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One day, when I worked for a while at Carl's grocery store, my supervisor had some bad news. The F/V Stardust had been reported missing. She said that no one was able to make radio contact with them and the owner was worried because the season had ended two days ago. Having been on boats whose captains had made a point to not answer their radios, I didn't think it was all that ominous. If they were fishing for black cod the Stardust might be a couple days away from Dutch Harbor. The Stardust is a small boat, it is only about 50 feet in length and we had 35-foot seas rising intermittently in this area. I told my supervisor not to worry because they were probably just holed up somewhere waiting for the water to lie down so they could travel. She then told me there had been a Mayday from the boat. That didn't worry me, I told her that I had been on plenty of boats that had Mayday'd while in trouble. It was standard procedure to contact Comstate Kodiak and maintain that contact until the emergency was resolved. My supervisor was really worried though. There were three guys on the boat and they came into the store all of the time. Perhaps I was a little flippant when I told her that if the boat had sank then the skipper would never get over his shyness and ask me out on a date. Even so, I meditated on the boat and felt a warm brightness mingled with a feeling of mirth spread through me. "The boat's okay, it didn't sink, no one went overboard and it will probably make it in tonight. I think we will see the crew in the store tomorrow and they will probably have some fantastic tales to tell." I told my supervisor. She wanted to know if I was sure, and I said, "Yeah, pretty sure." My supervisor went home around 6 p.m. and around 9:30 p.m. the Stardust came in and docked at its usual place. I went out and watched their antics since the dock was a stone's throw from the store. They pulled up alongside of a crabber whose huge hull seemed to dwarf the little boat by comparison. I could hear one of the deck hands, Todd, who had jumped onto the crab boat to catch the lines of the Stardust yelling, "Oh perfect, we have no buoys on this side, what are you doing?" The boat then shot forward and turned around, bringing the starboard side next to the crabber. I went inside and called my supervisor to let her know our missing friends had come home. My ex supervisor has a son who fishes and it is a frightening thing for her to hear about maritime accidents. She always feels like what if that had been her son, and what if her son is next? I can understand her worry, it's a lot easier being out there taking chances and riding your luck than sitting at home waiting for someone for whom you pray has enough luck. That poor mother, she's going to age prematurely if her son doesn't get a different line of work. The Providence lost a man during red king crab season. After the crew man went overboard, another crew member donned a survival suit and went in after him. But when the rescuer started to swim toward the man in the water he sank beneath the surface and was never seen again. The coast guard arrived in 30 minutes in helicopters looking for a body to surface. At this time of year they couldn't expect the man to survive in the freezing temperature of the water. But at least if they found him the family would have something to put in a grave and it would help to bring closure to their feelings of loss. A few years back a local fisherman got swept overboard and was never found. There is a Russian Orthodox cross marking his empty grave and each year when the family visits the grave they look to the water as they pray for him. I have been to the graveyard a few times because I am helping my friend get some rose bushes started on her parents' graves. Every time I see that cross I am filled with sadness for the family of the lost fisherman. His mother spoke to me one time about the circumstances surrounding his death. She didn't understand how they could just lose her son like that. She thought maybe one of the other crew members didn't like him and had killed him. She thought the boat's crew was covering up the crime. The woman was reaching for straws to explain a loss she didn’t understand. I had to explain to her how when a person goes in sometimes the shock of the freezing water just takes everything out of them and they sink like a rock. "There's just no getting them back once they start to sink." I told the grieving mother. I know the lost fisherman's sister really well, she works at the AC store and I saw her when I went shopping at the store after he died. She was operating one of the registers and her face showed her grief very plainly. All I could say when I saw how deeply her sadness was eating into her heart was that I was so very sorry for her loss. She tried very hard not to cry. A couple of times we almost lost men off of the boats I worked on. But because we got them back one incident was kind of funny. I was doing the coiling for the F/V Constitution during a halibut opener. The man who operates the roller guides the line over the rail, as well as any fish on the hooks attached to it by gangions. Halibut are really huge. If any fish come up that are too large for the roller man to handle by himself, he asks a second person known as the first gaff to help him. Sometimes a third person, known as the second gaff, has to help with a halibut if it is really huge. The rollerman's helpers are called gaffers because of the long-handled gaff hooks they use to catch hold of the fish. There was more than one halibut coming up with no empty hooks between them. The roller man was able to get the first fish, but he called for Adam who was first gaff on that string to get the next one. The fish was heavy and Adam stepped up onto the rail to get better leverage and bring it over and onto the deck. A wave hit the boat and the fish flipped its body and Adam into the water. Everything stopped when the roller man yelled, "Man overboard!" Several guys ran to the rail to look for Adam. He had gone beneath the water's surface and someone could see him drifting a few feet below. I held the line in the shives of the gurdy (hauler) and waited to see what would happen. A wave came along and pushed Adam up toward the rail but he was still a few feet below the surface. One of the guys at the rail who was tall and slender and who looked like a great spider in his rain gear dived into the wave after Adam. Leaning far over, the deck hand pushed one hand through the water while hanging onto the rail with the other and snatched Adam by a strap of his rain gear. "He's got him!" Someone shouted, who was standing nearby. The wave receded and the deck hand held onto Adam's strap. When the water came up again the guys all pulled and got Adam into the boat using the lift of the wave to help them bring him over the rail. Adam's hand was still hanging over the rail and when someone tried to pull his arm around they realized he still had hold of something heavy. "Holy Cow! He's still got the fish! And it's a big one!" the deck hand who had looked over the rail shouted. People started grabbing gaffs and trampled over Adam to get to the fish. He was nearly hooked by one of the gaffs as several guys scrambled to stick the fish and bring it on board. I watched in amazement as they stepped on poor Adam, who sat on the deck with a dazed look on his face. He didn't seem to be aware of the turmoil broiling up around and over him. The guys dragged the fish on board and it was huge-- at least five feet long. They dragged it across the stunned Adam, who got smacked by the tail of the struggling fish. The halibut was slid up onto the butchering mats on the hatch cover and clubbed senseless before it could get too violent. Now that the fish was dead, everyone who didn't have something to do stood around and admired it. Still keeping a tight hold on the line that was beginning to slip, I yelled, "Hey you guys! What about Adam?" My question brought everyone out of their admiring revery. They turned with a suddenly dawning realization that the poor guy might need assistance. The skipper told someone to take Adam aft and get him out of his wet clothes. The boat was turned over to a deck hand who acted as first mate while the skipper came down and assessed Adam's level of shock and hypothermia. Meanwhile, emergency over, I realized we needed to get back to work. "Hey, roller man, let's get this show on the road!" I yelled. "Oh yeah, why?" the roller man yelled back. He was also the deck boss and evidently didn't like me giving him orders. "Because the line is starting to slip and we're gonna have a big mess if you don't get those hydraulics running soon!" I shouted. The roller man looked at the line and caught its movement as it slipped again, this time a full six inches. "Oh yeah, I see what you mean!" he answered, and started the hydraulics that turned the gurdy. We went back to work, business as usual. After Adam had changed and warmed up a little he came back out on deck and went to work, but he never stepped up on the rail again. He had been fortunate for a number of reasons. It was summer, and while the water was still really cold, it was not so cold as to send him into immediate shock. He had hung onto his gaff instead of letting the shock of falling into the water break his grip. Because the fish was still on the hook the gangion that held the hook to the main fishing line helped keep him from sinking too far under the water for rescue. The biggest miracle was that his rain gear straps held through the whole ordeal. The ends of rain gear straps are made with metal bent into two-eared hooks on their ends that fit into buttonholes on the pants top. The buttonholes get worn and the metal hooks are always coming loose. Adam's rain gear was still in good shape. Instead of sliding out of the buttonholes and releasing Adam into the sea, the fasteners on his pants straps held tight, allowing him to be hauled in safely in a timely manner. So much could have gone wrong. A five-foot halibut can hit a man hard enough to break his bones. The gaff hooks, which were being wildly swung about, were very sharp. Adam managed to come out of his ordeal unscathed in spite of every attempt to ruin his health and take his life. I thought he looked pretty good for an almost dead man when he came back out on deck to start working again. He had nearly drowned, he had been trampled, nearly stabbed with a gaff, and smacked hard by a halibut. I am not sure if lucky was a word that applied to him, but after all that he was still alive and relatively unharmed!
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