The Fickle Gods of Fishermen

A while back.....before the episode with Carol (BCE).....one very foggy morning I arrived at Venice beach to find lifeguard trucks and police SUVs lined along the shore. When I drew near, I saw a small cabin cruiser floundering in the waves. Apparently a couple of fishermen out for some early morning angling had gotten lost in the thick ocean fog and mistook the rock breaker near the beach for a marina and had gotten caught in the surf. The fishermen had already abandoned ship and were on the shore, forlornly watching the small boat get battered by the waves. It was already completely swamped, rolling from side to side with each incoming surge.

Belying its name, the "Wolf Blade Razor" was now anything but sleek as it was being inexorably dismantled by the pounding surf. One fisherman sat huddled in a blanket as the other joined lifeguards fetching loose belongings and pieces of the disintegrating boat being washed up on the beach.

It was another powerful lesson on anicca ("impermanence" in the Buddha's original Pali language) as we all stood there watching the boat's seafaring days come abruptly to an end. The tides of time get us all eventually. (Which, apparently, everybody is actually happy about! I'm a fan of hypothetical questions and I have yet to meet the person who would choose immortality over mortality.)

After a few hours, a big tractor finally dragged the battered boat out of the surf and up onto the beach near the "public art walls" (read: "graffiti"). For the next week, debris form the cabin cruiser continued to wash up on the shore, providing me with some bonus flotsam to clean up. It's now over two months later and the carcass of the Wolf Blade Razor is still lying on the beach, now covered in colorful graffiti.

This whole event reminded me of an incident that occurred during my time in Alaska. One summer, I decided to do "the Alaskan fisherman experience" and joined a small crew planning to fish the far side of Kachemak Bay across from my small town of Homer. (Yeah, I know, it's an unfortunate name, but the town is actually very beautiful, attracting quite a few artists and their Bohemian ambiance.)

Our small boat was a "purse seiner", which requires a crew of four. There was Brent, our gruff, grizzled and pot-bellied captain. Tsviki was a handsome and proud Israeli guy fresh from his mandatory stint in his country's military. He used to enjoy spending his evenings throwing his knife into a target board he'd set up. Thomas was a young kid just out of high school from the East Coast, and true to his fiery red hair, he had a hot temper to match.  And then there was me---dark, bearded, brooding.....and still wrestling the demons that drove me up to Alaska in the first place.

So yep, we were basically four caricatures. And yes, we had our share of discord-----that's inevitable when you've got a curmudgeon, a proud warrior, a hot-head, and a brooder isolated together on a tiny boat. But for the most part, we got along fine and even though some work days lasted as long as eighteen hours, the summer flew by in a blur of sunshine, salmon, sea otters, and sleep starvation.

Brent operated the boat and barked orders from a short "crow's nest" of sorts which allowed him a good angle to scan into the water for schools of fish. Tsviki manned the small motorboat attached to one end of the net as we zoomed off in the bigger boat, laying out the rest of the net in a big arc or circle around the fish. Thomas ran the "lead line" which is the heavy edge of the net that hung down into the depths. I was responsible for the "cork line", which was the edge of the net that floated at the top of the water. As we reeled the big net in, tightening it around a school of fish (hence why it is called "purse seining"), Thomas and I tossed our lines into the storage area at the back of the boat, folding the net so that it could be deployed quickly and smoothly the next time. We were mainly going after "reds" (sockeye salmon), because the price was better than "pinks" (humpback salmon), and now and then we'd get some "silvers" (coho salmon) or even a big "king" (chinook salmon) as a bonus.

I guess there's a lot more I could write about that magical time-----like the long metal plungers we used to simulate seals diving into the water to scare the fish toward the middle of the net, or the aggressive jockeying between rival boats, or the tasty weekend salmon BBQs with friends-----but I don't really have the time (or the inclination!) right now.

The event that the demise of the Wolf Blade Razor reminded me of happened very early in our season. Our little fishing boat only had room for the big net and another storage area for any fish we'd caught that day. (At the end of the day---or if we'd caught enough to fill the hold---we'd deliver the fish to a tender boat which stored the fish on ice until they were transported to a processing plant.) So basically, our ship didn't have any compartments where we could sleep.

For sleeping arrangements, Brent had arranged with an acquaintance, Bob, to rent a very small cabin cruiser with four very small sleeping compartments-----shelves really, two on each side of the bow, one over the other. Now Bob was an eccentric character, a real do-it-yourselfer who had never met a project that he didn't feel he was already an expert on.

Since it was far from seaworthy, this old cabin cruiser needed a lot of work. For some crazed reason, Bob decided that the boat would be more maneuverable if the propeller was located further forward than the normal position at the stern. So he constructed a dubious "motor well"----basically a square hole with sides straight through the back deck and hull of the boat. He figured an outboard motor would work splendidly mounted in the well. Among other repairs, he also re-fiberglassed the entire hull. And to top it all off, we painted it in hideous shades of green and black.

We worked hard for a couple weeks helping Bob get the little boat ship-shape. And every night I would go home scratching my head about the latest theoretical "improvement". But I deferred to their deeper experience because I knew little about ships and the sea. After all, these were tough Alaskan men, wizened and wisened by lives spent carving out their survival from the harsh environment and rough seas. Or so I thought.

We finally launched the little cabin cruiser at the beginning of the salmon fishing season and my spirits were buoyed considerably when it didn't sink straight to the bottom. Unfortunately, that insane motor well design proved to be utterly useless, so we ended up towing it all the way across the bay and anchored it in a protected cove. After long days of fishing, we would return very late to sleep in the cabin cruiser.

Just a few nights into this routine, I was sleeping somewhat fitfully when I heard a foreboding series of events that in my state of exhaustion I did my best to ignore. First, I heard the bilge pump kick on. Now most boats naturally take on a little water, so they have bilge pumps that are automatically activated by float switches when the water reaches a certain level. Since this was nothing new, I easily went back to sleep. I woke up a little while later and realized that the bilge pump was still on. In my hazy half-sleep I still didn't think much of this and rolled over for more sleep. Then I heard Brent get up and start bailing water out of the boat with a bucket. I'm sure that the other guys heard this too, but we all did our best to pretend that we were still sleeping. I finally woke up more fully when I realized that Brent was bailing faster and faster. And then he said, "Uh guys, I'm not keeping up with the water." That got us going!

We jumped up, grabbed some buckets and pots, and began bailing like crazy. But somehow the water kept coming in faster and faster and it quickly became apparent that we were fighting a losing battle. Brent fired up the motor and headed us toward the shore as we continued madly bailing, profanities flying in all directions.

Sinking lower and lower, our sad little boat limped slowly toward the shore, due to that terrible motor well design and the fact that we had taken on so much water. Just when it looked like we would go under, the boat ran aground near shore. None of us had gotten the chance to get dressed, so we made for quite a sight as we abandoned ship in our underwear, splashing into the cold Alaskan water as we lugged our gear to shore, still cursing up a storm. Catching our breaths on the rocky beach, we watched as the tide came in, quickly submerging the helpless craft.

As I replayed the night's events and looked around at us, soaking wet in our underwear, I couldn't help but start laughing. Soon we were all busting up, unable to contain the absurd hilarity of the moment.

The next morning's low tide exposed the forlorn boat, revealing the cause of our calamity: apparently Bob had mixed the glue to the wrong proportions and the fiberglass waterproofing had simply peeled away from the hull. He eventually salvaged the little boat and I last saw it sitting on the famous Homer spit with a big "For Sale" sign painted on it. It's probably still there.

Sometimes when I remember that night, I wish I had been a spectator, watching from the shore or the surrounding cliffs. How priceless it would have been to see and hear the spectacle unfold! I even wrote a story called "The Fickle Gods of Fishermen" told from the point of view of three young sisters who are summering with their mother in a lone house on a bluff overlooking the cove.

We camped on the beach the rest of the nights and managed to finish the fishing season without any other major disasters. Prices were down that season and we didn't catch that many fish (for a commercial operation), so we made next to nothing. But the weather was exceedingly gorgeous that summer and I treasure my memories out on that beautiful bay. Especially that night of adrenaline-pumping profanity-laced hilarity.


"We'll be boarding the Titanic at 5pm sharp!"
---Non Sequiter Man to the crowd at St. Joseph's homeless center