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I can hear my muse, Charlie Schultz's dog Snoopy, tapping away at his old Underwood typewriter. He sits on top of his dog house, bent over the old machine, earnestly composing dramatic novels that will never be finished. Each and every one begins with, "It was a dark and stormy night . . ." It was a dark and stormy day on the Bering Sea. But then all days and nights are like that in November, with only the odd lull here and there that brings the seas down to five or ten feet, which is working weather for the crab fleet. If one were to look at the Bering Sea it is tiny in comparison to other bodies of water like the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, but in November it is a sea of contention, seeking to test the mettle of every vessel and its crew as they challenge her for her treasures. We were trying to catch Bairdi tanner crabs and having no luck. In the four years since I had seen my first Bairdi season the crab herds had dwindled to only a fraction of what they had been and it was hard going trying to find legal-sized crab. If the fish and game department had any sense they would have shut us down the year before and banned all bottom trawling. Instead they let us continue beating the remaining crab stocks into extinction and it saddened me to watch their decimation even as I earned my living doing so. My skipper had given up on catching anything when Peggie, our sideband radio announcer reported storm warnings with gale force winds. Gale Winds is the she demon of the Bering Sea. When she comes to visit everyone battens down their hatches and then they set their boats to jogging into or with the seas. With a half a load of crab our skipper decided to call it a day and head for Dutch Harbor. We had already been out twelved days and the storm was supposed to last two or three days with seas over 35 feet. We didn't want to be out in that mess just killing time and it would be hard on the crab in the hold, creating a huge dead loss. After I fed the crew and they went to bed, the skipper called me up to take the wheel. He didn't know me and had no faith in women at sea. He would only hire one as a cook, and reluctantly at that. He asked me if I had experience driving a boat and when I said yes he had the nerve to ask me which way one passes an oncoming vessel? Would I pass them starboard to starboard or port to port? Only the greenest seafarer doesn't know it's port to port and I was insulted, but kept my opinion to myself. The sea was building up in huge swells. I saw the F/V Guiding Star wallowing along, getting lost in the trenches. She was an 86 foot vessel that did various kinds of fishing. In the huge seas she looked like a rowboat and I couldn't resist hailing her on the radio, "What are you doing out here? I hope you are heading for port?" The little vessel answered that they were going as fast as they could, but it was rough fighting the currents and tides and winds. I watched her disappear for minutes at a time behind the swells, wondering each time if she would come up again on their crests, or be swamped and sink. But it was too early for such considerations. Later, when the swells began to crest into killer waves she would be in danger, but perhaps she would be close to home by then and out of the worst of the weather. Time passes quickly on the water. Soon I had to go feed the crew again and then it was time to take the evening watch. Now there were waves and they were breaking the 35 foot mark just as Peggie had predicted. We had traveled quite a distance by then and were alone above Unimak pass. This was an area that was infamous for wicked seas. The currents and tides passing between the islands work with the wind to build violent waves. I had heard many stories of harrowing crossings and now here we were, taking our chances as we continued on our course to Dutch Harbor. Sitting in the darkness with only the light of the control panel and plotter screen I watched the water heaving around our vessel and breaking over the starboard rail. At one point another ship, a tramper which was headed for the mainland coast, passed us. As I watched three hundred feet of steel disappear into the waves and reappear it occurred to me that there was no such thing as a big enough boat. Out here we were all tiny. We were all vulnerable. As I watched the waves coming out of the north a huge breaker suddenly reared up about 15 miles away. It looked like a tidal wave, though it was actually much smaller. I wasn't concerned because it started so far away and I figured it would lose momentum before getting to us. If it didn't crest and fall before reaching us it would bust our windows out and could even roll us over, even though our vessel was 180 feet long. It was that big of a wave. The wave kept getting closer, gaining in size with the change of perspective. I kept waiting for it to slow, hesitate and fall, but it didn't lose speed. On another ship I worked on the captain had told me to steer into a roll if a wave tried to capsize the boat. Turning into the roll would force the vessel to lean the other way and keep it upright. I put my hand on the switch that would put our ship on manual control and prepared to make a hard turn to port if it became necessary. I still didn't believe the wave would hit us with its full force, but if it did, the last thing I would do before being swept out of the pilot chair would be to try and save the ship. The wave kept getting closer and bigger, and closer and bigger. Soon my face was pressed against the glass looking up its crest as I quietly said, "Drop damn you, roll over!" These words became a mantra as I steeled myself for the impact that was sure to follow. Perhaps I should have steered south for a while to get away from the wave? Had I misjudged its force and traveling distance? Soon there was nothing but a wall of green water outside of the pilot house windows and I prepared myself for what might be a killing blow by this huge wave. As I peered up at the crest I realized it was about 20 feet above the pilot house, which in turn was 30 feet above the water line. I was looking at a 50 foot wave! In the past, losing a window to a huge wave had sometimes cost the pilot his life. One man was swept out of his seat and slammed against something in the pilot house with such force it broke his neck. Others had glass driven into their faces and bodies and had been injured in this way. When a wave breaks a window, whoever is in the pilot house is going for a swim if nothing else. Looking at that mass of green water I repeated my mantra, "Drop, god damn you! Drop you bitch!" All the while another part of my mind thought, "Oh shit, I really f****d up this time! I am going for a swim!" And then the wave dropped at the very last minute, just before it struck us. Even so, I was nearly thrown out of my chair and for minutes afterward there was nothing to see but foam around the pilot house windows. Foam is good, it has no power to break windows or do serious damage. If it had been green water it would have been inside the pilot house. When the wave had passed I began checking our course and position. Land was over 15 miles south of us and there was room to maneuver in that direction. I calculated that another wave would hit in about 20 minutes and that if we continued on our course, which was west by northwest, we would be behind the break line when the next wave hit and we would lose our windows for sure. I turned and reached for the phone to call down to the skipper and ask him if we could change course to a more southerly direction for a while until we were across the pass. But as I put my hand on the phone the captain came up the ladder and told me to go to bed, he was taking over. I should have told him what had happened and asked him to change course. But he was such a chauvinist and had such a poor opinion of women I thought he wouldn't listen to me, or wouldn't care what my opinion of the situation was. He didn't ask me about the hard blow we had taken, so I thought that was why he was taking over. I scooted out of the pilot chair and went below to check on the galley before going to bed. Having made everything doubly secure I went up to my stateroom and got into bed. About 15 minutes later I was slammed against the port bulkhead against which my bunk rested and heard windows breaking and water rushing into the pilot house. My stateroom was on the middle deck and the door had been built into a steel hatchway, so there was a foot of bulkhead I had to step across to enter and exit my room. The door once had a vent panel, which had been broken out and I watched the water rush down the passage way, seeking the lowest level of the ship in its journey. As I sat up and pulled on my sweatpants I listened for the captain. Was he alive? Had he been killed by the wave? I got up and latched my door open before pulling on my boots and heard him begin hollering. "Help! Helllp! Spanky, Tony, everybody get up! We've lost our windows!" I heard the skipper yell, with a voice that sounded gargled and oddly enough very much like that of a drowning cat as he howled in distress. He passed my stateroom, wandering along in shock as he sounded the alarm. His sweatpants were knocked down around his ankles and he waddled along in them. I thought to myself, "Why doesn't he kick them off or pull them up before he trips?" Because the skipper's sweats were down around his ankles I was able to note the color of his underwear, which was bright red. Such is the nature of a situation like this that I wanted to laugh at that. "Who does he think he is?" I wondered in my thoughts, "Santa Claus?" As Rick continued down to the lower deck I got my boots on and I heard one of the crew bolt up to the pilot house with bare feet pounding on the ladder. I knew it was probably Spanky and I thought, "Bad move, Spanky, you'll get electrocuted doing that." And then jumped up and followed him. In the pilot house Spanky was shivering at the wheel, wearing nothing but a pair of briefs. Wind and weather whipped in through the two windows which were broken as he turned the ship away from the elements, putting the damaged side of the house into the leeward position. I ran downstairs to get his boots and met the engineer and some of the crew. "What is happening? Where did all this water come from?" the engineer asked me. "And what is Rick hollering about?" I told the engineer we lost the windows and Spanky was at the helm getting us turned around. He didn't ask any more questions and ran up the ladder to the pilot house. I grabbed Spanky's boots and followed, dropping them on the deck behind Spanky. "Here's your boots, put them on before this water hits a live wire and electrocutes you!" I told Spanky. He didn't hear me, but turned the wheel over to the engineer, who told him to get some clothes on before he froze to death. Soon the skipper was back in dry clothes and everyone was assembled in the pilot house, waiting instructions. We lost power as the 2000 or so gallons of water that had shot down through the ship found its way into the engine room and short circuited the generator. The skipper took over the wheel and sent the engineer and a couple of the crew down to see what was happening. They didn't have a flashlight, so I gave them the one I had. One thing I had got into the habit of doing at sea was keeping a couple of flashlights on hand in my bunk. In the past emergencies had waited to be dealt with as the crew went to find flashlights and I made a point to have them on hand after one such incident. Other crew members were sent out to lash some spare plyboard over the broken windows to keep the weather out. The skipper had me get the shopvac and start cleaning up the water in the consoles. We had a middle instrument panel, but didn't dare turn it on until all the water was cleaned up. We had already lost thousands of dollars worth of equipment in the blast of water that had sent the skipper shooting across the 30 feet of pilot house in a burst of sea water. A greenhorn crew member was told to help me clean up the pilot house. He had panicked when the skipper sounded the alarm, quickly donning his survival suit and had headed out the back door to abandon ship when one of the more experienced crew stopped him, "Wait a minute fellah, you aren't going anywhere until we know if the ship is sinking. Never leave the ship until you really have to." I think it helped calm the greenhorn down to work with me. I was a woman and I was not concerned about the situation. Instead I calmly set to work and did as I was told and his chauvinist attitude wouldn't allow him to panic when I was so calm. Soon the spare generator was running, the bilge had been pumped clear, the windows were battened down with plyboard and we had the middle panel of instruments working. The skipper radioed a sister ship that was in the area and asked her to escort us to Akutan, where we would wait out the storm. We needed an escort in case we lost our other control panel and had to manually steer the ship into port. Akutan is a small harbor and it would have been easy to sail into rocks without instruments to guide us. During all this Spanky found the opportunity to tell me I was lucky it was the captain who messed up. If it had been one of the crew there would have been hell to pay for making a mistake like that. I couldn't help but think, "Yeah, especially if it were me." When everything was calm the skipper asked me to tend to his feet, which were cut up by glass. I pulled a few slivers out of his feet and cleaned and bandaged the wounds, telling him, "The spirits must truly love you, many people have died after being hit by that kind of water." I was looking up into his face as I said this and a wave of shock passed over his face as the realization hit him. He had nearly died that night. In Akutan the skipper of our sister ship came over to visit so he could hear about the incident. I sat listening in amazement as my skipper told him the wave just came out of nowhere. I told him I thought he had known about the other wave and that he had come up to take the wheel because of it. I told him I hadn't said anything because I thought he would just get mad at me and tell me not to tell him how to drive his boat. Both skippers looked at me with surprise. I think Rick was a little humbled by this disclosure. His attitude had nearly cost him his life by discounting an important source of information. The greenhorn was on the dock and had just finished calling home. He told me the whole incident had really made him think about the importance of life. I just looked at him and told him matter-of-factly, "Get used to it. If you stay on the Bering Sea this sort of thing will happen often. I have only been out here a few years, but every year, at least once or twice my vessel and my life has been in danger. That's just how it is." To his credit, the greenhorn stuck it out and came back the following year. When we went out on the next trip our engineer was captaining the vessel while Rick took a break and went south for a rest. He made a point to let me know he respected my opinion and wanted to know if I saw anything that should be brought to his attention. At least someone in that crew had learned not to underestimate a woman.
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