Seaworthy (19 page)

No sooner had the shark disappeared than there was another one pulling a leader to the surface, this time swimming under the boat rather than away. I hauled. Archie cut. Then there was another. Next came a shark that would rival Jaws; he was a size that fishermen would call a 747. I took the engine out of gear to give Archie time to deal with shark number three before jumping in to handle jumbo number four. The next half section had a fiendish brute on every hook. When the sharks come “hookety-hook,” the hauling is slowed to a crawl. I had the boat out of gear as we cleared leaders twisted up with ball drops and cut sharks out of tangles they had rolled themselves into. I silently prayed for relief from the blue devils, hoping that each swing around a corner might lead to a different depth or temperature that these particular monsters might find unappealing.

The beeper marking the end of the third section had two sharks wound up tight with it. I backed the boat down to make it easier to haul the mess aboard. We cut a huge snarl out of the main line and tied back in. Any longline fisherman who has encountered blue dogs of this size in this number has an understanding of “shark attack” that does not include missing limbs. It's frustrating, in a vicious-circle kind of way. The slower you go, the more time sharks have to find an empty hook. And the more sharks that find a hook, the slower the going. When I proceeded to the next shark, the boat didn't go in the direction I wanted. The rudder indicator showed hard over to starboard, but the jog stick was to port. “I've lost steering,” I said to Arch as I pulled the engine out of gear.

“Timmmaay!” Arch yelled, a little louder than necessary. “There's no steering!” Timmy hustled up the deck and disappeared toward the engine room. We drifted for a few minutes, waiting for a report from below. As we waited, I remembered a trip early in my career when the broken deck steering could not be repaired. It was back aboard the
Walter Leeman.
I was nineteen years old and learning my way around the deck on my very first haulback when the captain, Alden Leeman, announced that someone would have to steer the boat from the wheelhouse until we were able to retrieve the rest of the gear. I was assigned the job of steering while being screamed at from below. Keeping the boat exactly where the captain wants it to be in relation to the gear in fifty knots of wind on your first trip is a chore. The steering was in no way “power,” and it required a bit of strength to spin the wheel back and forth. I don't recall how long it took me to realize that I could aim the boat toward the next float off the bow rather than zigging and zagging hard over to hard over among shouted orders laced with obscenities from below, but I guess by the end of that very long day I had figured it out. Alden, popularly known as “Screamin' Leeman,” refused to go ashore for repairs. So I spent every haulback in the wheelhouse. I suppose that I had learned at least part of my stubborn persistence on that trip. I now hoped that history wouldn't repeat itself, as I did not look forward to the prospect of sending Arch up to steer from the bridge while I hauled from below.

Timmy appeared back on deck. “The breaker was tripped. We should be okay now,” he said as he joined me in watching the rudder indicator while I moved the jog stick. Things seemed to be in order again. I shrugged. Timmy shrugged and hurried back to his post in the stern, where he was trying to repair sharked-up leaders fast enough to keep pace with the cutting spree that continued at and aft of the hauling station. Leaders from which sharks had simply been cut off needed a new hook crimped onto their ends. Leaders that had done battle and suffered chafed and stretched monofilament were cut to a shorter length to eliminate their weakness. When a leader was determined unrepairable, the hardware was spared and the line was discarded. Hiltz was working as fast as he could, as was Timmy.

Sharks just kept coming, sometimes two and three at once, all in a balled-up mess of leaders, ball drops, and main line. The blue bastards had struck with a vengeance. We lost steering again. Timmy ran below, reset the breaker, and returned. Arch, Machado, and I pulled manageable sharks over the rail, large ones through the door, and cut the biggest of them off at the waterline. We removed and saved hooks when possible. I wished I had more hands as I steered, hauled, pulled, and cut. The novelty of catching sharks had worn thin for the crew. The fascination and intrigue with the mystery and danger disappeared when the deck was cluttered and expensive gear was being destroyed. My inexperienced crew now handled the blue dogs as well as the most weathered I'd ever worked with. Hiltzie kicked a shark out the door with the toe of his rubber boot as he hauled another over the stern. Archie walked through the gauntlet of twisting coils of flesh and fins while snapping jaws tried to sink teeth into anything within reach as casually as he would have passed through a flower garden. The war games and crimes against sharks had not yet begun. But I knew they would.

Crews from the past had made contests of pounding sharks with ice mallets, like trying to ring the bell at the county fair, in attempts to stun the dogs long enough to remove hooks. At times of poor fishing and heavy sharking, mallets were swung and brought down out of frustration, or even for entertainment value. I remembered well the torture rack, the drawing and quartering, and the igniting with lighter fluid and running up the flagpole. I remembered embarrassingly fondly the games of shark-nose baseball. Maiming, torturing, and killing sharks out of frustration and some weird sense of retaliation or revenge were bound to occur. Perhaps not today, but sometime. Call it maturity, or a different philosophy, or appreciation for life in general—my attitude about living things had changed. Killing fish was okay, though. Doing so was to benefit an increasingly obese and heart-sick population by supplying a healthy and sustainable food source. When the torture of blue sharks began—and I knew it would—I would nip it in the bud. I wouldn't have to pin the ban against senseless killing on a newfound love of all of God's creatures—nobody would buy that. I could simply use personal safety as the means to stop it. I had witnessed many a man suffer a nasty yet nonlethal shark bite, often in the course of shark warfare. Sometimes the shark wins.

We lost steering again. This time Timmy was longer in the engine room. “I'm trying another circuit breaker. Maybe the other one is going bad,” he said. “We should be okay now.” Timmy's dark bangs slashed across his forehead at a steep angle, giving him an air of consternation that I found misleading. What I knew of Tim Palmer was that he was solid, smart, and reliable. I added “strong” to his list of attributes as he effortlessly jerked the biggest shark of the day from the water and onto the deck while he explained his opinion of the steering problem. “The three-phase motor might be failing. That would cause the breaker to trip. I don't think we have a spare motor. I'll search when we finish hauling.”

I hoped that the steering malfunction was something less severe than a bad hydraulic motor or pump. A replacement was a very expensive and unlikely item to have on board, seeing as the
Seahawk
's supplies didn't even meet our more basic needs. I eventually noticed that I lost steering whenever the rudder was hard over to either side and the engine was in reverse. Perhaps I could try using less rudder. Maybe I was oversteering. I would certainly need full rudder in poor weather conditions. But if I anticipated more, I could probably stay on the gear with less rudder angle well enough to get the rest of the gear aboard. I kept this in mind, and the rudder functioned properly through the next barrage of blue sharks. When the entire deck was filled with writhing pests waiting to be freed from their monofilament lashings and pushed back overboard, Hiltz asked, “Is this normal?”

“No. We don't normally lose steering every time I back the boat down,” I answered somewhat sarcastically. “It's gone again. Timmmaay!” And this time the rudder-angle indicator pointed at a very shallow fifteen degrees starboard. I was now measuring progress by the number of sharks we boarded, dehooked, and released between steering failures. My arms were weary, and my hands were sore from hauling on the heavy leaders. This was getting old. I had come crashing down from the initial emotional high to good old reliable determination. We would struggle. But we would get the gear aboard and head for greener pastures.

When the guys were all too busy behind me to cut off a shark from a leader I had pulled, I wrapped the leader around my waist to free my hands, towing the shark from my midsection while I continued to haul. At one point I had three sharks in tow, the leaders cinched around my waist like a corset. This gave my wrists some relief, as I realized they did indeed ache. Arthritis? A little pain was the least of my problems. We would have to figure out the steering situation. But for now I just wanted to get the gear out of the shark-infested water and head east to fish among the fleet. The guys could repair and replace all the sharked-up leaders while we steamed tomorrow. Timmy and Archie could work on the steering problem and have that solved before we set out again. I had it all figured out. We landed very few swordfish along the miserable way. I had tallied half a dozen so far. Fairly slow fishing. The fish were all markers, or over a hundred pounds each. A nice run—just not enough of them to fight the blue dogs for. Yet in spite of the sharks and steering, I was happy doing my thing. I would be happier when my thing included more fish and fewer sharks. But that would come in time.

We were just beyond two-thirds of the way through the gear. The sharks were as thick as ever. The angle of the sun indicated that we were well into the afternoon. The men were laughing. I turned to hear the joke. Timmy leaned with both hands on the rail and stared into the water. He broke into his best Jacques Cousteau imitation: “The lonesome blue shark is a solitary predator. They do not swim in schools. . . .” Our deck was littered with sharks. Arch tossed one over the rail while I slung the next one aboard, perpetuating the continuous loop of teeth and fins. On and on Timmy went about blue sharks and how they always travel as singletons. Timmy had sharks surrounding his feet. He bent and started flinging them overboard by their tails, all the while going on about the “antisocial creatures that are never seen in numbers.” Soon the rest of the crew were feigning French accents and lecturing on blue sharks' monastic habits.

Fortunately, when things are incredibly bad at sea, humor reigns. I was thankful and relieved to hear the men joking around. I'm not a pouter or a whiner, and I can't appreciate grown men who are either. The men would never hear me lamenting tired legs, sore hands, strained back muscles, or aching wrists, although I was feeling all of the above. Fortunately, it appeared I had a crew full of class clowns. They kept working and laughing. These men seemed not to possess the hostile gene that would have driven others to some form of shark hockey by now. There's nothing worse than sour attitudes and long faces. If the guys could enjoy a sharking of this magnitude, they'd surely be able to endure anything this trip could dish out. I had experienced much worse, countless times. The worst of all was when my relentless positivity failed to infiltrate a rotten crew. This hadn't happened often, as more than likely the crew will follow the captain's lead in physical and emotional ways. Good men will always keep up with their captain. And my present company were really proving themselves as we waded through the never-ending parade of sharks. At least the weather was cooperating. And we were making steady progress. Machado had actually broken out in song. By now I'd forgiven his late start. Bucking up in rough going was far more important than being an early bird.

We were picking our way through the sharks and looking forward to seeing the end buoy when a yellow and green airplane buzzed us. I recognized the familiar colors and markings as the Canadian fisheries patrol. I waved and continued to haul. The plane passed over us again. When it came by the third time, I thought I had better go up to the bridge and listen to the VHF radio. Someone might be in trouble and in need of assistance. Planes are good because they can cover a lot of area quickly, but they can't do much to help a boat in distress. I knocked the
Seahawk
out of gear, removed my gloves, giving them a twist to wring the water out of them, and hustled to the bridge. If I'd been aboard the
Hannah Boden,
I would have shed my oil pants before entering the wheelhouse. I hesitated for a second at the threshold of the back door. The plane was over us again.

Leaning in, I could see the electronics. I was immediately horrified by what I saw. The plotter showed the blinking boat symbol that represents the
Seahawk
on the wrong side of the Canadian fisheries line. I took two steps and stood directly in front of the computer monitor, staring in disbelief. I moved the cursor to the blinking boat as my stomach tied itself into a knot. We were nearly five miles into Canadian waters. I tried to force my blood pressure down by telling myself to remain calm—it couldn't be as bad as I thought—but I could actually feel the pounding in my neck. In all of my years of fishing experience, this was new and forbidden territory. I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes briefly. When I opened my eyes, nothing had changed. I was in deep trouble.