She rides like a duck

waiting to unload Quillayute River '70s

Back yard built in the thirties, Shirley B raised three young families with loads of bright slab sided king salmon, carried to town in her deep round belly.   She was small.  Living and working in her felt a lot like wearing an old set of coveralls.  Enough room to move around, without any wasted space.


Along with Rube Goldberg deck machinery and flat head gas engines, boats of her generation all came with stories.

The time the rudder fell off thirty miles northwest of the cape.  With a years wages for each man iced in the hold they had to be in town by tomorrow night or the fish would go to the feed plant worthless.  Unshipped a trolling pole, lashed it to the stern and steered her up the straights like a Viking long ship. 

Then there is the one about how she "rides like a duck."

By the early forties the boys who built Shirley got themselves bigger boats, sold the her to brother Carl who brought in his share of salmon over the years.

When a southeast gale blows up the coast, the fleet scoots into Neah Bay for a day or two waiting for the ocean to lay down.  With the glass on the rise again, bigger boats edge their way back out toward the grounds.  Bulldozing their way through the still rough sea, they will be in position and ready to set the gear the next morning when the ocean has laid down enough for a guy to start fishing again. 

Often the boys would take a look outside and call  Carl on the radio, suggesting he lay in for another day, the ocean still too rough for smaller boats.  But he never listened.  Pretty soon they saw him bobbing out to meet them, the little Shirley  'riding like a duck'.

First time I heard the story my mind saw ducks nibbling along the edges of Lake Union. Not so much this kind of duck.  The boys were talking about the Puffin, in whose territory we plied our trade.

One of the joys of being at sea in those boats is watching Puffins.  Light and buoyant, they paddle around effortlessly in waves large and small,  the axes of their bodies always parallel with the sea surface.  Good for the ducks, not so much my stomach.

The waves out there are huge and scary.  Riding like the Pufins means rolling forty five, fifty degrees to port, then a sudden swing sixty degrees to starboard while she pitches her bow into the air, throwing the seawater off her foredeck like a dog shaking herself after a swim.

Carl may not have minded the ride.  In fact, he kept the windows open and let the spray come on in.  When he saw that I had a radio and LORAN set in the wheel house, wondered how I kept them dry in a rough sea.

Crouched behind those tiny oak framed windows, white knuckles on the spokes of her home crafted wheel, crashing through a rough sea like that, frankly scared the shit out me.  I always lay in the extra day, and them some.  

Photo credit, Richard Crow