Tempe Arizona!

In AZ hanging out with Dale for a few days. It's hot down here..90ish, I guess its not hot for Arizona, but for Westport/Washignton it's smokin. And I just got the news this morning...Sardines 07' is over! I'm freeee, the cannery officially laid off the boat. I'm not sure what the new plan is. I'm going to hang out and relax for a few down here and mull it over...Asia???

Sardine's Part One: Wrapped Up

Sept. 17th: This is great. Just relaxing at home, for the first time since I left for Alaska back in June! Sardines are pretty exciting, a real change of pace from tender life. I guess the plan is I'll be home for two weeks and head back out to Westport October first to finish off the season. While on break here, I'm going to visit Dale down at school in Arizona, hopefully leaving this Weds. and getting back mondayish. So far so good. One really hairy day out there fishing, or at least it felt that way to me. It was Jacobs first day as our skiffman, his second day on the boat, his second day seining. Convieniently it was also the stormiest day of the season so far, blowing 15-20knots, raining, ugly. After deciding it was too rough to set, we turned around, headed back towards westport. The waves seemed to come down a little closer to shore, so Capt. decided to "lay one out." Johna, Jacob and I get the deck ready for a set, hook the skiff up on the quick release, and attached the end of the net to the mighty Elk Tuna. We were ready to go. Now we wait for Greg to position us in front of the school of sardines, and give us the word. Jacobs in the skiff, I'm on top of the web pile, ready to reIease the Elk Tuna (our skiff) and Johna stands by to relay the message from Greg on the flybridge to us on the back deck. Aparently all the wave action, jerking the skifff around behind the boat, torqued the release, and "clank" the skiff was off before anyone was ready for it...fortunatley Jacob was standing by in the skiff and gunned it to keep up with the Voyager, preventing the net from flying off the boat before we wanted it to. Semi-disaster number one, delt with, we pull what little net went off back into the boat and set up again. Soon after Johna hollers "Let 'r Goooo." I yank the release, it makes a metal on metal sound when it pops open, and Jacobs off, he spins the skiff 180 degrees and guns it. The net gets off the boat just fine. The hand off, when the skiff passes his end of the net back to the boat, was a little spooky as a wave almost threw the skiff right onto the deck, but we got both ends of the net, and started the hual. Jacob cruised around to the other side of the Voyager and hands off his tow line, I hook him in and he takes off, towing us off the net. So the Tuna, Jacob at the helm, is roaring, dipping out of sight between the waves, trying to beat the wind and waves, which are pushing the Voyager into our net. The voyager's got a heavy roll going and all the sudden, snap, the two inch braided tow line breakes. Way out on the skiff end of the tow line Jaocb hears a small explosion next to his ear as the line lets go. Now the wind is blowing the Voyager into the net, Greg and Johna are yelling and screaming for Jacob to go get the end of the line and tie it back onto the skiff. Jacob gets his Pike pole and hangs out over the edge of the skiff and scoops up the line, gets it tied off and starts towing again, he tows till the boat is safely downwind of the net. The rest of the haul goes smoothly, we pulled up forty tones of sardines, skiffman keeps our bow into the swell while we are pumping. An hour later and I'm on the very back of the boat trying to get the skiff hooked back up. In order to do this, the skiff cruises up behind us, with a line wedged up on its nose where I can grab it. When it gets within an arms reach I grab his line, pull it through a small hole in the stern and hook it up to a hydraulic winch, and tighten it up till the skiff is pegged into our stern. The Elk Tuna was literally surfing down huge waves at this point and at times pointing right into the back of the Voyager, it was intense, but we nailed it. Jacob was pale, Greg says that seining is controlled chaos, and that chaos almost got the best of us.. On the run back to town, I hung out on the back deck and smoked two cigarrets with Jacob, and I normaly don't smoke. The next morning while we were taking ice, our ice man hollered down " you guys hear about the Papa George?" The Papa
George was another sardine siener, fishing maybey fifty miles south of us. No what happened? "It went down yesterday, capsized, the crew made it to shore in the skiff, the Captain and his girlfriend didn't make it"...I guess it was a malfunctioning bildge pump, the boat started listing bad on the run back to port, and rolled over. That put a really eiry feeling in the air, almost nauseating at first. Not that I knew the captain or crew personally, but when the Voyager first got into westport, it was us, the Bainbridge and the Papa George fishing sardines. Now it was only the Bainbridge and the Voyager. It took two or three days, before this feeling of incredible vulnerability lifted from the Voyager, It was really strange, my sense of safety was completely lost, even though the weather came back down over night... The final set we made before I came home was also pretty exciting, but thankfully for other reasons. We wrapped up a huge school of sardines, and about halfway into our haul we realized we'd wrapped up a little more than that. First I'll mention that its a huge relief when the fish show in the net, because sometimes we don't catch anything, and making a set is a lot of work for no fish. But this set the fish show...everywhere, and in numbers. They do this thing when they're really thick, it's like the wave at a sports game. Thousands of fish will hit the surface in a spot, all at once, jumping, going crazy and form that spot a wave of fish do the same thing rushing out in a particular direction. Its wild to see, sometimes I just hear it like an intense downpour or hailstorm ripping across the water. So on this set, the fish are doing "the wave" when in the middle of it a big old tail flops up...a whale. So imagine the feeling like, yes! there's enough fish in there! were done, heading in for the day, and it's so early too! (it's a really good feeling), then imagine the..Oh no, that's definitely a whale in the net, terrible, make it go away, we're going to have to let all the fish go to get that beast out of there feeling, sort of like your car just ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere feeling. That was the roller coaster we were ridding, just before we let the whole thing go, the whale charged the net and broke strait through. Now we have a whole the size of a volkswagen bus out there that the fish could easily escape from so we start hauling gear like mad trying to get that hole back on board before the fish find the hole. A couple of minutes later and the hole is coming over the roller, we pull it out so we can mend it later. I can still hear the occasional burst of fish out in the net, so there's some left in there anyways. We get close to all dried up, the waters boiling, like it does when there's a ton of sardines in there (not literally boiling, but the fish swimming in the net move enough water to make the surface look sort of like it's boiling) and then the corks go down, just disappear below the surface, the fish dove, dragging the net and corks down with them. An untold amount of fish are spilling out of the net now, Greg is wheeling the net onboard as fast as his block will allow. The corks were down for probably 30 seconds or so before returning to the surface with what appears to be an incredible amount of fish still in the net. Sure enough there were enough fish in that set to plug us, and the Bainbridge. Greg called the Bainbridge over the radio, told them we had enough for both of us, so they pulled up, dropped their pump into our net and loaded up, all told, between the two boats a little over 220 thousand pounds of sardines were landed from that one set. When I left Westport, our boat's total catch was closing in on two million pounds caught and delivered. P.S. thats a picture of the thresher shark we caught, it was huge! probably 10' long from tail to nose.

First Set of the Season...

Aug 20th: Day two fishing, we made our first sets yesterday, four to be exact. The first was awesome. Ross our greenhorn skiffman, and me, have never made a seine set in our lifes, and here we are, spotter plane circling a big old school of sardines, in radio contact with Captain. Greg hollers down from the flybridge "cut 'r loose!!" Johna, the six year vet of the fishery, yanks the "bear trap" and sets Ross free in the skiff. Ross executes his turn, points directly off the stern and guns it. The net whips off the back deck, the corks making a popping noise as they peel over the stern. A minute latter and Greg is making every effort to get Ross's attention, who seems to be heading in the same direction as us, making a long narrow set...not desirable. Gregs incohrent screams fill the air, his blasting on the horn, Ross can't hear any of it over the roar of the "Elk Tuna." Thats our skiff, the Elk Tuna, powered by some old school bus motor, and she roars. It looks like someone once named it the elk, and then later was tagged with tuna, so thoes two words are faintly painted on the rear of the skiff in two different styles, but there's something catchy about the name "elk tuna", or just Tuna for short and so it is . Well we close up set numero uno, Ross circles around in the skiff, hands off the other end of the net, and we're all hooked up. My job is to stack the corks as they come down from the block onto deck, if there's a since to it i've yet to discover it. I just scramble around on a pile of cork, laying it out in broken figure eights. A perk to the corks is that they stack on the opposite side of the boat from where the net is being hauled, so the waterfall of loose sardines, jellies, dogfish and the likes fall over on Jonah, who stacks the lead line. When most of the net is back on board, I see some sardines frantically leaping at one of the corners of the net. There's some fish in there after all. As we pull more net on board, pockets of fish that got caught up in the web start spilling out over the block, I'm thinking how do we get these into the hatch? But we don't, that hundred pounds or so is nothing compared to the sixty thousand odd pounds still in the net. "Unbelievable" says Johna, he couldn't believe we were into the fish on the first set of the season. We got the net all "dried up" mean all the net is back on board except for the very end "the bunt" where are the fish concentrate in a thick frenzy. We lift a large pump into the netted up fish sitting along side of the boat and start pumping them into our hatch. Everyone's stoked, Greg can't believe it, Ross and I don't know quite what to make of it, except we both like what we were seeing. At one point, Ross, staring into the net, looking at the 35 tons of squirming sardines along side, chew in lip, says "I wonder what it would feel like to be in there...naked." I busted up laughing, what an honest thought. Well the next two sets were for nothing, and on the fourth we filled up the boat then ran back into Westport. Then the waiting game, we waited in line to pump out from 9:00 pm till 1:00 am. Greg took off for a walk, the three of us crew were on the boat when the stove started making some crazy noises, Johna cracked open the front and flames burst out. The fire was contained in the stove, but was much larger than the usual flame that heats it. Not sure what to do we watched it for a while, but there was quite a bit of flame and smoke, we thought there might be a stack fire. The stove stack started glowing and when Jonah peeked inside again a flame burst out right back at him, he grabbed a fire extinguisher and let at it. We were all exhausted, couldn't find Greg anywhere, and weren't really sure what to do. The flame was contained in the stove, but the dry chem fire extiguishers would only put out the flame long enough for it it re-egnite. The galley filled up with acrid diesle smoke. Jonah had turnd off the fuel to the stove when we first figured something was up so we though it would burn out. Eventually it did, sort of a strange episode, I don't think there was a serious threat of the fire getting out of the stove, but it got us a little riled up. One in the morning, and we finally got the go ahead to pull up to the pump. At around four-thirty, we were done pumping and tied up in position to ice up in the morning. P.S. we caught a couple of these gorgeous King Salmon early in the season.

Start of Sardine Season

Friday Aug. 17-- After a couple days of of network, we loaded up the boat and left Lower Hadlock, bound for Neah Bay. Today we're sitting around waiting for the weather to change. Looks like we'll be fishing tomorrow, seining for sardienes, it should be interesting. Neah bay's harbor is loaded with cool old wood boats, most are derelicts, weathered paintjobs, rusty gear, but loaded with character. Its been rainy, then sunny, followed by a downpour, then back to sunny. Not a whole lot going on, feeling out the new boat, the Voyager, and how things are done aboard. Definitly a different style then Guy. Hopefully by tomorrow night we're loaded with sixty tons of sardines and headed into Westport to unload our first catch of the season...
Sat. Aug 18 -- And were off! Departed Neah bay around 6:30 this morning, squalls, grey sky with a bit of swell. Shortly after getting under way we shot a gap between an island and a rocky coastline,
smooth cliff surfaces with several tunnel-holes, the larger ones still support trees on their topside. Several tall rock formations standing alone out in the waves remind me of the heads on easter island. The swell has put Ross, one of my fellow crew down with a bit of the sickness. Things are fairly helter-skelter on deck, Greg gives a good shot at teaching but the message usually gets scrambled in excitement, haste and a few wild hand-arm gestures that aren't particularly helpful. Jonah, the guy thats been working on the Voyager for the past six years, gets a little frustrated between the simplicity of the tasks, the captains explanations, and our attempts to follow orders. It's pretty funny, were usually laughing. Once we start fishing things should clear up a bit. Seems like experience always beets out a hearty explanation. All is well, hopefully we'll be catching some sardines here shortly...
Well the original plan was to load up with fish on the run from Neah bay to Westport. All looked good, the depth sounder and sonar lit up, Greg gave the yell "Jiggers" and two of us moved up to the bow, fishing polls in hand. He gave us the go ahead and our jiggs drop, seconds latter four of my six hooks are consumed by sardines. We found em, they wern't the big ones that fetch the best price, but they were sardines. Greg positioned us right off a large school and we made ready to set. One small problem, the hydraulics were sucking air, why? because there wasn't enough hydraulic oil in the tank. Small oversight that no one checked it before departure. So we bagged the set and ran for Westport. I found it ironic that with this massive net on the boat we were using herring jigs to sample the fish.