ABIGAIL CALKIN hails from New England with Lunenburg, Nova Scotia ancestors who fished and sailed the seas. She lives in southeast Alaska and is working on her second book of commercial fishing stories and Coast Guard rescues. She also writes poetry and nonfiction about glaciers, soldiers, and wilderness, as well as articles and books about thoughts and feelings. Her poetry has appeared on Prairie Poetry’s website, Inscape, and other literary magazines. Spending as much time on the water as she can, she has also swum Icy Passage, an arm of Icy Strait just outside of Glacier Bay, twice…on purpose.
You may see more of Abigail’s work at:
http://abigailbcalkin.com http://www.poetryrepairs.com/v15/136.html http://www.prairiepoetry.org
You may see more of Abigail’s work at:
http://abigailbcalkin.com http://www.poetryrepairs.com/v15/136.html http://www.prairiepoetry.org
AUDIO
WRITINGS
Against Disaster
a sestina
Jack London used all spars and sails to drogue
His vessel down, improvised ocean drag.
Glenn M tied his toolboxes at the stern
to slow against mad and raging seas--
to lessen speed, keep family from waves
a lesson from old naval books on: Storm.
Use wood, metal, cloth—anything against storm.
Common sense told Glenn M to build a drogue--
to grit hold perpendicular to waves,
act as if toolboxes made heaviest drag.
They had thought to sail the coast on calm seas,
nothing like sixty-foot waters at stern.
They awakened one day with winds at stern
had not known they’d see such violent storm
be tossed, violated by vengeful seas.
They called all powers to build a new drogue
something, anything to work as boat’s drag
against each new onslaught of killing waves.
Approached from starboard, port, fore, aft these waves
Created bow, scuppers seemed blocked, slammed on stern
Water covered the deck, wrong kind of drag
So it was—no abatement to the storm.
They clung to deck and rail, prayed for the drogue
to save mother and young son from the seas
water came in cabin, seas engulfed them.
How would they weather these violent waves?
What else could they tie and drop for a drogue?
Glenn acted as he rushed from stem to stern
The Coast Guard was there to save them from storm,
Trail lines wrapped the mast, gave light but not drag
Oh save us, save us, give our sailboat drag!
Keep these waters from us. They are the seas!
Man wants calm not castigating storm
All are slammed in the face by these damned waves
Will they die now or live till their life’s stern?
What will keep them alive, their daily drogue?
It was drag that saved family these waves
They will survive these seas till come life’s stern.
They survived, will buy new tools—the next drogue.
_______________________
Land to Sea
Digging for quahogs
on the beach of a West Falmouth cove
feeling the warm late afternoon sand
expand inside me, outside me
grain by grain against sole and sole as each foot
moved in the slow motion of geologic time.
I swam the cove one afternoon alone,
age ten. I told Ginny, my parents’ peer,
I was going. She thought nothing of it
so nor did I. She said she’d keep watch for me.
I could have drowned but the thought
didn’t cross my mind. It was
pleasure boats that passed by
I paused for they had the right of way.
They waved, seemed to think nothing of a girl
sidestroking and dogpaddling the distance.
Decades later I stopped running,
took up swimming. In one length I
grabbed the pool’s edge eight times to breathe,
but learned to swim long distances
as if I were a sockeye headed home.
Began to feel that salmon flutter of fins
as soon as water covered my calves.
I moved to Alaska, remote and with no pool.
I eyed Icy Passage’s tidal waters
with the envy of a swimmer. I could not wade
—water would go over the tops of my XtraTufs.
Still I eyed that water.
I kayaked it
I skiffed it
—all the while thinking of crawling into it--
till one day I did. Organized a fundraiser.
A half a dozen people swam across Icy Passage
—raised ten thousand dollars for the clinic.
I got my swim at a seal’s eye level
chin out of water, stared at his image.
Swam past imaginary kayaks, huge
boats from the level of a wave.
The water was forty-three degrees
that day before Mother’s Day. I won’t say
I felt toasty warm in my dry suit
—ever try swimming a mile in a dry suit--
reaching the shores of Pleasant Island
—so cold so numb--
I could not feel my soles against the grains of sand,
nor against small rocks…or the wooden dock
once back on Gustavus side.
But oh!
The joy of seeing ocean at its level!
I wrote books, climbed mountains, gave birth,
earned a PhD, and swimming Icy Passage
ocean waters tied my life in blue ecstasy.
I was in the sea!
—I was of the sea, the essence of our planet—
in Pacific flowing in and out of Icy Strait and Icy Passage!
Oh the joy!
Love has no stronger pull than to
lie on my back swimming
seeing the day’s parhelion,
peaks of the Fairweathers
—the planet’s highest coastal range--
snow-covered hills of Excursion Ridge,
the hypsometric outline —the great circle curve--
of Earth’s water
I was one in the deep of my ocean home.
_______________________
Out to Sea
I went inland but now come
to the sea. I hoist my sails
in the silence of night,
head out beyond the jetty.
It is autumn and strangers have left.
I listen to water move as the faintest light of day
sags in the western sky. Auroral greens
begin to shimmer in the north and zenith.
A breeze luffs my sails as strong black coffee
will luff me through the night.
Hopeful gulls follow my wake too early
for the fish I have not caught.
I feel the swells beneath my feet as I ride
against them out of harbor toward
open sea. Now wind ripples
across the midnight green ocean.
I head to the blood red stain, that horizon’s
edge of a sun. I slide into the Fata Morgana
that gap between sea and land.
The moon glistens as I head out on the waves.
_______________________
Out to Sea in My Zodiak
I went out to sea
in my Zodiak
One chilled October day.
I never thought the fog would roll in.
I sat in silence
Contemplating nil.
In that absence of sight and sound
I bumped into a humpback whale
A quiet lumph in her barnacled sleep.
She awoke with a start,
Flipped fin at me till I,
flew in ecstasy to land on her back, I
as startled as she.
We swam together for the eons
since mile high glaciers covered this land and water,
ah, even since broiling cauldrons of volcanoes
and fire covered the planet that would be ours.
I clung tightly and scratched her back.
(She gave me a free ride.
I owed her something.)
Soon she shared her barnacles with me
till my feet and hands were covered with new
life forms. I learned to hold my breath
for long minutes under water
as she fed on krill, herring, and newborn shrimp.
I dined on herring and shrimp too. Oh!
the herring! Why do fishermen
insist on using it for bait when whale and I
can dine on this sweet delicacy?
I want to see it on market ice
when I get back to human form, but first
we swim beneath sailboats and trollers,
cause them no trouble. I clear them of barnacles,
suck out the wiggling forms for my sustenance.
The owners would thank me if they knew
I did that.
In between vessels, I pull limpets
from my feet, put them on the cushion
in the sun at the bottom of my Zodiak.
I’ll feast on their warmth this day out at sea
when my whale glides to breathe and I
launch to sit in my Zodiak as if always there. But
the whale and I know where we both have been.
_______________________
The following are segments from Abigail’s latest book, The Night Orion Fell, a nonfiction story about a 1982 commercial fishing accident on the F/V Fargo, out of Garibaldi, Oregon.
As the lines continued winding over the portside gunwale and onto the drum, Larry heard a short, gut-launched scream. He whirled around to see Dick’s feet going over the top of the net reel. Part of the line lashed Dick ever more tightly in its mechanical turn as it rolled over him and rolled him over the reel. In that instant, Larry saw Dick’s terror-stricken face, pallid and frozen. His adrenalin surged and although he considered the longer, safer route around the net reel, he instinctively took the shortest route racing over the incoming line to shut off the hydraulic motor Putting his hand on top of the core of the net reel, he boosted himself across the starboard hose line, something he’d done countless times before…although never while the lines were moving nor while wearing his heavy foul weather gear. With its normal wear on even one haul, the line had developed indentations and small frays that snagged first his gloved right fingers and wrist, then took hold and whipped up his arm. It pulled him over the line and slammed him face down against the net reel, his arms flung out as he reached to rescue Dick. Over the noise of the boat and its hydraulics and on his own first revolution, Larry heard Dick’s bones snap as the line wrapped and crushed him in its vise. The steel hose line cudgeled down Larry’s left arm, jolting and jerking him repeatedly. Fastened to the reel, Larry spun in continuous revolutions, feet over head, head over feet, again and again. The force flung his hat, boots and a sock God knows where.
The lines had now whipped and wrapped the two men against the reel like captured fish. Only the wind and Dick heard Larry’s cold words:
“We’re dead.”
As soon as his feet left the deck, Larry thought this thing’s gonna grind us up. He visioned himself and Dick as mush. Innards out in the air. Two lives mulched into the beyond.
One cross of the line against his torso would break and crush his bones as easily as it had just done Dick’s. The wings and body of the net ground over the gunwale and across the deck toward the reel. Within a minute or two, its slow, steady, unstoppable pace would pull tons of fish on board. In moments, the weight and webbing of the net would bring to bear the final pressure needed to kill Larry and Dick.
If only the net’ll fall over the flange on that side of the winch…. If it’ll just fall over that flange, it’ll jam up that roller bearing. I’ve seen it happen. The motor won’t turn the reel. It’ll jam it ‘cause it can’t break that hose line inside the gear.
A skilled skipper maneuvers his boat to roll the hose lines and net evenly onto the reel. Wrapped against it, Larry could not steer. The line began to wind unevenly and drag toward the edge of the spool. It wedged over the drum’s flange and onto the chain and gear sprocket to catch in the bearing, jamming the hydraulic motor, preventing it from turning the drum. When the drum stopped, the trawl doors were still drawn against the sides of the boat, hanging unfastened from the gallows posts. Larry hung upside down suspended facing the reel, bowed against its underside, his back toward the deck, arms spread eagle, his feet not far from the stern and not quite touching the deck. Motionless and trapped, he listened to the prop wash of water against the stern, the drag of the net webbing, and the hydraulics screak of a siren’s call.
He called out, “Dick. You OK?”
Sunday, Feb. 7, dawned still clear on land as well. At home, Bev threw a Pendleton mackinaw over her bathrobe as she went out for the Sunday Oregonian, Portland’s paper read throughout the state. She stood there in the chill for a moment looking down at the bay and out to sea, at Venus in the west, and wondered what Larry was doing at that very moment.
Please bring him home to us. Plugged. We sure could use the money. Realizing she was chilled and the coffee was probably ready, she hurried inside.
At the kitchen table with her coffee, Lincoln still sound asleep, she pulled out the ads to read later, read the funnies then set them aside for Lincoln. Having read the first section, she turned to its Northwest Magazine.
On the front page was a photograph of the now-upright crabber, Sagacious, grounded and obviously damaged from its capsize. The headline read, “TRAGEDY STRIKES THE WEST COAST: At least 33 people have died in fishing-related accidents in recent months.” She, the wife of a fisherman out with a green deck hand, did not need to see this. She already knew it was a deadly season. Every restaurant on the coast that ever served a cup of coffee to fishermen or Coasties knew this. You could see it on any face in the grocery store as locals gave a somber nod or wan smile to friends, avoided eye contact with the occasional stranger who traveled the road in winter. Must have money. Is he gonna make it back?
Turning to page 2, the lead article title, “The Grim Harvest in Fisherman’s Lives,” was not written with coastal families in mind. Portland lies 50 miles inland as the crow flies. Fishermen don’t live in Portland. No. The cover with its headline and photo was designed for those who lived in the city, the Valley, the Cascades, or Eastern Oregon. Its message was: Be glad you’re a rancher, a logger, or an office worker. Be glad your life isn’t being harvested. It didn’t mention until the fifth page of the article, that the four crew of the Sagacious were rescued.
As it turned out, between October 1981 and Feb. 7 1982 when the article was published, 33 fishermen from San Francisco to the Canadian border had died; more deaths were yet to come. This would become the deadliest season on the century’s record.
As Bev read the Sunday Oregonian, her brother, David, was trawling deep water out off the entrance to Tillamook Bay. Her other two brothers, Tony and George, were trawling off Astoria, and Larry had just hauled up his net off Pacific City’s Haystack Rock. All she knew was that her worry, just below the surface, was now about to explode. She tried to read the article. She tried not to read the article. She didn’t see the words, but she did see names of boats and people she knew. A knot gripped her and she couldn’t release it. She silently chanted over and over and over all that day and the next and the next, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.
She had skipped over the name that caught every Oregon and Washington Coast Guardsman in the throat—Capt. Frank Olson, the CO of Station North Bend was killed during an attempted rescue mission when his helo malfunctioned and crashed in the ocean. Lt. j.g. Ray Shultz with his crew including flight mechanic, George MacGillis, was headed down from Station Astoria to rescue Olson and his crew but the southerly headwinds blew so fiercely, it took Shultz an hour to get the 20 miles to Seaside. Still having over 100 miles to go, he called Station Tillamook Bay, 40 miles farther south, and was told they’d just had a gust of 115 miles per hour. After this Marine-turned-Coast Guard pilot maneuvered the dicey but judicious turn back north, his helo was in Astoria in minutes. Years later, with a catch in his voice and turning his head away, Shultz described this turning back as the most difficult thing he’d ever done. A pilot doesn’t leave a fellow pilot and his crew in the ocean…unless the rescue means losing his own life, crew, and helo. Fishermen and Coast Guardsmen knew this was the worst fall and winter they’d ever seen.
------------------------
He careened through time and it slowed until each instant, each excruciating agony reached out and touched him again. Nothing existed but time, pain, and shivering in the cold. Again, he visualized warm blood flowing down his arms, into his hands, and back up through his wrists, past his elbows and muscles, back to his heart. Warm blood. It flowed, and he watched his will pull it back to his heart, cleanse it, push it down again to his hands and fingers.
Dark seconds lengthened to hours as the Fargo idled farther and farther offshore running at about 3 knots into the long slow ocean swells that came from the distant, approaching storm front.
In the dark morning hours, he let his head hang back, looked at the stars in their familiar positions. The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia sparkled. His eyes focused on Orion, his favorite constellation, and specifically Betelgeuse. He filled in from memory the stars he could not see. Familiarity provided only split seconds of comfort before Orion began to quiver as if it were a person on his side falling into the sea. Here, here! he called out. He had to remain conscious or he would die. He focused on Betelgeuse, concentrated until he could feel its heat warm him. When Betelgeuse no longer gave sufficient warmth, he picked another of Orion’s stars and concentrated on the power of its heat flowing through him. As dawn came nearer, Orion’s left arm and leg and part of the belt gradually sank into the sea. Finally his right arm and leg also disappeared.
-----------------------
They cut more cable and net loose. Suddenly, the weight of the fish began to unfurl the net from the reel. Dick’s body landed on the deck. Net and cable flopped, whipped, and slapped across the deck threatening to strike or lash overboard John, George, David, or Fred. These four men found their own lives in danger as a cable end slammed the deck inches from one man then another. It lashed the air above their heads or beside their shoulders in those moments until one of them was able to reach and lock the gear and winch. Each man then quickly looked around to be sure all were on deck and standing. No one said a word. They just assessed the status of the others, realizing how close they’d come to further disaster.
Lutz looked up, either hearing the helicopter or thanking God they were still alive. He saw the 1489 was still on scene.
David and Lutz had the same thought, David saying. “Tell them to get my brother-in-law to the hospital. He needs medical attention now. This other man’s all but decapitated. Time doesn’t matter for Dick.”
Lutz radioed the helo. “The second man’s already dead. Don’t worry about him. Go!” He went to the gunwale and vomited into the sea. The 89 departed for Tillamook at 2:21.
------------------------
Once Larry was on his way to Tillamook, David, Fred, John, and George stood momentarily numb and exhausted, staring at the gray sea, sky, and boat, but each saw only Larry and Dick in images rimmed by emotion.
When David finally broke the silence, the three men looked at him.
“He crewed for me four months last summer, tuna fishing off Southern California.”
Solemnly they placed Dick’s body in a deck checker, a trawler’s deck compartment with sides a foot tall, designed to hold the different species of fish when sorting.
Respectfully they stood. Lutz and MacGillis wore their Coast Guard mustang suits. The fishermen stood in their Helly Hanson dark olive green rain gear. Four men at an impromptu funeral where their vocations happened to place them. Spray, blown by the now 20- to 35-knot February winds on the North Pacific, continued to wash over them and the deck.
------------------------
Their work completed, the men went inside the galley and sat at the table. They were spent and chilled to the bone. It felt good to be out of the wind, spray, and rain. Wet and cold from the experience, David and Fred removed their rain gear and donned the two survival suits David found stored in the unused head.
Lutz and MacGillis sat in their mustang suits, the Mac-10 Coast Guard flight suits—orange flotation coveralls that zipped crotch to throat, with Velcro snaps at the wrists and ankles, topped by a vest that doubled as a life preserver and had a signal mirror, flare, radio, and airbags in the pockets. Even out of the wind and rain, MacGillis, wet beneath his suit, never did warm up. Periodically, he went into Larry’s stateroom and laid under one of Larry’s sleeping bags. Lutz remained chilled also. The men sat at the table for the long ride to Astoria, numb and exhausted by the events they had witnessed and experienced. It was a bad case for Lutz and MacGillis, for MacGillis, his first rescue handling a dead man, for Lutz, only his second. For David, the sadness and shock of losing his buddy began to overwhelm him. It was too soon to let go of the person and friendship. He sat, deeply pained at Dick being outside in the deck checker. He finally went to his bunk and took his sleeping bag out and covered him with it. George walked out with him. Cold water splashing on Dick made both his friend, David, and the stranger, George, feel uncomfortable. They wanted to protect him, help him. They felt a sense of guilt at being relatively warm while Dick was out in the almost freezing, wet ocean spray. On the long journey, they occasionally continued to check on him.
I want to comfort you. It’s a personal thing. Dick, you’re my friend. Here we are inside the boat trying to stay warm, and you’re out getting that cold wake on you. Damn it.
David shuddered.
Back inside, he still saw him…. Nasty weather and you’re getting rolled around in that checker. I gotta go back out. Maybe I should kind of relocate you, Dick. What I want…. Here I’m nice and warm in a survival suit and you’re…cold.
Infrequently, the men pulled themselves from silence to single-sentence conjectures.
“What happened?”
“Dick got his glove caught in the line. Pinched it.”
“Pulled him over?”
“Had to.”
“Larry went under the line. Boat rolled a bit and he reached up and grabbed it.”
“Or over it.”
“Over it. Oh. Yeah, over it.”
“Think he’ll lose his fingers?”
“Or his hands.”
“Or his arms.”
No one mentioned that he’d never fish again. None dared think about whether or not he would survive his injuries; after all, they had just saved his life.
Unneeded now, their adrenaline surges dissipated across the next couple of hours. Their sadness grew, as if a fifth man had arrived in the quarters of the wheelhouse.
a sestina
Jack London used all spars and sails to drogue
His vessel down, improvised ocean drag.
Glenn M tied his toolboxes at the stern
to slow against mad and raging seas--
to lessen speed, keep family from waves
a lesson from old naval books on: Storm.
Use wood, metal, cloth—anything against storm.
Common sense told Glenn M to build a drogue--
to grit hold perpendicular to waves,
act as if toolboxes made heaviest drag.
They had thought to sail the coast on calm seas,
nothing like sixty-foot waters at stern.
They awakened one day with winds at stern
had not known they’d see such violent storm
be tossed, violated by vengeful seas.
They called all powers to build a new drogue
something, anything to work as boat’s drag
against each new onslaught of killing waves.
Approached from starboard, port, fore, aft these waves
Created bow, scuppers seemed blocked, slammed on stern
Water covered the deck, wrong kind of drag
So it was—no abatement to the storm.
They clung to deck and rail, prayed for the drogue
to save mother and young son from the seas
water came in cabin, seas engulfed them.
How would they weather these violent waves?
What else could they tie and drop for a drogue?
Glenn acted as he rushed from stem to stern
The Coast Guard was there to save them from storm,
Trail lines wrapped the mast, gave light but not drag
Oh save us, save us, give our sailboat drag!
Keep these waters from us. They are the seas!
Man wants calm not castigating storm
All are slammed in the face by these damned waves
Will they die now or live till their life’s stern?
What will keep them alive, their daily drogue?
It was drag that saved family these waves
They will survive these seas till come life’s stern.
They survived, will buy new tools—the next drogue.
_______________________
Land to Sea
Digging for quahogs
on the beach of a West Falmouth cove
feeling the warm late afternoon sand
expand inside me, outside me
grain by grain against sole and sole as each foot
moved in the slow motion of geologic time.
I swam the cove one afternoon alone,
age ten. I told Ginny, my parents’ peer,
I was going. She thought nothing of it
so nor did I. She said she’d keep watch for me.
I could have drowned but the thought
didn’t cross my mind. It was
pleasure boats that passed by
I paused for they had the right of way.
They waved, seemed to think nothing of a girl
sidestroking and dogpaddling the distance.
Decades later I stopped running,
took up swimming. In one length I
grabbed the pool’s edge eight times to breathe,
but learned to swim long distances
as if I were a sockeye headed home.
Began to feel that salmon flutter of fins
as soon as water covered my calves.
I moved to Alaska, remote and with no pool.
I eyed Icy Passage’s tidal waters
with the envy of a swimmer. I could not wade
—water would go over the tops of my XtraTufs.
Still I eyed that water.
I kayaked it
I skiffed it
—all the while thinking of crawling into it--
till one day I did. Organized a fundraiser.
A half a dozen people swam across Icy Passage
—raised ten thousand dollars for the clinic.
I got my swim at a seal’s eye level
chin out of water, stared at his image.
Swam past imaginary kayaks, huge
boats from the level of a wave.
The water was forty-three degrees
that day before Mother’s Day. I won’t say
I felt toasty warm in my dry suit
—ever try swimming a mile in a dry suit--
reaching the shores of Pleasant Island
—so cold so numb--
I could not feel my soles against the grains of sand,
nor against small rocks…or the wooden dock
once back on Gustavus side.
But oh!
The joy of seeing ocean at its level!
I wrote books, climbed mountains, gave birth,
earned a PhD, and swimming Icy Passage
ocean waters tied my life in blue ecstasy.
I was in the sea!
—I was of the sea, the essence of our planet—
in Pacific flowing in and out of Icy Strait and Icy Passage!
Oh the joy!
Love has no stronger pull than to
lie on my back swimming
seeing the day’s parhelion,
peaks of the Fairweathers
—the planet’s highest coastal range--
snow-covered hills of Excursion Ridge,
the hypsometric outline —the great circle curve--
of Earth’s water
I was one in the deep of my ocean home.
_______________________
Out to Sea
I went inland but now come
to the sea. I hoist my sails
in the silence of night,
head out beyond the jetty.
It is autumn and strangers have left.
I listen to water move as the faintest light of day
sags in the western sky. Auroral greens
begin to shimmer in the north and zenith.
A breeze luffs my sails as strong black coffee
will luff me through the night.
Hopeful gulls follow my wake too early
for the fish I have not caught.
I feel the swells beneath my feet as I ride
against them out of harbor toward
open sea. Now wind ripples
across the midnight green ocean.
I head to the blood red stain, that horizon’s
edge of a sun. I slide into the Fata Morgana
that gap between sea and land.
The moon glistens as I head out on the waves.
_______________________
Out to Sea in My Zodiak
I went out to sea
in my Zodiak
One chilled October day.
I never thought the fog would roll in.
I sat in silence
Contemplating nil.
In that absence of sight and sound
I bumped into a humpback whale
A quiet lumph in her barnacled sleep.
She awoke with a start,
Flipped fin at me till I,
flew in ecstasy to land on her back, I
as startled as she.
We swam together for the eons
since mile high glaciers covered this land and water,
ah, even since broiling cauldrons of volcanoes
and fire covered the planet that would be ours.
I clung tightly and scratched her back.
(She gave me a free ride.
I owed her something.)
Soon she shared her barnacles with me
till my feet and hands were covered with new
life forms. I learned to hold my breath
for long minutes under water
as she fed on krill, herring, and newborn shrimp.
I dined on herring and shrimp too. Oh!
the herring! Why do fishermen
insist on using it for bait when whale and I
can dine on this sweet delicacy?
I want to see it on market ice
when I get back to human form, but first
we swim beneath sailboats and trollers,
cause them no trouble. I clear them of barnacles,
suck out the wiggling forms for my sustenance.
The owners would thank me if they knew
I did that.
In between vessels, I pull limpets
from my feet, put them on the cushion
in the sun at the bottom of my Zodiak.
I’ll feast on their warmth this day out at sea
when my whale glides to breathe and I
launch to sit in my Zodiak as if always there. But
the whale and I know where we both have been.
_______________________
The following are segments from Abigail’s latest book, The Night Orion Fell, a nonfiction story about a 1982 commercial fishing accident on the F/V Fargo, out of Garibaldi, Oregon.
As the lines continued winding over the portside gunwale and onto the drum, Larry heard a short, gut-launched scream. He whirled around to see Dick’s feet going over the top of the net reel. Part of the line lashed Dick ever more tightly in its mechanical turn as it rolled over him and rolled him over the reel. In that instant, Larry saw Dick’s terror-stricken face, pallid and frozen. His adrenalin surged and although he considered the longer, safer route around the net reel, he instinctively took the shortest route racing over the incoming line to shut off the hydraulic motor Putting his hand on top of the core of the net reel, he boosted himself across the starboard hose line, something he’d done countless times before…although never while the lines were moving nor while wearing his heavy foul weather gear. With its normal wear on even one haul, the line had developed indentations and small frays that snagged first his gloved right fingers and wrist, then took hold and whipped up his arm. It pulled him over the line and slammed him face down against the net reel, his arms flung out as he reached to rescue Dick. Over the noise of the boat and its hydraulics and on his own first revolution, Larry heard Dick’s bones snap as the line wrapped and crushed him in its vise. The steel hose line cudgeled down Larry’s left arm, jolting and jerking him repeatedly. Fastened to the reel, Larry spun in continuous revolutions, feet over head, head over feet, again and again. The force flung his hat, boots and a sock God knows where.
The lines had now whipped and wrapped the two men against the reel like captured fish. Only the wind and Dick heard Larry’s cold words:
“We’re dead.”
As soon as his feet left the deck, Larry thought this thing’s gonna grind us up. He visioned himself and Dick as mush. Innards out in the air. Two lives mulched into the beyond.
One cross of the line against his torso would break and crush his bones as easily as it had just done Dick’s. The wings and body of the net ground over the gunwale and across the deck toward the reel. Within a minute or two, its slow, steady, unstoppable pace would pull tons of fish on board. In moments, the weight and webbing of the net would bring to bear the final pressure needed to kill Larry and Dick.
If only the net’ll fall over the flange on that side of the winch…. If it’ll just fall over that flange, it’ll jam up that roller bearing. I’ve seen it happen. The motor won’t turn the reel. It’ll jam it ‘cause it can’t break that hose line inside the gear.
A skilled skipper maneuvers his boat to roll the hose lines and net evenly onto the reel. Wrapped against it, Larry could not steer. The line began to wind unevenly and drag toward the edge of the spool. It wedged over the drum’s flange and onto the chain and gear sprocket to catch in the bearing, jamming the hydraulic motor, preventing it from turning the drum. When the drum stopped, the trawl doors were still drawn against the sides of the boat, hanging unfastened from the gallows posts. Larry hung upside down suspended facing the reel, bowed against its underside, his back toward the deck, arms spread eagle, his feet not far from the stern and not quite touching the deck. Motionless and trapped, he listened to the prop wash of water against the stern, the drag of the net webbing, and the hydraulics screak of a siren’s call.
He called out, “Dick. You OK?”
Sunday, Feb. 7, dawned still clear on land as well. At home, Bev threw a Pendleton mackinaw over her bathrobe as she went out for the Sunday Oregonian, Portland’s paper read throughout the state. She stood there in the chill for a moment looking down at the bay and out to sea, at Venus in the west, and wondered what Larry was doing at that very moment.
Please bring him home to us. Plugged. We sure could use the money. Realizing she was chilled and the coffee was probably ready, she hurried inside.
At the kitchen table with her coffee, Lincoln still sound asleep, she pulled out the ads to read later, read the funnies then set them aside for Lincoln. Having read the first section, she turned to its Northwest Magazine.
On the front page was a photograph of the now-upright crabber, Sagacious, grounded and obviously damaged from its capsize. The headline read, “TRAGEDY STRIKES THE WEST COAST: At least 33 people have died in fishing-related accidents in recent months.” She, the wife of a fisherman out with a green deck hand, did not need to see this. She already knew it was a deadly season. Every restaurant on the coast that ever served a cup of coffee to fishermen or Coasties knew this. You could see it on any face in the grocery store as locals gave a somber nod or wan smile to friends, avoided eye contact with the occasional stranger who traveled the road in winter. Must have money. Is he gonna make it back?
Turning to page 2, the lead article title, “The Grim Harvest in Fisherman’s Lives,” was not written with coastal families in mind. Portland lies 50 miles inland as the crow flies. Fishermen don’t live in Portland. No. The cover with its headline and photo was designed for those who lived in the city, the Valley, the Cascades, or Eastern Oregon. Its message was: Be glad you’re a rancher, a logger, or an office worker. Be glad your life isn’t being harvested. It didn’t mention until the fifth page of the article, that the four crew of the Sagacious were rescued.
As it turned out, between October 1981 and Feb. 7 1982 when the article was published, 33 fishermen from San Francisco to the Canadian border had died; more deaths were yet to come. This would become the deadliest season on the century’s record.
As Bev read the Sunday Oregonian, her brother, David, was trawling deep water out off the entrance to Tillamook Bay. Her other two brothers, Tony and George, were trawling off Astoria, and Larry had just hauled up his net off Pacific City’s Haystack Rock. All she knew was that her worry, just below the surface, was now about to explode. She tried to read the article. She tried not to read the article. She didn’t see the words, but she did see names of boats and people she knew. A knot gripped her and she couldn’t release it. She silently chanted over and over and over all that day and the next and the next, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.
She had skipped over the name that caught every Oregon and Washington Coast Guardsman in the throat—Capt. Frank Olson, the CO of Station North Bend was killed during an attempted rescue mission when his helo malfunctioned and crashed in the ocean. Lt. j.g. Ray Shultz with his crew including flight mechanic, George MacGillis, was headed down from Station Astoria to rescue Olson and his crew but the southerly headwinds blew so fiercely, it took Shultz an hour to get the 20 miles to Seaside. Still having over 100 miles to go, he called Station Tillamook Bay, 40 miles farther south, and was told they’d just had a gust of 115 miles per hour. After this Marine-turned-Coast Guard pilot maneuvered the dicey but judicious turn back north, his helo was in Astoria in minutes. Years later, with a catch in his voice and turning his head away, Shultz described this turning back as the most difficult thing he’d ever done. A pilot doesn’t leave a fellow pilot and his crew in the ocean…unless the rescue means losing his own life, crew, and helo. Fishermen and Coast Guardsmen knew this was the worst fall and winter they’d ever seen.
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He careened through time and it slowed until each instant, each excruciating agony reached out and touched him again. Nothing existed but time, pain, and shivering in the cold. Again, he visualized warm blood flowing down his arms, into his hands, and back up through his wrists, past his elbows and muscles, back to his heart. Warm blood. It flowed, and he watched his will pull it back to his heart, cleanse it, push it down again to his hands and fingers.
Dark seconds lengthened to hours as the Fargo idled farther and farther offshore running at about 3 knots into the long slow ocean swells that came from the distant, approaching storm front.
In the dark morning hours, he let his head hang back, looked at the stars in their familiar positions. The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia sparkled. His eyes focused on Orion, his favorite constellation, and specifically Betelgeuse. He filled in from memory the stars he could not see. Familiarity provided only split seconds of comfort before Orion began to quiver as if it were a person on his side falling into the sea. Here, here! he called out. He had to remain conscious or he would die. He focused on Betelgeuse, concentrated until he could feel its heat warm him. When Betelgeuse no longer gave sufficient warmth, he picked another of Orion’s stars and concentrated on the power of its heat flowing through him. As dawn came nearer, Orion’s left arm and leg and part of the belt gradually sank into the sea. Finally his right arm and leg also disappeared.
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They cut more cable and net loose. Suddenly, the weight of the fish began to unfurl the net from the reel. Dick’s body landed on the deck. Net and cable flopped, whipped, and slapped across the deck threatening to strike or lash overboard John, George, David, or Fred. These four men found their own lives in danger as a cable end slammed the deck inches from one man then another. It lashed the air above their heads or beside their shoulders in those moments until one of them was able to reach and lock the gear and winch. Each man then quickly looked around to be sure all were on deck and standing. No one said a word. They just assessed the status of the others, realizing how close they’d come to further disaster.
Lutz looked up, either hearing the helicopter or thanking God they were still alive. He saw the 1489 was still on scene.
David and Lutz had the same thought, David saying. “Tell them to get my brother-in-law to the hospital. He needs medical attention now. This other man’s all but decapitated. Time doesn’t matter for Dick.”
Lutz radioed the helo. “The second man’s already dead. Don’t worry about him. Go!” He went to the gunwale and vomited into the sea. The 89 departed for Tillamook at 2:21.
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Once Larry was on his way to Tillamook, David, Fred, John, and George stood momentarily numb and exhausted, staring at the gray sea, sky, and boat, but each saw only Larry and Dick in images rimmed by emotion.
When David finally broke the silence, the three men looked at him.
“He crewed for me four months last summer, tuna fishing off Southern California.”
Solemnly they placed Dick’s body in a deck checker, a trawler’s deck compartment with sides a foot tall, designed to hold the different species of fish when sorting.
Respectfully they stood. Lutz and MacGillis wore their Coast Guard mustang suits. The fishermen stood in their Helly Hanson dark olive green rain gear. Four men at an impromptu funeral where their vocations happened to place them. Spray, blown by the now 20- to 35-knot February winds on the North Pacific, continued to wash over them and the deck.
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Their work completed, the men went inside the galley and sat at the table. They were spent and chilled to the bone. It felt good to be out of the wind, spray, and rain. Wet and cold from the experience, David and Fred removed their rain gear and donned the two survival suits David found stored in the unused head.
Lutz and MacGillis sat in their mustang suits, the Mac-10 Coast Guard flight suits—orange flotation coveralls that zipped crotch to throat, with Velcro snaps at the wrists and ankles, topped by a vest that doubled as a life preserver and had a signal mirror, flare, radio, and airbags in the pockets. Even out of the wind and rain, MacGillis, wet beneath his suit, never did warm up. Periodically, he went into Larry’s stateroom and laid under one of Larry’s sleeping bags. Lutz remained chilled also. The men sat at the table for the long ride to Astoria, numb and exhausted by the events they had witnessed and experienced. It was a bad case for Lutz and MacGillis, for MacGillis, his first rescue handling a dead man, for Lutz, only his second. For David, the sadness and shock of losing his buddy began to overwhelm him. It was too soon to let go of the person and friendship. He sat, deeply pained at Dick being outside in the deck checker. He finally went to his bunk and took his sleeping bag out and covered him with it. George walked out with him. Cold water splashing on Dick made both his friend, David, and the stranger, George, feel uncomfortable. They wanted to protect him, help him. They felt a sense of guilt at being relatively warm while Dick was out in the almost freezing, wet ocean spray. On the long journey, they occasionally continued to check on him.
I want to comfort you. It’s a personal thing. Dick, you’re my friend. Here we are inside the boat trying to stay warm, and you’re out getting that cold wake on you. Damn it.
David shuddered.
Back inside, he still saw him…. Nasty weather and you’re getting rolled around in that checker. I gotta go back out. Maybe I should kind of relocate you, Dick. What I want…. Here I’m nice and warm in a survival suit and you’re…cold.
Infrequently, the men pulled themselves from silence to single-sentence conjectures.
“What happened?”
“Dick got his glove caught in the line. Pinched it.”
“Pulled him over?”
“Had to.”
“Larry went under the line. Boat rolled a bit and he reached up and grabbed it.”
“Or over it.”
“Over it. Oh. Yeah, over it.”
“Think he’ll lose his fingers?”
“Or his hands.”
“Or his arms.”
No one mentioned that he’d never fish again. None dared think about whether or not he would survive his injuries; after all, they had just saved his life.
Unneeded now, their adrenaline surges dissipated across the next couple of hours. Their sadness grew, as if a fifth man had arrived in the quarters of the wheelhouse.