Day 7

Day 7

I'm starting to lose my wonderment of the ravine called The Bering Sea. It's become the backdrop to life out at sea. It doesn't become a notable participant of life at sea until it wants to be noticed. I'm starting to see fish everywhere. I see them in my dreams, I see it for dinner, I see fish in the grain of the wood in the top bunk above my head as I try to sleep. I've been on the boat for 5 days, and life is already starting to become mundane. Days run into one another with no relative since of the end of one and the beginning of the next. When you live and work in a 24 hour factory, with no shut down time, I get the feeling that I'm missing something I am supposed to be watching if I sleep for too long. My mind is always preoccupied with something that is or could be going on that I'm missing because I'm asleep that my boss will wonder why I was sleeping instead of paying attention to this or that. I enjoy paranoia latent dreams in which I awake from wide eyed and with a rush of adrenaline. This wears off in about 30 minutes but is replaced with coffee.

Hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into months and those months pile up turning our years forward one peg at a time. At sea it feels as if this process momentarily put on hold. There is no element to judge the change of one day to the next (besides the amount of fish caught) except the rise and fall of the Sun. We all work shifts in which that doesn't determine the start or end of our individual day. Most days there is no sun, only light escaping the ominous overcast of layers of clouds.

This anxiousness of returning to a world that has been changing day to day is creeping in. How am I going to catch up to this change by the time I get back. Like I said before, everything is relative towards life out on a boat for months at a time. But at some point we all get off the boat and return home. We'll return to a world that has changed from Summer to Fall, and Fall will be transitioning into Winter. It's a lot like what I would expect the day in and day out repetitious nature of being in the military to be, obviously without the gun fire and imminent threat of death. There is constant conversation about how their money is already spent in their mind, who'll they'll see, what their wife (usually ex-wife) or girlfriend looks like, what they plan on doing before signing up for their next tour. These men have decided to put life at home on hold for 3 to 7 months of the year in order to make the plump take home wage that spurs them to sign the contract.

I couldn't do what they do, knowing that my family is going on with a normal day. Around half of the year is spent away from your family at one time. I guess it's no different for a traveling salesman, but his time is spent gone in short chunks verses multiple months at one time. The captain was telling me that after one four month trip, his son had grown 6 inches and he missed his boys driver test and his first high school dance in those 4 months. They all have the same sadness in their eyes as they speak of home. Most of the conversations are the same, they start with words of pride about who they are providing for back home, the house, the toys, all the time off, and the life they have when they get home. Then the conversation shifts towards the little things and big things they are missing while living the life of a fisherman. Their eyes fill with reverence when they start referring to home, but their words are spoken with a melancholy tone. Yet the conversations always end explaining to me, and reiterating to themselves, they make more money here then they could at in the jobs they could get at home.

- Casey

Start of Boat #2

9-27-08

Day one on boat number deuce.

Today was the first day of fishing. The crew was fighting cabin fever after being stuck in town for the last week from a multitude of problems with this old vessel. This girl is older then the last boat I was on. She was used in the WWI and WWII as a fueling vessel. I've found out most of these fishing boats are hold overs and turn-arounds from war time marvels of the industrial age in this country. She was turned into a fishing boat 25 years ago, and there isn't much new to her since then. This crew is much more experienced then the last group of cats. They are much more crass, tattooed, and consist of the personalties that I expected to work with. This type of fishing is much easier for me to do my job, but also consists of more concentration combined with less physical work. It's essential having a couple of funny crew members around to bust balls with that can break up the staleness of continuous counting for hours. I think I'll fit in well here. Then again it is day one of probably 30 . . .

The cook here is Latino from San Diego. It'll be 30 days of mexican food. Luckily for the crew members they had the for sight to put me in my own stateroom. He is a funny guy, and I'm too gullible, he will be making fun of me for awhile until I can figure out if he is messing with me.

It was such a beautiful day out today. The clearest sky I've seen since leaving Spokane. So beautiful. The boat was riding right towards an Island range with Mt. Pavlof staring at us down the bow of the boat. I got some good pictures of it. I have a port hole on the starboard side of the boat to watch and do my counting, and the Island was on my horizon for most of the day. Found it hard to work and not stare. Thats the type of views I expected to see coming out here. Incredible. I don't own a camera to do it justice, its sad. But there is going to be a great sun set, and maybe a clear night for the stars. This boat also prints of the Washington Post and the NYC Times every morning. This little port hole into the world that is passing us by as we are out here hunting fish may keep my anxiety of having the election, bail out, and collapse of the treasury pass me by. I get to drink coffee and read the news every day. That is such a welcoming thought.


- Casey

Day 5

Day 5

After two boats, I've come to the realization that the cook can only be an allay, I am never going to want to be on the cooks bad side. Ruben is this boats cook. Mexican born, living now in San Diego. We chatted for a good hour today, well he spoke his broken english, searching for words that he knew and I would understand, and I spoke in broken english searching for words he knew and would understand. I don't have the patients to do that for too long, no matter how nice the guy is. But for dinner tonight, pizza. I may have dropped a hit that the food I missed the most from the main land was pizza. Hand made pizza too, not frozen pizzas. I haven't found the ice cream yet, but give me a week.

Hail to the Victors. I love that we get the news on this boat. I was able to see that the might Big Blue came from behind to beat Wisconsin on Saturday. It'll be a rough year, an other reason I decided to leave TV behind and work out here during the fall. I couldn't bare to watch Rich Rod change the tradition of Michigan football. I give him three years there before his head will be called for.