Wheel Watch / spinning yarns to pass the time

As kids, Jon and I used to stare at maps of Alaska, tracing grubby finger lines straight west northwest from Cape Flattery, the western tip of Washington State out to Kodiak or the Aleutian Islands, fantasy fishing adventures always bubbling on the back burners of our little minds. 

Even when we got out of school and landed in the cannery ships out in Bristol Bay we were surprised to find these hundred fifty ton boats skittered along island to island up the coast, like pond skippers dodging dragon flies; sneaking through the fabled inside passage for two thousand miles between Seattle and Cross Sound before venturing out into the open, crawling up the coast another couple hundred miles or so before venturing west toward Kodiak and on to False Pass into the Bearing Sea.  Later we found out what a blessing that stretch of relatively protected traveling rally is for small boats.  Easy travel, twenty fours a day at full speed, rarely interrupted by adverse weather conditions more than makes up for a few miles saved by cutting directly across the gulf.  Back in the days of sail, restricted waters, variable winds, and strong currents presented real hazards to ships.  Bound to the whim of wind and current, safety lay in having lots of sea room in which to maneuver.  Entrances to the Straights of Juan de Fuca and the Columbia River became known as grave yards, storm winds and tidal currents shifting at critical moments carrying many a hapless vessel to their doom on sandy beaches and rocky shoal waters north and south of the safe harbors.  With the advent of steam and later diesel power boats of all sizes began bulldozing their way up the channels behind the islands that link Puget Sound Country with Southeastern Alaska.  Aids to navigation in the form of lights and buoys dotted along the track, combined with marine charts, tide and current tables, and a good travel guide like Hansen’s, helped boats make the trip with nothing more sophisticated than compass and lead line, long before electronics began glowing in every wheel house.

     With no tides to catch during the first leg of the trip, and a twenty four hour traveling schedule, there was no particular reason to get a but-crack early start the first day out from town.  Whenever possible two or three boats travel along together, so that if one of them runs into trouble the other will be close by to help.  Our running partner for this trip, the Barbara Ann was a retired tug boat converted over for fishing.  About ten feet longer than our boat with long gentle sweep of sheer from bow to stern and a well proportioned double level deck house that gave her heritage away in a glance.  Drag wenches sat in the well deck aft of the main house where the huge tow cable used to wrap on a drum larger than the net reel now bolted on deck ahead of the low rounded stern.  She certainly appeared to be hell for stout, obviously a good boat to be in at sea.  I remembered seeing the skipper, “Terrible” Ted, hanging with the bar room gang during the long dark evenings in town.  Mid to late forties, two twenty solid pounds under a Carhartt jump suite, zipper open to the middle of the ample belly showing large plaid flannel shirt.  Stubble chin, close cropped red hair under a bright colored home knit cap that squared off at the top sporting decorative little pom-poms at each corner.  He was the kind of guy who was pals with every boat owner and skipper from here to Fort Brag, and made sure everyone in the room knew all about his connections.  Story teller to be sure, delivery different from Phil and the Old Man.  Rather than rely on carefully selected combinations of descriptive words and irony to paint the scenes, commenting on personalities and interesting situations, Ted blasted out his monologues relying on the raw power of his solid frame to make the point.  Speaking with every ounce of his bulk, pom-poms dancing and jiggling with every syllable, the listener couldn’t help but notice even if one was less than impressed or entertained.

     On his way up town the previous evening Ted climbed over the side of Commander while we were sitting around the galley table after dinner and announced that he still had to get groceries and top off his tanks in the morning before leaving town, so we couldn’t get an early start.  After he left Phil expressed mild annoyance with the guy for laying in town for the better part of a week, knowing that he needed to be ready to take the boat south as soon as the weather broke, without bothering to get his ass in gear until the last possible minute.  Now that the last of our loose ends for the trip had been knotted together our mood was anxious to get on the road.  Nevertheless, after a leisurely breakfast Jon and Phil and I strolled up to the store, as much to kill some time as to pick up a few last minute things, newspapers fresh from the early flight and a few magazines that would help pass the time along the way home.  When we got back to the boat, Tom had finished something he was doing below in the engine room and had the main cranked up at the ready.  It was around ten o’clock when Phil gave the word to let go the lines, and she began idling down out of the harbor.  Passing close by the fuel dock where a couple black hoses threaded their way down into the Barbara, Ted bellowed over the distance between the boats that he would be a half hour behind us.  We waved and turned back to our job of putting the tie up lines in the locker, lashing crab float bumpers to the rail along the break behind the wheel house, and generally picking up anything that might be washed away during the crossing, eight hundred odd miles until we raised Cape Spencer and the easy, inside part of the trip where we would be effortlessly slipping south in calm waters protected from the ocean by a thousand miles of coast line broken with some of the world’s most beautiful misty isles.

     We all gathered in the wheel house, Phil in his usual place leaning against the chart room door frame, Tom at the wheel, Jon with the port side door open for a better view, and me on the other side in front of the companion way leading down to the galley.  I had a pot of soup warming on the range and intended to quickly slid back down to the galley to finish lunch preparations as soon as we cleared the sights of town.  Passing the old Kalakala, ensconced in a mooring of large stones evoked memories from the Seattle waterfront as it was when we all were kids.  For me the futuristic looking, rusted steel superstructure of that old boat seemed as permanent a feature as Pike Place market or Ivar’s.  We all hated to see her rusting away here, steam spouting from a couple places along her length, hinting at the fish processing equipment installed where cars and passengers used to enjoy the view from outsized port holes as she rattled her way between down town and Bremerton.

     “Did any of you guys ever take a ride in that thing?”  I asked, not sure if it had ever actually been anything more than an interesting landmark.

     “I did,” Phil answered, “the old man used to take me to school to make sure I didn’t skip, but as soon as he was out of sight my buddy and I snuck out the back way.  Lots of times, we took the street car down town and rode fairies back and forth all morning.  That thing may look pretty, but she rides like a threshing mill, rattling and shaking something fierce. You know she was originally built with a conventional wood superstructure that had a lot more flexibility than the steel, and the changes probably made her such a horrible mess to be in with the engines running at full power.”

    An old halibut schooner lay alongside a dock just further along the way, prompting Tom to spin a yarn.  “Heard about a crew on one of those things who came back from town drunk late one night.  Next morning a small crowd gathered at the dock gawking and laughing,  there the boat still lay with the engine churning away in gear, skipper passed out on the drop seat, iron mike grind away holding the boat on a steady course, crew snoring in the fo’c’sle, one of the tie up lines still fast to the dock.  The old boy fell asleep so soon after throwing it in gear that he didn’t notice he was still tied up to the dock and going nowhere.  Probably slept his way out to the grounds drunk fifty times, and figured he would make it without bothering to watch where he was going."

     By now the first seas from the open ocean were beginning to slip under our keel, the old hull and house creaking and groaning, Tom’s steady hand slipped the throttle leaver further forward until the needle on the tack indicated seventeen hundred, and the pyrometer gauge, interior temperature in the exhaust stack, advanced into the optimum operating range, and we were on our way at last.

     It was about time for three of us to go down for lunch, so the watch schedule for the trip was set.  Traveling twenty four hours a day someone has to be running the boat at all times, so the day is divided into four six hour segments, two guys assigned to each with the change of watch at twelve and six.  Always two people on watch at a time, helps prevent someone nodding off to sleep in the small hours, not to mention the added pair of eyes watching for lights and reading the charts adds to the safety of the boat.  The six hours between watches isn’t quite a full night’s sleep, but trying to sleep both watches below is too much.  I always tended to get a bit stiff and cranky from so much time in semi-comfortable bunks without actually having a complete cycle of continuous sleep.  Not that it is a serious problem, for a week or two the system works well, certainly much more comfortable than one of those graveyard shift jobs back on the beach.

     Phil suggested that Jon and I take the twelve six, and he and Tom cover the other, at least for the start of the trip, maybe changing up along the way to avoid getting tired of the same company the whole time.  The twelve six watch was always my favorite.  Something about coming down into the galley at breakfast time, loading up on a big breakfast, like juicy  stake, eggs and home fries, then climbing into bed with a slightly naughty stay home from school feeling.  Spending as much time sleeping as possible throughout this morning rest period, then sometimes lingering a bit longer in the galley reading or visiting after coming down for dinner at the end of the afternoon watch suited me best.  Five hours sleep after breakfast, then a three or four hour nap in the evening rounded out the day nicely.  Mind you, these boats are far from cruise ships, and there isn’t much to do sitting around between watches.  There are no comfortable places to sit; galley benches are great when a guy comes in off deck cold and exhausted between sets, like the locker room during half time in the football game.  The hard bench feels like heaven for a few minutes, but they are hell for hard and uncomfortable for extended use.  Then too, even though the scenery during the day can be stunning, even at sea there is a never ending variety of light and color, birds and marine life one never ordinarily sees, the interior of the boat is designed for strength and flexibility, maximum conservation of space for efficiency of her job as fish hunter; no windows in the mess room at all and the small side lights in the galley that originally provided at least a partial view outside now open into the storage locker on the port side, and into the entry companion way on the other.  When the weather is fair, the outside door is always hooked open here, so from the galley sink a guy can get an occasional look at things.  While we were at sea this consisted of a good look at the sky during the port roll, then as she dipped toward the starboard the horizon came into view in the distance, a few sea birds squawking and reeling overhead in anticipation of someone tossing the trash overboard, then down to a view of the foamy, green sea, before the cycle repeated.

     No one ever lounged around outside either.  Safety is a big issue of course, one misstep and a slip overboard and that’s it.  If it were your watch below and the other guys assumed you to be in your bunk when you went over the boat would be thirty miles or more away by the time anyone noticed that you were gone.  Even if a guy went over with the others right there watching, by the time she got turned around and maneuvered back to the spot there is a strong likelihood of not finding the body.  Cold takes over fast in these waters, heavy warm clothing doesn’t help once it gets soaked, which is why Tom always had his float coat when working on deck that could extend a guys survival time in the water significantly, but when the boat is traveling and the trip on deck may only be to take a leak over the side, the chances are great that the coat would be hanging on a hook in the companion way.  Then too, there really isn’t anywhere to relax out there anyway, on a warm day running along the inside then the hatch can be a reasonable substitute for a sandy beach, but crossing the gulf not so much.  Cold winds always sweep across the ocean, and even in fine traveling conditions the boat is jumping and reeling to a degree that someone who has never been on one of these things could even imagine.  So, it was enough to be wedged into the bunk, or braced between the table and wall during the rest periods, and fairly comfortable in the wheel house while on watch.

     As soon as the boat cleared the confined area close to town, the automatic pilot took over the minute to minute chore of keeping her on a straight course.  The old model, trademarked “Iron Mike,” were Rube Goldberg contraptions, powerful electric motor geared way down, connected to the steering wheel with bicycle chain.  The same gear box also connected the motor to a steering compass mounted on a swiveled binnacle that rotated as the motor turned the wheel.  Inside the compass, a sensitive switch opened when the compass rotated a certain distance to the left, reversing the direction of the motor.  Closing when it has rotated back to the right a few degrees past the center line of the course the boat was traveling.  This constant small rudder oscillation around the course line had the effect of keeping the boat within a degree or two of the plotted course.

     The old models had a delightful, unique set of sounds that could be heard around the boat over the roar of the main engine.  The grinding of the bicycle chain constantly straining against the wheel, the sound from the gear box and the clunking of the solenoids in the brain box, the occasional clink of the clutch lever, disengaging the motor from the wheel when the guy on watch needed to make a course correction.  By the time I landed on this trip this older system had been replaced with an updated model, designed to work with the hydraulic steering gear that replaced the old shaft and chain junk that had been on the boat from the beginning.  Gone was the grinding motor and chains, replaced with a rudder angel indicator mounted over the windows in front of the wheel and a control panel from which the course corrections were entered at the flip of a switch.  The steering motor and other equipment had been moved into the lazarette, the area at the back of the hull where over the rudder.

     “You guys may as well go down for lunch now,” Tom suggested when we finished discussing the watches, “I’ll grab something later,” he said putting his face into the radar hood, clicking the distance selector dial out to its longest range setting.  “But you two had better keep closer track of things than old Tovorld and Ivar did that one night when we were heading north for a charter trip.  A few hours south of Ketchikan I came into the wheel house just in time to stop them from running the boat up the wrong side of a small island.  Crazy guys thought it was a tug with two barges coming down on them.”

     Mimicking the Norwegian accent that still salted the old boys tongues after forty years living in this country, Tom went on, “Ya, but dat is a tugboat,  look in the radar.”

     “Everyone knows that that island looks like a tugboat with two barges, but if you give it the red light you will plow into two fathoms of water on the east side of that island, and wreck the boat.”

     The accents were funny, and we all had a good laugh at Tom’s recreation of the incident, complete with declarations of how totally stupid those two were not to know where they were, and after god only knows how many trips up the coast to still get confused at that well known place.  It hadn’t even been thick weather, and the lights of the tug, if it had been a tug and not an island would have been clearly visible ahead.  No doubt that it was not funny at the time, and Tom, never one to suffer fools, certainly lit into the boys with both barrels as he grabbed the wheel and swung her around to the correct course.  Rightfully so, just a few more minutes certainly would have resulted in serious damage if not the complete loss of the entire operation, possibly loss of life in the dark cold water.

     “The funniest part though,” he completed the story with the punch line, “as I climbed back down the ladder I overheard old Ivar saying, vat ever happened to dat tug?”

     Possibly influenced by our already high mood of starting the long anticipated trip home and the exhilarating effects of clear clean ocean air, we enjoyed another laugh, the kind that clears the mind and cleanses the sole.  Laughter  that lends credence to the old fisherman’s saying that every day at sea is a credit against the total number of days a guy is granted for his entire lifetime.  Of course most of us tend to use our days at the beach in habitual hard living, which tends to cancel out these gains, but that is another story altogether.

     When I came back into the mess room from the head Phil was spinning a yarn about taking some kind of old tug boat from Portland to Seattle some time back.    I missed some of the details, but things went great coming down river until they got onto the bar, crossing into the ocean.  As the old boat plowed her way into the sharp swell rolling in from the northwest, salt spray began flying everywhere, and the dried deck planks leaked like a sieve.

     “Water ran everywhere, into all the electrical conduit and boxes, creating short circuits and even small fires.  Thought we might lose power altogether right there on the bar.  It was terrible.”

     He went on, “Just two of us on the boat, no rest to be had during that trip.  Someone had put an old stained over stuffed easy chair in the engine room, and every time I went down to check things I sat down and dozed off for five minutes.  By the time we got into Seattle I had two black eyes.”  He stopped for a slurp of chicken noodle soup and bite of tuna sandwich before going on, “that’s why there are handles on a boats steering wheel, you know, every time I fell asleep at the wheel my head nodded forward and one of those handles caught me in the forehead or nose, waking me up before we got too far off course.”

     With that, he slurped the last of his soup, ambled back toward the range for a fresh cup of coffee, back to the ladder on the wall that lead up to the wheel house.  Taking advantage of an especially hard starboard roll he managed to walk up the wall in two long steps far enough that his back caught the inside of the alcove opening in the room above for the port roll, stepping into the wheel house without grabbing the hand hold or spilling a drop of the coffee. 
    In another minute, Tom stepped down and scooted around the back of the table to his place in the corner, flopped down and reached for the sandwich fixings spread across a couple heavy white porcelain platters on the green matted table.  He loved Wonder Bread sandwiches.  When we were kids, it had been fun to pull the crust off the stark white slices of that stuff and roll it in our hands to create dough.  When our mother made biscuits or pie crusts we always crowded around calling for some of the raw dough, and it was a real treat to get a nice ball of it out of slices of Wonder Bread.  Well, Tom had perfected a technique of carefully squishing a Wonder Bread sandwich between his palms, both slices transformed into a delicious membrane of chewy dough like substance; surpassing the culinary pleasure of simply eating the little balls of sticky stuff you could get from rolling single slices in the palms of your hands.  After preparing his bread, then the usual slather of mayo and mustard coated each of his bits of crust rimed dough, then bologna, a few sweet pickle bits and a garnish of lettuce.

   In rough weather, our favorite chicken noodle soup slopped out of the bowls too easily, but in good going like today with predictable, slow rolls, the soup still graced the menu, simmering in a large pot on the back of the range, served up in deep restaurant ware china bowls.  Something hot providing a delicious contrast from the chilly ocean breeze making its way in through the open port lights over the galley range and in through the outside door and sliding galley door, both open as often as possible throughout the trip.  Nothing in this world is as refreshing, or as conducive to a hearty appetite as that fresh sea air, especially when it is tempered by the roar and heat from the main engine throbbing three feet below our feet under the deck and behind the thin wall separating our dining room from the exhaust shaft stack, the roar of the galley range in the other room, and the creak and groans given off by the ancient planks and timbers in which our little world existed.

     The afternoon watch passed uneventfully, the persistent line of the radar beam scanning only the high ground as the shorelines of the islands in our wake sunk below the horizon, until finally the entire screen indicated nothing but a medium strong blip from the Barbara Anne chugging along a few miles off our stern.  Phil leaned in his doorway most of the time spinning yarns about the charter days.  Talked about how confusing it is to turn around backwards to see into the sonar screen after using the radar facing forward.

     “One night, the first season we had the thing, Cliff and I were on watch heading into a narrow channel.  By the time we got lined up for the entrance a huge shallow reef lay a mile or so off the stern, so that the images in the radar and sonar appeared exactly opposite each other.”  Accenting the story with mimed radar and sonar screens into with he peered, “The bright returns from seas crashing over the reef at the bottom of the radar screen, the narrow black line of deep water between two points of land at the front, but in the sonar screen the image was reversed.  Every time I turned around from the radar to the sonar left and right, front and back instantly tangled up in my mind.  Cliff kept yelling, ‘Which way?  Which way?’ The more he yelled the scareder I got and the harder it was for my mind to change directions from front to back.”

     It wasn’t funny at the time, things get scary in the black of the night with a crew of guys sleeping below, and rocks lurking in the darkness on both sides ready to smash the boat, nevertheless we all laughed at the telling as if it were the best standup comedy.  At that time I didn’t have a radar on my own little boat at all, just a world war two vintage LORAN set that if read correctly gave me a position somewhere in a half mile or larger circle.  Many a time I lay in the chop off James Island at La Push rolling wildly with trolling polls up and, shutting the engine down to listen for the fog horn at the entrance to the river, the firing up the machine and inching my way through the fog until the white foam on top of the breakers gave a visual reference.  That was terrifying.  Easy to visualize the boys in the bigger boat, black of night seeing danger in the radar and sonar apparently surrounding them in a tight spot where it was a matter of hitting the narrow channel or drowning.  A good laugh at these situations after the boat came safely through always releases tensions, everyone certain that from now on nothing nearly as scary will be happening again.

     The first day out we weren’t into the staggered sleep schedule yet; Phil went back into his room and pulled the dark green curtain in front of his bunk for a long nap during our watch, and along about five thirty or so an occasional domestic sound along with savory smells wafted up from below, letting us know that Tom was at work in the galley.  About that time Phil rolled out of his bunk, stepped into his deck slippers, stretched and scratched before switching on the LORAN set, mounted on the overhead just aft from the large hinged chart table that also swiveled down from above in the narrow space between the four bunks in that compartment. 

    “Let’s see where we’ve gotten to,” he yawned as the power began to flow through the circuits inside the VCR sized box, two rows of numbers flickering to life on across the front with a dimly glowing screen at the far side.

     LORAN worked on the same principle as satellite navigation in common use today, two or more radio transmissions, finely tuned at their source, are tracked and a precise location calculated based on the difference in the amount of time it takes for each signal to travel from the transmitter to the receiver.  Instead of tuning to geosynchronous satellites, the old LORAN (LOng RAnge Navigation)  system received radio signals from stations located along the coast line.  The receiver had to be manually set to the frequencies of the two closest transmitters, then tuned in several steps to get a numerical read out, corresponding to numbers printed on the marine chart for the area.

     I marveled at the slick, updated set Phil used in this boat, a neat row of knobs and a small cathode ray tube in which a clear, easy to see curved line represented each of the stations, little windows over each knob showing red electronic numbers.  Not like my old system.  Vacuum tube technology drawing thirty amps that tended to fry alternators and stress batteries.  Taking several minutes of warming up, the read out came from flickering green lines on a tiny cathode ray screen, visible through a shielded viewing port aided by a thick magnifying glass.  No numbers on mine, only calibrated lines across the bottom of the screen that had to be counted and written down, ten thousands, then switch and realign the flickering signal curves, then count again thousands, hundreds, tens and ones, then start again for the second coordinate necessary to plot my position on the chart.

     “Soon as I get a little trip on Coho this summer I’m getting one of those things,” I allowed,watching the read out quickly pop up on the front of the set in less time than it took my APN-9 to even come on.

     The prudent skipper does not discard the old as soon as the new electronic gizmo switches on in the wheel house.  One drink of salt water washing through the room instantly shorts out the twentieth century, and then it is back to the old ways in a hurry.  The reason we made such raucous fun of the two old gaffers who mistook an island for a tug boat is that they of all people should have been using the time and distance on the plotted course to keep track of where they were, noting each light and buoy along the way, reading the chart first before peering into the radar as a backup conformation tool.  Even then mistakes happen, mostly due to exhaustion in boats like fish tenders where everyone works long hours before running through often dark and thick weather conditions back into town.

     Looking over his shoulder from the doorway we watched as Phil lightly marked our location on the chart, spanned the dividers over ten one nautical mile marks along the side of the chart, then walked off eight steps from our present location back to the point at the eastern entrance of town.  “Let’s see, almost eighty miles in a little less than eight hours.”  He mumbled as he then walked the dividers across the expanse of light blue on the chart over which we were crawling, “two hundred twenty miles to Cape St. Elias,” he looked up and announced to the three of us in the looking in the door, “on schedule.  By this time tomorrow we will be at Kayak Island, then a quick shot down the line, sneaking in Cross Sound by midnight the next day.  That is if the weather holds; couldn’t be better now.  Why don’t you three go down and have supper, I’ll get mine after you finish Tom.”

     Dusk came on quickly this time of year.  A short cold sunset flashed for a moment between the broken cloud cover out to the west followed instantly by deepening colors that faded into shades of gray in the time it took Phil to plot our location and course for the night.  Stepping down the sharply rolling ladder into the mostly darkened mess room, Tom’s dinner filled our noses with smells as good at any three childhood Thanksgivings put together.  Complete with Oklahoma gravy on piles of mashed potatoes, caned string beans and salad, a hot deep brown crust cherry pie cooling on the counter to be eaten with ice cream for dessert, now that’s good eating.

     “Was the Brown Bomber a fifty five or fifty six, Jon?”

     “Fifty five.  Gutless too, straight six and the old slush box tranny.”

     “You should have seen it Tom!  The day we had the back stuffed with shit and an old couch hanging two feet past the tail gate, Jon trying to do wheel stands all the way from the Brown Hell apartments through down town on the way to the dump over off first avenue south.”

     “Yah, I thought it would too.  All that weight hanging over the back, almost did get the front wheels off a time or two at the crest of hills.”

     “Not!  The damned thing could hardly crawl off the line we had it weighted down so heavy.”

“That was junk from the apartment where the guy got shot, wasn’t it?  You must have heard about that didn’t you Tom?”

     “No, when did all this happen?”

“Not sure exactly.  Jon and I were driving,  so it was sometime when we were in high school.  I got my license sophomore year, and even though Jon here is a full year younger than me he went ahead and started driving then as well.  Norma would give us the keys with the understanding that I would do the driving but as soon as we got around the cornet Jon turned me out and got behind the wheel.  Went all over town that way, only got pulled over once the entire year before he got legal.”

     “Used to hot-wire mom’s Karmen Ghia with the tinfoil from a stick of Wrigley’s chewing gum, push start it and off we went.  Fifty cents worth of gas got us all over the north end.”

“I think by the time the brown bomber came along you had your license. Anyway it was summer,  between junior and senior year and Norm set us to work gutting the trash out of the apartment that suddenly became vacant with one of the roommates in the hospital with a bullet hole through his arm, and the other either in the nuthouse or jail.”

     “The place was filthy too.  Bags of trash piled in the corners, moldy old cloths scattered around the place, and the fridge, you don’t even want to know!”

     “We made several dump runs that day, the most fun with the couch, especially getting it down from the third floor landing.  On the street side that place is only two stories, but the lot slopes down toward the back so it is a full three flights to the parking area there.  Each level has an open porch, and when we got that bulky old overstuffed couch out on the porch it seemed natural to huck it up over the railing and let it tumble.”

     “I thought it would hit with a tremendous smash, splintering into pieces on the ground.  But nothing really happened at all, just hit with a muffled thud.  A guy probably could have ridden it down and hardly spilled his beer at the landing, I’ve been in Wean Air jets that hit the runway in Kodiak harder than that.”

     “Stuffed into the brown bomber along with all that other junk.  I’m surprised Jon didn’t make me ride out on the back too, just go give him the extra leverage needed to do the wheelie!”

     “Damn!  Why didn’t I think of that.”

     “Of course we had all the windows open for the stench.  By the time we got down to Mercer Street there was rattling and rustling around behind us and we were sure it was a pack of vicious rats in the pile, awakened by the movement of the car, ready to jump us from behind at any moment.”

     “I made Paul grab a big screwdriver that was rolling around on the passenger side floor and be ready to fend off if a rat attacked.  I was sure that a rabid rat might jump over the seat and bite me in the neck.  Later we realized the noises were just the wind rattling through the plastic bags of trash, but we were scared at the time.”

     About that time Tom finished his dinner and headed up to relive Phil so he could come down and have a bite.  Jon and I cleared the table, did the dishes and headed to our rooms for a few hours of sleep before coming back on watch at midnight.  By now it had been a fairly long day.  After dusk at that time of the year radio KGO from San Francisco comes in on the battery set I always had with me, and the familiar voices from the city lulled me into a deep sleep before the first commercial break.  The tap on my door, Tom’s voice waking me for the change of watch seemed to come in an instant, and with a fresh mug of coffee laced with two packets of Nestle chocolate mix, I gained the wheel house deck without spilling a drop.  Or hardly a drop.  Advantage of heavy flannel shirts over long thermal underwear.  A drop or two of coffee on the shirt front or in the matted beard only add to the patina.

     First thing coming onto watch is to get the skinny on the current location of the boat.  A dim reading lamp, on a flexible stem attached to one side of the chart table, showing a small pool of yellow over the area through which we were traveling.  Too dim to see the LORAN lines clearly, but plenty good enough to see that we had walked across a good chunk of territory since I lay down for the nap.  One of the trips I made through this country in the cannery boat had been at a four knot crawl, towing a smaller bluff bow boat that slowed the already snail like progress of the damned thing.  Originally outfitted for Navy action with eight six cylinder Jimmies, four on each shaft geared through heavy transmissions, the ship now blundered its way along on a single six seventy-one turning each shaft.  Ponderously slow, especially towing the Unalakleet, on that trip a guy could come up after six hours in the rack only to find that the light clearly visible at the end of the previous watch still lay a little ways out ahead.  Compared to that, or to my own little six knot troller, the ten plus knot speed in Commander seemed like flying down the fast lane on the freeway.

     “Don’t forget to check on the machine every hour or so, and if one of you could crawl back into the lazarette once or twice during the night to check the steering gear too.  Tom thought there might be a hydraulic leak in one of the fittings.  Last thing we need out here is to lose all the juice out of the steering.”

     About that time Terrible Ted’s voice crackled out over the big set, “Yah cap, I’m out here in the gulf, traveling with Phil Edwards, running south from Kodiak, over”

     After a brief silence from the speaker on the large green metal radio bolted to the back wall in the stateroom, a clear if somewhat scratchy voice answered, “We just cleared the Columbia bar, traveling down the line to New Port.”

     “He has been on the air all evening.  Radio reception is especially clear this time of year and these sets blast their way clear to California.  Kind of embarrassing really.  I’d just as soon that everyone on the coast doesn’t get the idea that I’m buddies with that guy.”  Phil commented before screwing the volume down several notches, switching the reading lamp over the chart off and rolling heavily into his bunk, pulling the curtain shut after him.  The door to the stateroom always stayed open, but behind his curtain the sleeping compartment provided complete privacy and a sense of isolation in which a guy could get good rest.  Of course the standing procedure is to call the skipper any time something comes up that needs deliberation.  Not for simple course changes along the way, but for something out of the ordinary the skipper needs to make the call.

     Night watch, twelve to six, running through the dark, radar glow reflected on the overhead, straining the eyes looking for lights on the horizon, others in the boat sleeping, quiet conversation with your mate that often went beyond the usual jokes and stories men often use as a replacement for sharing thoughts and feelings in conversation.  Above the hum of the engine two decks below an occasional voice broke through the squelched radios, volume lowered so Ted’s horse barking faded into the background noise, just audible enough that if he, or anyone else that may be in the neighborhood really needed us we could respond.

     “These watches always were my favorite.  On that trip south in the Bearing I used to go down to the galley at about five thirty and start stake and egg breakfast so that Sandy and I could eat as soon as you and Bjorn climbed up into the wheel house.”

     “You got lucky, Sandy was a lot nicer than old Bjorn.  He didn’t even let me sit down on the stool.  ‘Stand watch means to stand!’” he added affecting a poor Ballard Norwegian accent that I didn’t think the follow actually had.

    “Not so lucky, one day Crystal told me she couldn’t find me in my bunk, didn’t know that I had moved from the room up in the forepeak to that nicer stateroom on the far side of the machine room companionway.  The thought of her finding me in the middle of my sleeping time started the imagination running.”

     “Talk was that she sometimes showed some of the guys a good time.”

“Yah.  But you know how people love a little sexual titration.  I spent five summers working on those boats with her, became good friends, and never got anything more than a Vicory and whiskey flavored tongue in my mouth a few times.  She did get me laid one night when everyone had been drinking pretty heavy, arranged a little date with one of the native girls.  Sometimes I think lots of these stories are mostly bull shit, but who knows?”

     “The part of that trip that I thought was the best, not counting running aground in front of the locks in Seattle, happened that day when all four of us where in the wheel house coming in off the ocean down by Noyes Island.  Remember that boat didn’t have a steering wheel, just that silly little handle and rudder angle indicators, and you were steering us through long lines of knotted kelp and drift wood, looking for openings so we wouldn’t fowl the wheels with junk.”

    “Oh yah, when I smashed into the old rotten skiff tangled up in the mess.”

     “Bjorn and Sandy cussed you good for not avoiding the accident.  Didn’t seem to cause any problems though, but wasn’t it about ten minutes later that the variable pitch mechanism in the port wheel went shithouse?”

     “Could have been the problem, although we were going through a lot more junk in the water than my skiff.  Which, by the way I saw way out in the distance and decided to smash through it just to see what would happen.  Figured the reinforced steel bow of that tub wouldn't be hurt by the rotten little skif.”

     Falling silent in our memories of that early September trip from Yakutat to Seattle, six of us on the boat, Bjorn who lost his life a few weeks later when a boat he was running north got caught in a gale somewhere along the line and was lost with all hands.  Sandy the engineer who couldn’t get a coast guard license because he didn’t have citizenship, Englishman from the north; cauliflower rugger ear from years playing with a club team back home, fascinating accented stories from his youth and travels.  Jon and I and our buddy lurch, who got his nick name early in the season when Jimmy Kitka slashed the back of his wrist as he lurched his arm across the table over Jimmies buttered bread, reaching for the salt.  Rounding out the crew was Crystal, woman in her late twenties who seemed to always have worked around the boats summers, hung out around Berkley during the off seasons attending Merritt college in the pre-Reagan days when education was free, and one could pay modest rent with a part time job.

     “That was a fun trip.  Remember when we lay up in Klawock for a day and Crystal took us into the woods to that clearing where the old totems stood, green with moss like sentinels from the spirit world?”

“Wonder what happened to that place?  The way things have changed in this country I’ll bet they are gone not.”

     “I think they were preserved and moved to a park over in Ketchikan.  But no park setting could ever match seeing them in a natural setting like that.  We were really lucky Jack picked us for that trip instead of putting us on the airplane back home.  That was a great summer.  I started out desperately home sick and miserable, scared of Jack and hating Tom the cook and that whole crowd on the Kayak.  You know that he originally had you slated to work on the Bearing, but when I spilled the gasoline into the bilges of that funny boat he used to pack freight around, he agreed to let me change places with you.  I always felt a bit guilty about that, the crew on the Bearing was a lot more fun.”

     “We did ok down at Big Creek.”

     “I know, actually the next three summers I was there, the Bearing pushed into the creek a couple times and another couple years we were there in the Kayak.  It was all about the same, although the woman who cooked on the Bearing the first year had cuter tits than old Tom, even if I was such a naive kid that I didn’t realize it at the time.”

     “Probably just as well.  Lots of those things are better in fantasy land.”  His voice trailed off, as he peered into the tall rubber hood covering the radar screen.

     “How bout I head down to check on things below?”

     The weather maintained its westerly flow; unseen seas marching under us form the stern quarter, fine traveling weather.  Six foot seas gave her a comfortable ride, although for someone who may not have been in a small boat at sea the movement may seem almost extreme.  There is a lot more to it than just rolling side to side like a rocking chair.  Each wave raises the stern six feet, dropping the bow by as much while also sending the angle of the decks on a long sweeping roll to the port, away from the direction of the wind.  Powering along at full speed, momentum of the hull tends to push the port rolls a bit further, decks at a sharper angle before the massive weight of the ballast called back on the starboard roll.  By the time the boat reached the far end of the port side roll the crest of the sea was passing under her belly, dipping the stern back down the back side of the wave, raising the forward section up six feet, then just as quickly back down the back side, the hull wallowing to the starboard as the deck also dropped fairly quickly down the back side of the wave and she positioned herself for the next wave in line, already lapping at the heavy timbers of her stern.

     Saying that a six foot sea happened to be running from the west by west south west, meaning that the wind moved from that direction toward the north by east north east, pushing lines of waves in roughly parallel rows with an average vertical measure from trough to crest of six feet.  Within that range lots of seven or eight footers loom up above the average and others not so high are in the mix.  The direction of movement in the wave pattern is also an average, with occasional seas taking the boat directly on her side, slapping it way over on beams end, while others come up directly astern, allowing for a momentary fore and aft pitch with little or no roll.  All of which adds up to a variety of movements for the poor chap who just wants to stagger through the galley, down the companion way to the engine room and back into the hold to make sure everything is riding the way it should in the boat.

     Stopping in the galley to rinse out our coffee mugs and slide the kettle over the hot part of the grill to set the water boiling for fresh coffee on my way back up, I scanned the deck through the eye level port hole, everything appeared to be in place; riding good, nothing broken loose.  Then across the companion way to the pisser for some relief, refreshed by the blast of ice cold wind through the always open port hole, hanging from a loop of green Oregon leader attached to the deck beam overhead.  Replacing the six inch long bronze hook that kept the louvered door latched slightly ajar for ventilation, I turned toward the engine room door further along the narrow passage.

     Sliding my left shoulder along the slick white lead painted vertical planks for three steps as she took an especially deep port side roll, I reached the tarnished bronze football shaped door handle as we careened across the larger lump of black water under foot and started the starboard roll, stern settling deep in anticipation of the next wave.  Before Phil installed the bulkhead across the back side of this entry area huge volumes of water must have sloshed up into this companionway all the time, just fifteen feet forward from the open deck which is awash frequently in tough weather.  A Dutch door, heavy solid hard wood tightly fitted into the opening helped prevent these incursions of the sea from flooding the boat, while allowing some engine room ventilation with the top section of the door latched open.  During her earlier career in the tuna business, traveling in warmer climes heat in the engine room must have been unbearable, but now a powerful fan pulled outside air into the space from high up over the top house, and with the much louder modern high speed diesel keeping the door tightly closed helped considerably with the noise level in the boat.

     Coat hooks at the top of the closet in which the ladder led straight down held a few pair of ear muff sound dampeners which helped tremendously with the deafening roar with the Dutz cranked up to full power, then on the next port roll, back against the slick wall of the shaft, feet finding each warn wood ladder step easily, I slipped easily down into the always brilliantly lit engine room to have a look around.  A thick plank topped work bench, deeply oil stained, cleared and cleaned for travel, green painted cabinet front shelving extended a few feet along the rapidly narrowing side of the room forward from the ladder.  The small generator set filled most of the area on the other side, with some general storage space up forward where the deck met the exposed back side of the huge bow stem.  In earlier days a six foot tall, ten or twelve foot long low speed diesel engine filled most of the room.  These huge engines were a sight to see, exposed valve rods rattling up and down, ticking along even at full power with a different sound than the modern high rpm models.  Kind of like the difference between a seasoned old base violin playing its part in a classical music and a Telecaster wailing out heavy metal riffs.  Each with its own special attraction, the former possibly easier on the soul, depending of course on ones stage of life.

     When Jon and I used to hang out around the boat the old man would send us below to watch the machine when crew had jobs on deck that required power from the old Atlas, our jobs being to keep exterior oiling veins and grease cups filled, mostly pretending we were keeping the power plant running while the boat braved our fantasy deep sea adventures.  The old engine was something to see, three hundred rpm at full speed, and it didn’t use a transmission for reverse gear.  There were two large air tanks located in the forward compartment on the deck above, with an air compressor driven from the engine keeping them up the pressure.  Instead of an electric starter motor there was a system where the compressed air could be fed into each cylinder, forcing the engine to roll over, firing off the fuel on the compression stroke and away she went.  To reverse the shaft and wheel, the skipper threw a lever that stopped the engine, moving cam the cam shaft so that when the next shot of air entered the cylinders the thing started again in the opposite direction, giving the reverse thrust needed to maneuver in tight places.

     I remember standing on top watching Clifford, the long time skipper of the boat, backing her out the narrow passage between rows of boats at fisherman’s terminal on the way over to the fuel dock.  His comment, “she backs like a hay wagon,” certainly seemed appropriate as he continued to change between bursts of forward thrust to kick the stern one way or another then back to reverse, moving her further along the way.  Each time he threw the stout bronze shift handle and adjusted the throttle lever my heart almost stopped.  Wondering what in the heck was going on in the engine room, seems like the motor shouldn’t  be stalling out every time the gears are shifted, and what if he runs out of air and we crash into the boats on the far side, and if it is out of air how do you get a jump start?

     Actually I knew a guy who had the old style engine in his trolling boat.  A much smaller model than the huge six cylinder job in the Commander, but it operated on the same principle.  One night something happened to a valve in his air starting system and in the morning the tanks were empty, no power.  He called the coast guard for help, and a couple hours later they had arrived on the grounds with the patrol boat, threw him a line and begun the long slow trip back toward Neah Bay.  But as soon as they started moving through the water he opened the fuel to the Hercules and she rolled over twice and started running, like when we used to push our old beaters to start them when new batteries didn’t fit the budget.  He called to the coast guard boat to stop so he could throw off the tow line and get back to work setting out his fishing gear.

Mass production of high speed, lighter engines for high way trucking sounded the death knell for the old style machines.  I have no idea if the newer designs are actually better than the low speed engines, or if the replacements begun with the tens of thousands of engines produced during the war flooded the market, pushing the companies that produced the old style engine out of business.  In those days lost of us looked to the heavy low speed machines with a nostalgic eye, beautiful objects from the golden age when everything was just a little bit better than today.

     Whatever the changes, the room certainly had a different look with the clean crisp lines of the v-12 Dutz, no external moving parts like the old hunk of iron that used to fill the room.  Even though next to a car or truck engine the thing would have seemed huge, in that spacious engine room, white painted sides and overhead, red floor boards in the traditional style, (the old man always painted the porch and steps to the house red as well) it seemed tiny.  Removing the air tanks from the forward compartment on the deck above gave space for an extra little sitting room complete with a table and storage cabinets, even a couple extra bunks; I think it had been used during the last couple of charter seasons as the biologists private ward room, where they could complain about the red neck fishermen’s stupidity, while the fishermen gossiped about the dullard egg head academics.

     Now I needed to have a good look around the main engine and generator set, checking for oil leaks, making sure all the belts looked like they were running right in the sheaves, then scanning shelves and bins of spare parts and junk to make sure nothing is moving around, then over to shelves holding the industrial sized battery banks, on the far side of the room.  Twelve volt batteries wired together in series to create the thirty two volts required for the boats systems, terminals all looked dry and tight.  Next switching the fish hold lights on and crouching through the five foot square opening in the bulkhead, taking a moment to get my eyes used to the dim yellow glow after the brightly lit engine room.  Main thing in here is to check the cargo lashed along each side on top of the net, nothing moving here, then lift the lid over the shaft alley over the sump where the pumps drained the bilges to make sure nothing had fowled up down there.  The boat had an alarm wired to a float switch in the sump so that if water got too high the horn went off on deck, audible everywhere in the boat, but a guy likes to have a look several times a day anyway just to make sure.  Then a quick scramble over the net pile to the smaller opening that led into the after compartment in the boat.  Several feet of dank, dark passage between the massive fuel and fresh water tanks that filled most of this space opened into the small steering gear room, lit with a single steel caged lamp.  Everything looked alright here as well, just a hint of oil around a couple fittings, but nothing appeared as if it were ready to pop loose, which considering that this equipment controlled the movement of the rudder for steering, would not have been a good thing.

     When I got back up into the galley water in the kettle boiled merrily on the range, ready for a fresh pot of coffee.  A quick rinse around the coffee pot, three and a half scoops of fresh grounds then add the hot water, allow it to steep a couple minutes then stir the soaked grounds to the bottom, true delight to the senses.  Then back up to the wheel house, coffee mug steaming to relieve Jon to go below and mug up himself as fortification against the rest of the long dark night watch.  Phil hadn’t stirred in his dark nest, the only light in the room a faint glow from the dial on the front of the single side band radio bolted to the back wall.  The CB radio screwed to the overhead on the far side of the wheel house began squawking with some Alabama Bubba’s voice, carried on reflective layers of ionized particles in the ionosphere skipping the radio waves along over tremendous distances.  Mumbling a cuss word under my breath I reached up and adjusted the squelch a bit higher and lowered the volume, I already knew that part of the country was full of rednecks, didn’t need to hear them crowing into their microphones all night.  These little radio sets, nicknamed the Mickey Mouse, shortened to just the Mouse for their weak transmission range as compared to the more powerful Big Sets, on which Terrible Ted was holding court along the coast earlier, could be useful when a few partner boats happened to be fishing a in a relatively small area.  Talk between skippers, while always guarded, usually coded to avoid sharing too much information with the competition, didn’t attract too much attention when they used the mouse because its circle of effective transmission didn’t extend much further then five or ten miles.  The previous season one of the guys in our trolling group got the notion to extend our communication range a bit and we all purchased some kind of amplifier from some friend of his in the radio business.  Mine worked as it should one time, when I raised a guy fifty miles away, but mostly our voices just blasted out in a haze of garbled static and we quickly discarded the innovation.

     In a few minutes Jon climbed back through the companion way with his chocolate coffee, and we settled into the comforts, such as they were while the old boat continued to growl along under us.  Not confined to standing watch like with old Bjorn, I settled on the padded top stool on the far side of the room, leaning my back against the bulkhead, and Jon put the drop seat down, a hinged platform just fanny sized attached to the wall with a single supporting leg also hinged so that it folded flat against the wall when not in use, but offered a bit of comfort on long watches in wheel houses too narrow to allow for permanent captain’s chairs like we see in the modern slammers the boys use now days.  The compass binnacle lamp cast a faint glow from below on our faces, close enough that both of us could see the degree marks moving to starboard and port under the guidance of the auto pilot, the body of the instrument gimbaled in both directions so that no matter how the boat rolled and tossed under it the plain of the glass top remained at right angles to an imaginary line extending straight down to the core of the earth.

     In the dark of the night, each guy obligated to keep himself and companion awake, is conducive to free and open conversation that often goes beyond the usual galley table banter.  Jon started first now, broaching the topic of my brother and I shuffling around town back in the hippy days of the mid sixties.  “You heard that Dorothy spotted Justin, beard flowing and hair down to here like a rats nest, selling hippy beads on the street corner down at the Public Market.  When she went up to him and called his name, he looked right through her and turned away in disgust.”

     “Yah, we heard that.  Had a good laugh.  Justin never had a long beard or filthy matted hair, didn’t sell beads or anything else on the street either.  At the time this incident happened he was carrying mail up in the CD, nowhere near Pike Place.”

     “The whole family kind of freaked when the rumors came in that you two had gone hippy though, didn’t even go to church anymore.”

     “The church part certainly is true for me, not exactly sure why but from the first Sunday that I moved out of the parents house it never even occurred to me to attend a church service.  Even now, almost ten years later I have a faint feeling of liberation on Sundays.  Once I added up all the time I had spent in church, from birth up to the age of eighteen and a half when you and I flew out to Alaska after high school, and it equaled the total number of times an average person attends Sunday services during their entire life, so I recon my time in those places has been banked and it is ok to go ahead and coast the rest of the way out on the accumulated credits.”

     “I never thought of it that way, guess I have a few credits banked as well.  Aren’t also supposed to get credit for Sundays on the boat when we can’t get back to go with the family.  Those days should count double.”

     “Sure they do; then you certainly will be given extra credit for time spent in the service too, so you shouldn’t have to spend much time in church either to have the same credits at the end of life as some regular working stiff who manages twenty or thirty Sunday’s a year.  Of course the preachers only real interest is money in the collection plate, so they aren’t going to mention these finer points of the theology in the Sunday sermon.”

      A series of seas began slapping the boat from an odd angle about then, pushing the bow fifteen degrees to the northeast with each new twist.  When she settled back into her previous rhythm the auto pilot had decided to go ahead and steer the new course for a while.  After a minute or two Jon slipped down off the drop seat, disengaged the pilot and swung the rudder ten degrees to starboard, watching the constantly moving compass card slowly recover our original course.  Actually the compass card, floating in the spirits enclosed under thick glass in its case remained relatively still while the boat pitched and turned her way through the night.

     “Speaking of church, not long after Dorothy’s incident with the street peddler Justin and Cathy, on the other hand, got involved with what I thought was an odd little store front church somewhere out in the boonies east of town.  Real holly roller place, I went once but it was too far out for my taste, they all stood around for what seemed like hours swaying and chanting, then different ones in the crowd began the tongues thing.  Sounded for all the world like little kids pretending to speak foreign languages, you know make up words with lots of repeated sounds.  I was surprised that no one called bull shit on the whole thing, but somehow when a preacher reads from the bible, takes collection and says a sermon everyone leaves their rational thought process at the door.  Later I wondered if none of them really believed it, each one thinking that they were the only skeptic among others who really have the faith, so no one spoke up.”

“Hard to say.  Our church tradition is death on those holy rollers and I have never seen what they do there.  Mom insists that we come to church with her some times, and it isn’t so bad.  It seems to me that none of the men really believe much of what the preacher says, but the women eat it up without question.

    Jon observed as he stepped over to the wheel and edged her back a bit to the northeast, the pilot settling down a bit too far toward the south southeast after the last correction.  “Feels like the sea is coming up a little don’t it?”

     Reaching around to the large white dial on the barometer attached to the wall behind my head and gently tapping the front, “glass is starting to drop.  Could come up with a blow tomorrow, hope not, all we need is one more good day and we will be on the inside then it can do whatever it wants.”

     Resuming our conversation, I allowed, “Our family tends to have an anti trade union attitude,  probably inherited from Grandfather Pete who ran businesses in which inexpensive labor helped the bottom line, but without the unions workers really get the shit end of the stick.  Now I don’t understand everything my brother thinks, and so much of it is wrapped up in a Sons of the Pioneers fantasy about the old west that it can be tough to pin down exactly what he really believes, but it smacks of an every man for himself philosophy that plays right into the hands of the wealthy elite in this country.”

     “I just want to go fishing and not worry so much about all that stuff.  What can you do about it anyway?”

     “You’re right, nothing.”  Uncertain if I should take the conversation further, after cautioning myself not to get political with the boys in the boat.  Of course there had always been a different kind of relationship with Jon than the others.  Sure we had our fights over the years, but never religious or political arguments.  Not so much from lack of disagreement, but it was a matter of being open to listening to each other without the harsh judgments and protective shells of rigid dogma we usually throw up when someone doesn’t agree eye to eye.

Almost time for one of us to have a check around the boat again, deepest part of the night watch in which a sort of magic bond between brothers, shipmates opens communication even better than strong drink, I went ahead and stepped through another potential mine field of emotion,  “besides,” I started again, “it doesn’t help to argue with people, especially family.  I used to think different, imagining that discussions and disagreement were some kind of peoples philosophy.  Maybe a legacy from my preacher father, in which the desire to bring people to the salvation of my personal opinions, out of the darkness of their deluded notions about politics and economy.  But lately it has begun to dawn on me that I was just coming across as a disagreeable asshole, and life goes on just fine if I keep my mouth shut once in a while.”

     “You are right about that.”  Jon added, clearly drifting through his own private scenario at the same time as he half listened to me talking as much to myself as to him.

     “I better have a look around below, sounds like Phil stirring around back there; time to fire up the loran and see how far we have come.  Tap the glass and see what is happening, will ya?”

     The spell of the small hour watch broke.  Securing the stool back in its place under the front shelf with a bungee, I tapped the glass gently once more but the long slender needle held steady, “hasn’t moved, maybe our luck will hold for another day here,” knocking on the wood shelf combing in front of me as I spoke for good measure.

     About that time Phil lumbered in, repeated my barometer observation, adjusting the fixed needle with the small knob at the center of the glass, the reference by which movement in the barometer indicator needle could be monitored.  Then, reaching a heavy paw overhead he fiddled with the squelch on the VHF radio, making sure we had not adjusted it so quiet that nothing could break through the silence, then made his way below.  Jon followed with the observation that he needed to have a look around the engine room, and check the steering gear again before going off watch.  Alone in the room, I took a long look in the radar, switching through each of the ranges from twenty four miles down to one,  the Barbara Ann, running a mile and a half off our port quarter showed strong blip in a field only broken by random returns from wave tips and the steady line of the distance marker rings circling the center of our little world.  Like the heliocentric universe of the ancients, our radar world centered on the spinning antenna ten feet over our heads, constantly scanning the horizon, giving us a simplified picture of the surroundings.  About the same as our own perception, sensitivity and distance of observations adjusted to receive just enough information to get by, without overloading the system with too much unnecessary static.

Copyright 2012 - Paul Petersen

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