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Back when I fished for a living the crab season still lasted 6 months out of the year for opillio. It shows the drastic effects of overfishing that now, only 7 or 8 years later opillio season only lasts a week. At one time the crab was so abundant it was fished all year round and the pots came up filled with crab and "riders" covering the outside of the pots. Now the boats search hard for a handfull of legal-sized crab and are lucky to fill their holds in the week given them to fish. It was late May and I was working on the F/V Pacific Sun. We were headed for St. George Island, which is the smaller of the two islands known as the Pribiloffs, which are located in nearly the center of the Bering Sea. I was in the galley checking our stores and doing some heavy cleaning that had not been possible when we were fishing. The crew was outside doing gear work and making repairs to the deck and equipment. It was a bright calm day with flat seas and a blue sky we almost never saw in Dutch Harbor. There were no great land masses for the clouds to collect around and so it was often sunny at sea during this time of the year. Suddenly I heard the skipper shouting upstairs. He often yelled at the crew over the loud hailer when they were doing something really stupid, but this was different. There was an uncharacteristic panic in his voice instead of the usual annoyance and I rushed up the ladder to see what was going on. We were entering the horseshoe of the artificial bay that had been constructed to shelter the M/V Gallaxy which was a Unisea processing ship tied up at St. George. We were coming around the mound of rubble that formed an artificial hill to protect the waterway that led the processor and my skipper was yelling, "We've lost our clutch! I can't find reverse! Tell Ed! Where's Ed?" My skipper sent me down to find our engineer alert the crew to prepare for the up and coming impact with the other vessel. Something had happened to the pneumatic system that powered our clutch and the skipper was unable to shift gears. He had put the boat into neutral, but that was all he could do. We were headed straight for the Galaxy, and if we didn't slow down we would ram her amidships and probably sink both boats. This was not good. I scampered below decks and ran into Thor outside. "What's he yelling about?" Thor asked me, with a stupid grin on his face. "We can't understand a word he is saying." I listened for a moment and realized the skipper was still yelling, but the sound was so garbled it sounded like nonsense. "Where's Ed? We lost our clutch and we are going to ram the Galaxy! The skipper wants a couple of guys to get some buoys and head for the bow. Everyone else needs to put buoys on the rails down here. Ed needs to fix the clutch or we are in trouble!" The stupid grin dropped from Thor's face as he ran to the side of the ship and looked at our situation. "OH SHIT!" Thor shouted and began yelling at the rest of the crew. Everyone stopped what they were doing in order to lean over the side and look at what Thor was talking about. "OH SHIT" echoed through the deck hands as they began grabbing for mooring buoys. I saw a temporary crew member who had been useless during the whole trip suddenly spring into action. I couldn't believe the speed with which he moved as he unlashed a couple of buoys and shot up the ladder on the starboard side that would take him to the bow. Thor told me Ed was in the engine room and I ran to find him as the deck hands continued running about in chaotic fury. Trying to inform Ed of our situation was a frustrating experience. The engine room is a noisy place full of the roar of a cat diesel in full throttle and each time I spoke to Ed he just shook his head and said, "What? I can't hear you!" Finally I yelled right into his ear and the next thing I knew the little dwarf-like man was running upstairs with all limbs pumping as hard as they could go. I chased after him and emerged on deck in time to see him run to the starboard side for a look. "OH SHIT!" I heard him yell as he turned and shot past me back into the engine room. I grabbed a huge buoy and headed for the bow. Thor, the tempory deck hand and I all lined up with the lines of our buoys wrapped around the rail. We jockied to find the best position for our buoys, bracing for the impact as we glided toward the Galaxy. On the lower deck the other hands had lined up with more buoys along the side of the ship as our captain tried to steer us into an arc that would create a glancing blow instead of a full head on ramming of the other ship. Because we were in neutral we didn't slow down, but at least there would be no power behind us when we hit the other ship and this would help a little. Still, we gritted our teeth and prayed. The curve of the bow rammed the Galaxy, making a huge hollow booming as though a giant stick had hit a steel drum. The Galaxy shuddered, slamming against the dock as our ship scraped along its side. The buoys crushed between the two vessels screamed in a horrible high pitched protest. I can only imagine what must have been going on inside the other vessel as people were knocked off their feet and equipment was thrown around. The noise must have been terrible and I am sure everyone was caught between hanging on, trying to get up, or holding their ears against the awful noise. On the Pacific Sun we just breathed a sigh of relief as we realized that neither vessel would suffer any serious damage. At last our ship was clear of the other vessel and the crew began to relax as people came topside on the Galaxy to see what had hit their boat. But I looked around and realized that with no power we had very little steering and because we were in a horseshoe we were headed for the rocks. This could all still turn out very badly. "Thor, tell them to throw us a bow line, quick!" I yelled. Thor looked at me with a stupid look of condescension. "Why, we're okay now. What do we need a bow line for?" "Because we are in a horseshoe and we are headed for the rocks!" I shouted furiously, pointing at the huge jagged stones that made up the shoreline. Thor took one look at the boat busters and then turned and began jumping up and down, waving his arms in some frantic parody of jumping jacks." "Throw us a line, throw us a line!" He shouted at the crew of the Galaxy. The skipper poked his head out of the pilot house window, asking us what all the noise was about. Thor pointed to the approaching shoreline, telling him we needed to stop the ship or we would crash. The skipper began yelling on the radio for help and soon people on the Galaxy were coming to the rail with a heaving line, trying to throw it to us so that we could drag a bow line on board. They were inexperienced crew and tried to throw the monkey fist like a baseball instead of a bolla. As they fumbled around, throwing short and hauling the fist back in for another fruitless attempt we got farther away and closer to the dangerous rocks that might puncture our ship. Finally, a fisherman who had flown to St. George to catch up with his fishing boat came out. He had just returned from the little village on the island and discovering our plight, he took the heaving line from the processors and shot it across our bow like a comet. We soon had the mooring line attached to our bow and as it stretched taught we slowed down and came to a hault. But as I looked around I realized we weren't safe yet. "Thor, we need a stern line. Have them throw us a stern line!" I urged the red-haired Norwegian giant beside me. "Now what?" He asked me, "We have stopped, everything will be okay now." "No, we are swinging around." I told him. "Look, we are so close now and our ship is just long enough we could lose our rudder on the rocks. We need a stern line." Thor's answer to that was, "Oh shit!" He began waving and hollering again and once again the skipper had to radio the other vessel. The fisherman had disappeared and once again we were at the mercy of the incompetence of the green crew on the processor. They were having no luck sending us a stern line, but by this time Ed had fixed our clutch and now the skipper was radioing the other boat to get their line out of the water as he shifted into reverse. Tying up to the Gallaxy was a humiliating experience. I had friends on the boat, the head cook, the processing foreman, and the fish and game observer. They were all leaning over the rail as we backed into position with big grins on their faces as they welcomed us. "So, what was wrong with the name, Minnow?" the head cook asked with blithe sarcasm. "And where did you leave Gilligan?" the foreman asked us. "How many islands does this make? Have you set a record yet?" queried the observer. I could tell I was going to have a really great visit with my friends. But this wouldn't be the worst of it all. By the time we unloaded and left port everyone in the crabbing industry would hear about how we had nearly sunk the Gallaxy in her own harbor. When things calmed down I asked Ed what had happened to our clutch? The story he told me was like something out of the annals of the Three Stooges. It seemed Ed had discovered a leak in the deck air hose and was trying to put a patch on it. Thor saw him struggling with the problem and decided to help by sticking a screwdriver in the nozzel of the hose to relieve the pressure. Unfortunately there was no shut-off valve for the hose, which was hooked into the main air system, which was what the problem was to begin with. But Thor didn't know this and ended up breaking the nozzel on the deck hose, which caused the clutch to start losing power as the pressure slowly bled off. Ed went looking for a way to fix the problem, which is how he found out there was no shut-off to the main air reservoir. While Ed was trying to figure out what to do the skipper found out he had no clutch. While we were all topside getting ready to ram the other ship Ed ran around the engine room in a panic trying to figure out what to do. Finally he kinked the hose and tied it off and the system began to build pressure back up and we got our clutch back. After that Ed asked the Gallaxy for the hardware to install a shut-off valve. We didn't need another maritime disaster because of an air hose. For some reason the Gallaxy asked us to deliver our next load to the Unisea, which was anchored off of St. Paul Island. Nearly sinking their ship was only part of our non gratus status. While waiting for our crab to be unloaded we visited my friends on the processor and had a party. Several processors got drunk and didn't make their next shift. My skipper didn't help matters when he got on the horn and advertised the private party to all who would listen, advising the entire crab fleet to check out "Club Mel" on the Gallaxy. This got my friends in trouble, with "Mel" being summoned to the pilot house for a lecture from the captain of the Gallaxy. Club Mel was officially closed from that date forward and we delivered to the Unisea until the closure of the opillio season.
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