Pyx

PYX sliding up the coast on a southeaster

"I'd fish Fairweather Grounds in that boat."  A friend and I were walking the docks at fisherman's terminal in Seattle daydreaming about the fish biz.  Hand scrawled For Sale signs, and old boats with older owners attracted our attention.  PYX had been nosed into the pier at the same slip for as many years as we could remember, maybe the old man who lived in her will be ready to sell out to a younger guy some time soon.


We used to see him shuffling along dock six, ancient eyes under crumpled hat, rusted American Flyer wagon in tow. I don't recall ever hearing him speak. Seemed a shame to see what I considered at the time to be the perfect salmon troller falling apart at the dock, unkempt year after year.

If I ever knew the details of how it happened, I have forgotten.  One spring Bob showed up in La Push running the PYX.  A neighbor of another boat owner, Bob had been around the fleet, mostly working with Eric on the North Star for most of the time I was on the coast. He had befriended the guy and helped with his move to more appropriate housing when he got too old to crawl over the boats bow up onto the dock.  It felt good to see the boat back to work.    

Sometime in July that summer Bob was fishing the PYX down off Destruction Island with some of the other gang when a south east storm blew in over night.  I believe the photo of PIX rolling off the back side of a sea may have been snapped that morning.  Still photography tends to flatten the size of the ocean waves.  I was out to the northwest of town that day, and it was scary rough for our little boats.

We all yacked a lot on the radios, especially on a stormy day when everyone is sitting in the house running the boat.  Helps with anxiety to be chatting away with friends, while the boat jumps and dives along at a snails pace toward shelter.

Could be confusing that day with another and someone else, but I'm sure I recall bob coming on the air casually mentioning that the wind had just blown the smoke stack for the galley stove over and he had to scramble to keep it from going overboard.

When the mast splintered, dropping both poles and miles of wire rigging into the water all around the boat, things must have gotten frantic on little PYX. No time for radio commentary. I heard the story later.

PIX sans mast and polls in La Push next daq

Memory often runs thin when a guy tries to write stories like this.  It is not unknown for a story teller to fictionalize to keep the story rolling at times like this.  In this case I'll just say that getting that boat back into the harbor was not easy, but he made it in.

The photo shows the boat being eased into a work area in La Push the next day.

Without missing a beat Bob set to work in a flurry of optimistic energetic production the like of which I have never seen before or sence. While the rest of us enjoyed a couple days partying on the beach, he fashioned a new mast from a spar he found in town, and had the rigging standing, poles in place ready for the next trip offshore.  Probably beat me out to the grounds.

I happened to be on Eric's boat when Bob bounced in announcing that the new mast was ready to be installed.  Saying that it is nautical tradition to place a silver dollar under the base of a new mast for luck.  He held a Susan B Anthony dollar out for our inspection.  Closest he could come to the real thing on short notice.

Not long after that.  Certainly not long at all in the context of nearly forty years passed, Bob lost his life in a tragic boating accident.  It wasn't the PIX with her counterfeit charm, but I've never been able to look at a Susan B Anthony without seeing that coin between Bob's rough thumb and forefinger, catching a glint of sunlight on its edge.

These days I am skeptical to a fault, don't believe a damned thing.  Yet there are parts of my mind that kind of feels the willies when I handle one of those coins.

Another fellow from the islands got PYX after that.  Remember fishing out of Neah Bay at the same time, used to raft up together of an evening, share dinner and visit. Remember sitting in the neat little galley under her foredeck, thinking about the old fellow who spent his reclining years looking up at the Ballard bridge through that skylight.  Cooked his meals on that same black stove.  Dreamed of the life he wished he had lived from that narrow bunk. 

Heard that she ended her days broken on rocks in Cowletz bay on Waldron.   Sad to see the end but old wood hulls get to a point where they are beyond repair. She lived a ling and productive life, which is as much as any of us can ask.