed by a ship that has a draft deeper than the line’s position beneath the surface of the water, or when a shark bites the line in two, or when it’s stretched beyond its tensile strength. A typical set is thirty to forty miles of thousand-pound-test monofilament main line, a thousand leaders, and three hundred floats. So if the gear is constantly spun up and parted off—severed by sharks, ships, or current—you’re in for a long, hellish day.
Hiltz measured five-fathom ball drops, pulling mono from a spool hand over hand and stretching it at arm’s length, each stretch being six feet, or one fathom. Dave crimped a snap to one bitter end and tied a three-inch eye, or loop, in the other end, into which the floats themselves would be snapped when we set the gear out five days from now. Completed ball drops were cranked onto an aluminum spool, where they are stored when not in use. The main line was stored on its own drum, mounted to the deck just aft of the fo’c’sle and looking like a giant spool of thread with a hydraulic motor on one end. The line would free-spool off the drum when “setting out” (putting fishing gear into the water) and would be “hauled back” (retrieved from the water) hydraulically.
The gear operation closed down when Archie announced that breakfast was being served in the galley. I had eaten frozen pizza nearly every morning for years aboard the Hannah Boden, so hot oatmeal was a bonus. We all managed to squeeze in around the tiny galley table, pushing Timmy’s bedding into a corner. Tight quarters were further diminished by the size of the men. I was elbow to elbow with Machado and Hiltz. The company was as warm and sweet as the bowl of oatmeal. It hadn’t taken long for this crew to develop real camaraderie, I realized as I nearly spit a mouthful of cereal across the table, unable to suppress a giggle at Machado’s antics. By the time I had inhaled breakfast, Tim was laughing so hard his face was McIntosh red and Archie was wiping tears from his cheeks. Hiltz sat quietly chuckling and shaking his head.
I hated to leave the breakfast scene. All that good nature, humor, and just plain positivity was magnetic. I had rarely shared a meal with my crew at the galley table in the past. Generally, the conversation was unfit for mixed company. Not to mention the fact that the crew needed time to bad-mouth their captain. But these guys were different. I had certainly shipped with gentlemen before. But not four of them at once. I had always eaten alone in the wheelhouse, paranoid about being away from the radios and missing some critical piece of information that might trickle in. There wasn’t much of a trickle happening these days, I knew. There may have been all of one boat out fishing last night. There were two at the dock unloading in Newfoundland and three in transit. Soon there would be more activity to keep track of, and I would need to have all radios tuned and ready. With this in mind, I excused myself from the galley and headed topside to program frequencies into our single-sideband radios.
Scotty had given me a short list of channels to monitor in order to stay up with the small fleet. Standing on my toes, I could just reach the two SSB radios that hung from the overhead behind the chair and above the chart table. Although the radios’ manufacturer was I-COM, a maker quite familiar to me, I had no experience with this particular model. Most radios are similar and straightforward in operation, enough so that operating instructions are unnecessary. Or at least that was what I thought when I began pushing buttons. I turned the tuning knobs around and around, scanning the hundreds of preprogrammed frequencies for the ones I needed until my arms were tired of being held over my head. When I couldn’t find 3417.0 megahertz on either radio, I decided to program it in. Frustrated after many failed attempts, I began a search for the instruction manual.
I’d been through the steps of programming laid out in the user’s guide several times with no luck when Timmy entered the wheelhouse. “Hi. How’s it going? Mike is organizing the fish hold and wants me to shut down the ice machine. I think I’ll change the oil in the generator. It’s almost due,” Tim said.
“No.” It was a knee-jerk reac
tion. “Don’t shut the ice machine down. What if it doesn’t crank back up?” I asked as I continued to push buttons on the starboard SSB. “That would be a real bummer. I’m never comfortable without it running, even if it means shoveling ice overboard to make room for fish. It’s a pet peeve of mine.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess that makes sense. We’ll keep stockpiling ice for now. But I’m sure between Archie and me we could always get the ice machine running again if we did shut it down.” I liked Tim’s confidence. Confidence breeds confidence. But I had cut trips short in the midst of very productive fishing when ice was depleted. Confidence does not erase memory. “Anyway, I heard that having a list was your pet peeve. What are you doing?”
“A list is my other pet peeve,” I chuckled. “I’m trying to program this radio. I need a three-megger to communicate with the other boats. I’m following the directions in this manual, but nothing’s happening. I’ve tried both radios,” I said as I continued to push buttons.
“Want me to give it a try?” Tim offered.
Normally, I don’t allow my crew to touch any of the equipment in the wheelhouse. But, I reasoned, Timmy was a captain. He owned two boats and has skippered some high-end sportfishing yachts that would certainly put this rig to shame. The Seahawk wasn’t exactly state-of-the-art technologically. There was nothing on this bridge that was of a hands-off quality. Besides, I was getting nowhere in programming the radios that I desperately needed. “Sure. Thanks, that would be great. I need thirty-four seventeen simplex.” So now both Timmy and I scowled at the uncooperative radios and cursed the useless manual. (In all honesty, Tim did not curse.) We tried and tried, Timmy on the starboard and me on the port SSB. I had mistakenly assumed that programming the radios would be easy, and now I regretted not trying it before we departed the dock.
“I got it,” Tim whispered.
“Oh, thank God. I was getting nervous about not being able to hear what’s going on. What did you do?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.” It certainly didn’t matter how he’d accomplished programming the radio. But now that it was done, I would leave the starboard radio tuned to 3417.0 for the entire two months so as not to have to rely on Timmy’s stumbling across the right combination of buttons again. I thanked him and agreed that it was a good idea to do his engine-room maintenance while the weather was good. And before he disappeared, I reiterated my phobia about running out of ice. Tim assured me that as soon as he was done with the generator, he would resume the ice making. It sure was nice to have someone taking responsibility for the engine room without having to be told when to do things. I was absolutely confident in Tim’s mechanical ability and knew that Archie would be overseeing everything, too. I was lucky to have this crew. In the past, although I invariably shipped with a designated engineer, I had always been the best aboard. Trying to do everything aboard a boat was something that I now knew was a function of youthful stubbornness, or paranoia. I had found it difficult to delegate in the past and realized that doing so now would make me a better captain. Confidence in the ability of my crew would allow me to excel in my position of leading them.
I spent the hours between breakfast and late afternoon reading manuals, trying to get some of the nonfunctioning equipment to come to life, and chasing wires around the wheelhouse. Hands-on was my style for learning, and I had plenty about which to educate myself aboard the Seahawk. The boat was old and had miles of power cables, connectors, and cords that all seemed to lead to or come from a major bird’s nest of multicolored rubber-coated wires under the forward console. It was the most serious ball of confusion I had ever tried to make sense of, and at one point—after losing track of a cable I was tracing for the third time—I simply sat and laughed. In my younger years, I would have ripped the mess out and thrown it all overboard in a fit of impatience and suffered the duration of the trip without whatever it was. I didn’t feel that urge now.
I supposed that I had enough of the critical stuff working to get by with, and I realized that I’d never even heard of some of the technology I had aboard that didn’t work. So things were okay. I could always get by. That was my strength and perhaps my greatest asset. It would have been nice to have all of the latest gizmos and software and feel as though I were on a level playing field with the other boats. But we would persevere with the minimum. We would catch fish the old-fashioned way. That would be very satisfying. The old guys on the old, junky boat would outfish the best of them. I would have to be careful not to allow my confidence in my ability to run wild. Confidence would be healthy if it remained below cocky. I needn’t swagger. Now, if I had a bigger boat …
Archie came up and announced that he was going to grill steaks for dinner. The weather was too calm to bake chicken, he reasoned. Grilled steak was exciting. I shared this attitude with the rest of the crew. We were all about the food at this point, as was common during a long steam. Once we started fishing, food would become simply a necessity to fill a void. I wouldn’t care what we ate, as long as we ate it quickly and meals did not interfere with the work of getting forty miles of gear in and out of the water on a daily basis. My memory was fully engaged when we’d put together the grub list for the trip. I decided that I would eat a can of sardines every day for lunch and maybe a can for an occasional snack. Sardines were quick, easy and multi-weather-condition food. Arch agreed, as did Tim and Dave. We sailed with a hundred cans. And although a hundred cans would not last sixty days if we all actually did eat them every day for lunch, the quantity seemed a little excessive once they were delivered and stowed.
We were only one day out, and so far I hadn’t felt like eating sardines and hadn’t seen anyone else enjoying them either. But there would be ample opportunity as soon as the wind kicked up to a velocity that would make it impossible for Archie to prepare a real meal. Or if the trip was extended for whatever reason beyond our food supply, we would always have the sardines. I remembered a trip when sardines would have been torn into like a favorite meal. Poor fishing amounted to many more days at sea than I had originally imagined or planned for. The last week of that ill-fated voyage was filled with voids of all kinds. The cigarette smokers tried rolling lint from the clothes dryer, a can of cake frosting was used for coffee sweetener, and I ate codfish gills. This afternoon was a perfect time to light the grill, I agreed.
The sun had traveled to the stern of the boat. I stood on the upper deck behind the bridge and soaked up the last rays while Arch and Machado set up the grill below. Dave and Tim appeared from within the setting house and sat on the fish hold’s hatch cover. Dave looked up, smiled, and said, “All I want to do is catch fish.” Tim reported progress of eight hundred leaders for the day. Wow, I thought, at this rate we’d be geared up well before we reached the fishing grounds. A pod of large porpoises broke the otherwise flat surface just off our port quarter. They splashed and played, closer and closer until they swam alongside. I’d been wondering for the past ten years how it would feel to be back here, I thought as I watched Archie light the charcoal with a blowtorch. And right now I remembered at least part of what I’d missed about this industry. The confidence to command is powerful. To command a bunch of screwups is one thing. But to be a leader of real men is dumbfounding.
Archie cocked his head slightly to one side, listening to something. I imagined he heard the high-pitched squeal of the porpoises. He looked up with wide blue eyes, cupped a hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Shut the engine down! Quick!” He and Tim ran toward the fo’c’sle and disappeared. I flew to the controls, pulled back the throttle, threw the engine out of gear, and hit the kill switch. I took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. I knew I had to join Arch and Tim in the engine room. I glanced out the back door where our wake had run off to the side and petered out. If being at sea is more of a feeling than a place, being adrift is a really bad feeling.
CHAPTER 4
Things Fall Apart
My descent into the engine room was accompanied by stomach-knotting, nearl
y nauseating anxiety. Fear of what I might find mounted with every step I took down the gangway. When I landed on the steel-plated deck, my field of vision was filled from frame to frame with backs and elbows. Archie and Tim were leaning over and on the engine, their combined mass dwarfing what I would otherwise describe as a hulking machine. I walked around the men’s backsides to the opposite side of the engine room, where I could now see the top of the Cummins diesel as well as the men’s faces. Arch pulled a long dipstick from its skinny tube, flipped his reading glasses from forehead to bridge of nose, and checked the oil level. He wiped the stick on his shirt, pushed it back into the engine, and withdrew it again to inspect. He gave a satisfied look and returned the dipstick to the tube. Arch squinted over his glasses and focused above my shoulder at the box with the Murphy switch that indicated the coolant level. I looked, too, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, turned my attention back to the top of the engine.
Tim held a small electronic temperature gauge that he passed along head cover to head cover. He hesitated, showed the reading to Archie, and frowned. “This one is hot!” he yelled to me over the din of the generator. A bead of sweat trickled down Tim’s temple and dripped onto the collar of his navy blue shirt.
“I heard a rapping sound. Let’s start her up and listen,” Arch suggested. I agreed that I would like to hear what had set the big man into fluid, amazingly fast motion, and I walked carefully over to the remote starter, forward of the engine. I reached above my head to the ignition switch, looked for a nod from the men indicating that they were ready, and pushed the toggle up with my thumb. The diesel started without a hitch and ran smoothly at idle. Tim nudged the throttle arm up a bit, and we all listened nervously. Another 100 rpm resulted in a definite and sickening knock. Tim pulled the throttle back to dead idle, and Arch drew a finger across his throat as a signal for me to cut the engine, which I did. I went sort of numb at this point. “The noise seems to be coming from that hot cylinder head!” Arch yelled above the painful, steel-ringing-in-steel clatter coming from the generator. Tim nodded agreement, pursed his lips in concentration, and went to the toolbox.