Fishing Vessel Odyssey

Side by side in the old Ford F150, past the badlands of South Dakota and mustard fields of Alberta, we finally reached the Alaskan island of Ketchikan. Dave and I followed an abandoned logging road into a high forest, and found a perfect spot to set up camp beside the truck. Fat orange slugs slimed up our boots and the air was dense with a fog that never lifted. The scenery was stunning – sharp mountains rushing down to a restless sea – but rarely visible through the slurry of water that hung in the sky.

“It’s time to hit the docks,” I declared.  

 It was late June, the season for pinks and silvers was starting, and the captains needed crew. I had researched all this ahead of time back at our college near Philadelphia. We were poised to enter senior year, and life was wide open, gaping, beckoning. It was my dream to work a season on a salmon fishing boat and I’d convinced my boyfriend to come along. 

“You don’t want to go for some hikes first?” he said.  

We were still in our sleeping bags, which we’d zipped together so we could snuggle all night. A classic pair of opposites – I was the nerdy Boston Jew and Dave the self-taught mechanic raised on an Indiana tobacco farm. We’d been dating for a year, been friends for three, and were endlessly curious about each other’s bodies, minds, pasts.  

“No.” I said firmly. “I don’t want to miss our chance.” 

I extracted myself from the tent and stretched my arms up to the dewy branches. Dave followed me out after a moment and I handed him his toothbrush, then latched the gear bin. 

Half an hour later down on the docks, a goldmine of boats bobbed hopefully in their slips. My eyes thrilled over the scene – men in orange rainproof overalls called Grundens shaking nets and coiling seaweed-coated line. Other men holding cigarettes in one hand and paint brushes in the other. Seagulls swooned and the harbor water lapped playfully on the pilings. I stood beside Dave at the top of the gangway, smelling diesel mixed with brine, and squeezed his hand. The scene was like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book; every boat held irresistible promise. I felt intoxicated, immortal, and wanted to live them all. 

I turned to take in Dave’s face, which appeared incongruously grim.  

“What’s the matter, babe?” 

“Indiana is a landlocked state,” he replied, glancing out at the long horizon of ocean. “The only boat I’ve ever been on besides the ferry over here is Barry’s rowboat and we barely made it off the banks of the Ohio River. I don’t think I’m a boat person after all.” 

“Are you kidding me? You’re figuring this out now?!” 

I searched Dave’s slender face, his shock of white blonde hair that fell in the center of his forehead, that he swiped back when he got nervous like this.  

“But these boats have engines, Dave. You love engines.” 

My body leaned toward the sea, and all I wanted was to be set adrift. I was like the figurehead on a clipper ship, face to the waves. It didn’t occur to me to empathize with Dave at that moment, or even to take his hesitation seriously. On some level I knew he would go along with me no matter how uncomfortable he felt. That was the way our relationship worked – I had the ideas, and Dave helped make them happen. This didn’t feel wrong to me. It felt like we each had our role to play and we needed each other snugly. I told him I loved him, and coaxed him along. Together we walked down the ramp to the boats. 

At least Dave was wearing the right clothes – Carhartts and a t-shirt. I was not. I did not own work clothes because I had never done manual labor aside from spraying my parents’ rose garden. So far in life my resume consisted of babysitter, writing tutor, and receptionist at my father’s psychiatry office. I wore khaki shorts and a tank top with spaghetti straps, and my body felt soft underneath.  

We approached fisherman after fisherman.  

“Hi there! We’re looking for work as crew; could you use any extra hands?” 

Nobody seemed glad to talk to us. They had all hired their nephews and neighbors already.  

“Where you from?” they wanted to know.  

“Who sent you down here?” 

“You know Larry? No? Never mind.” 

It’s because I don’t look believable, I thought. I look weaker than I am. Maybe Dave should take the lead; he speaks their language more. But if anything, I sensed that Dave was relieved by the rejection. 

At the end of the morning, we got lucky. Bruce Wallace, a burly man in his fifties with a red Santa nose, stepped off his vessel the Odyssey heading for lunch and got a twinkle in his eye when he heard our story.  

“I can only take one of you,” he told us, “but I’ve got a friend who’ll probably take the other of you. I need a cook.” 

He looked at me. The girl. 

I didn’t think we’d get another offer. I wanted this to happen so badly. 

“Yes,” I said.  

I looked at Dave. He nodded. 

 “Don’t get relegated to the kitchen,” my friend wrote back in an email that I read in the town library later that week before we left for the fishing grounds at Kendrick Bay. I was supposed to be shopping on a budget for the boat’s groceries for the month. The crew of five required four square meals in twenty-four hours, with red meat always on the menu. We sometimes would be fishing around the clock, so coffee had to be a steady drip. I had no clue how to make roast beef, or even operate a coffee maker. I was frantically copying recipes from cookbooks, and calling my mom from a payphone.  

“Ok, honey, so you tie the string around the roast four to five times, then oil it and season it.”  

“I don’t get it, Mom. Do I tie knots in the string? When do I cut the string off?” 

She never called me “honey” at home. She sounded so far away.  

“And what kind of string do I use? Just like normal string?” 

“I use butcher’s string, honey.” 

“Mom. I doubt they sell butcher’s string at the market in Ketchikan.” 

I felt lost. Dave had in fact been hired on the spot by Bruce’s buddy Phil. We should have been on a boat together. This wasn’t the plan, and I struggled to find a way to feel good about how it turned out. I missed Dave and felt less brave without him. Plus he was a better cook than I was by far. 

Our captains were an odd pair – the jocular Bruce was offset by a sullen quality in Phil that I didn’t quite understand or trust. Phil made Dave a deckhand on the Lone Wolf and I burned with the gender injustice. He got to operate the enormous crane that lowered the purse seine net into the water, then lifted it back up full of fish. It is called a purse because it’s shaped like a sack with a drawstring closure. The trick is to cast the huge heavy net far enough behind the fish so they don’t spook, but near enough to close in on them and cinch the net tight around them. I had also read about this on my computer in my dorm room, and it was exhilarating to see it in action. 

We saw each other every couple of days when Bruce and Phil rafted up their boats to lend a tool, get a radio battery, or appraise the forecast. I would see the looming maroon hulk of the Lone Wolf blast through a shroud of fog and come into a spot of sunlight. It was almost unbelievable to see humble old Dave transported to the stern of a fifty-eight foot fishing vessel, grinning steadily from below the brim of a rain hat.  

What I couldn’t tell was if the grin was real. Without any privacy to talk, without even being able to touch each other, I had to take on faith that Dave was faring okay at sea. If anything, seeing him respond to an order from Phil and step away from the edge of the deck where he could holler to me deepened my own resolve to immerse myself in learning to cook for the Odyssey crew. Occasionally we came in contact with other boats as well but I never saw another woman out there. I hadn’t realized how disorienting this would be. I felt I had much to prove, although whether I was proving it to the crew, to Dave, or to myself I wasn’t sure. 

The mates on board consisted of three friends in their late twenties from Bellingham, Washington who had fished together before but never for Bruce. First mate was Marty. He was tall, serious, and married, and had an intimidating smile, like a shark. He slept with a gun, “to be on the safe side.” This did not feel safe to me at all and it was not until several nights had passed by without incident that I began to relax. Then came the day Marty spied an orca off the starboard side and ran to get his gun to fire at it.  

“How could you do such a thing?” I cried. 

“How could you not?” he gleamed. “What a shot that would be!” 

“But it’s illegal. And cruel!” 

“And fun!” he replied. 

Second mate was Bill. Bill was heavyset, wide-eyed, and a willing worker. He talked to me the most, constantly bewildered about how I got there.  

“What’s a girl like you doing on a salmon fishing boat?” He kept shaking his head. “What’s that you’re always writing in, are you writing a book?” 

“It’s my journal,” I told him.  

“A journal? You mean like a diary?” 

I nodded, just as confused as he was about his confusion.  

“What, are you taking notes for a movie or something? Are you a reporter?” He wasn’t aggressive in his suspicion, and he wasn’t teasing me either. We honestly peered at each other from different worlds. 

“No,” I tried to explain. “It’s just for myself.” 

The one I related to best was Nate, the deckhand. Right away he confessed he was a recovering drunk and had lost his girlfriend because of it. He came fishing to get over her, but it didn’t seem to be working. Daily he would ask me for advice about girls, about how to win her back. I didn’t think I had any special insight to the mind of this ex based solely on being female, but I appreciated that he listened to what I said. 

“Maybe just explain how you’re feeling,” I ventured. “Let her know how hard you’re trying.” 

Bruce remained a good-natured captain and, in his free moments, entertained my curiosity about navigation, fishing regulations, and the life cycles of salmon. Gradually, he led me up from the galley and introduced me to the vessel’s machinery.  

*** 

By week three I had not only perfected the coffee maker but I had successfully convinced the crew to add salmon to their menu in addition to pork and beef. I slathered teriyaki sauce on salmon, mayonnaise and dried dill on salmon, lemon and olive oil on salmon, and flaked it into fried rice for breakfast. After all, we were catching so many of the majestic fish, it only seemed appropriate to consume a few. Salmon slapped down on the deck in regular salty hailstorms every time we pulled the seine net up through the tall crane, along with the purple jellyfish whose sting was merciless. After the first sting swelled my left eye closed for over a day, I began to borrow Bruce’s goggles. 

In my brown waterproof boots, locally called Ketchikan tennis shoes, I learned to kick the salmon quickly into their icy hold before they piled up too high and slid off the deck back into the sea. But not so hard a kick that they would lose a fin or start to bleed. I was good at it and fast, and I was also adept at the knot Bruce taught me to repair the net when it tore. I could visualize how many diamonds of twine needed to be recreated to fill the hole and keep the netting even.  

Meals got tougher to plan as we approached the end of the month and our groceries dwindled. I was looking forward to the trip to land to resupply. We hadn’t seen the Lone Wolf for over a week and though the time had gone fast, I was longing to see Dave. I was hoping they’d be at anchor and I could pick him up in the dinghy and we could take a walk together on the trail leading out from town. I couldn’t wait to exchange descriptions of how things worked on our boats – the crew dynamics, the sleeping arrangements, the meals, the process of hauling in a bonanza of salmon.  

It was a Friday when we reached the cannery and unloaded our cache of fish. Bruce was going home to see his wife and teenage kids, and the crew had the weekend free to replenish our energy for the next month at sea. I wandered down the boardwalk to the library. I wanted to check my email and send a blitz of triumphant emails back detailing my adventure. I was basking in the unusually clear, vibrant day on the island, gazing up at the glaciers decorating the necks of the mountains like lace collars. So I was completely taken aback to recognize Dave’s voice beside me on the street, from behind a wad of tourists.  

“Yes, that plant is called Bear’s Toilet Paper,” I heard him say in a false but still familiar way. “Grizzlies like to use it because it’s flat and tough.” 

Several kid voices at the front of the crowd piped up together and I couldn’t hear their questions. But I had locked eyes with Dave. He gave me his sheepish smile and raised a finger for a sign to wait a minute. Then he glanced up the road I’d just walked along to the cannery, and checked his watch. 

“Folks,” he nearly shouted. “My colleague will be meeting you in five minutes under the flag outside the cannery for that portion of the tour. Feel free to use this time to have a snack, use the public restrooms….”  

Then he turned his back on the group and galloped over to where I was leaning against a cedar tree. Our hug was like a free fall. Back to safety, back to being known. 

“You’re here!” he said finally, breathless. “I watched for the Odyssey every day.” 

“What do you mean? How long have you been on land?” 

“I quit fishing, babe. I’m so sorry. I was seasick and miserable. Turns out Phil was legally blind, and had no idea what was coming, fish or weather or anything. So many parts of the boat were broken, and I never had time to fix them, and nobody wanted to hear it. I quit right after I saw you the last time. I’m so sorry.” 

It didn’t make sense, this ending to the story. We had made it all the way! We were hardcore and resilient! I had put so much pressure on myself to adjust to life on the boat. I had pushed past loneliness, exhaustion, all the fears and discomforts of being a woman on a boat with four men. I had finally hit my stride – and Dave had been living in town all these days that I had been hustling in the galley, bracing pots against the lurch of swells?  

“Oh.” I said. “Oh no. That sounds awful.”  

My words sounded like they were being translated from a foreign language. I felt let down, confused. Had my spirit of adventure been simply trying to fulfill an expectation I held for us as a couple? Was I still free, attached to someone who wanted something different? 

“So…now what? Were you leading a tour group or something?” I tried to sound normal. I looked at Dave’s calloused hands, the way his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. His lanky shape was so familiar to me, so worn by love, it felt almost used up. 

“You wouldn’t believe it but the woman who picked me up as I was hitchhiking back to where we left the truck offered me a job! She runs this new agency called Ketchikan Adventure Vue. I know, it’s cheesy. But she’s really nice. Her name is Valerie.” 

“Babe. Did she tell you to say that lame thing about the Grizzly Bear Toilet Paper?”  

“Um, yeah? It pays decent though, and some people hand me ridiculous tips. I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait to see you. But now you’re here!”  

He leaned in for another hug, but our arms both went up instead of locking together and we bumbled it. But Dave rushed on: 

“You’re here now and I love you and I’m sorry and now we can go home.” 

*** 

The memory of quitting is what haunts me most. When I called my mom from that same payphone, I remember her concern. 

“You’re sure you want to quit, honey? You don’t have to quit just because Dave did.” 

“I already decided, Mom. We’re leaving.” 

“I just want you to know you have the choice.” 

“You already said that. I heard you.” 

Her hesitation bothered me because it spoke to my pride, my feminism, and it was all the more powerful because she had worried so much about me going out there in the first place. The way I justified it to myself was by saying that if Dave’s and my positions were reversed, I would want him to come home with me. Those were the gender roles I was resisting – the timid girl tamps down the boy’s galivanting spirit – but I felt chastened for pushing too far and disregarding Dave’s plight. And I told myself that even if I was having qualms about it, I was being a strong partner and doing the right thing for my relationship. 

The hard part to understand, then, is how our relationship buckled under the weight of that decision and afterwards was never quite the same. We climbed in the old Ford and rolled home through different states than we’d visited on our way out, stopping in Montana to visit a friend of ours. When we arrived in Indiana, I said my parents wanted to see me a bit before the fall semester started up, and saying goodbye to him wasn’t all that hard.  

I went back to the Odyssey right away after I’d found Dave that Friday afternoon leading tours, and Bruce hadn’t left the boat yet. I told him in a roundabout way what happened with Dave, leaving out the details about Phil. Bruce gave me a long look straight in my eyes while he listened. Then he let me go. 

“Ye-ahp. I had a feeling things were going to turn out that way. I know I took a chance on you.”  

The guilt that lodged in my stomach as he said that never fully went away. I knew he’d be hard pressed to replace his cook so late in the game. I imagined Bill making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone at lunch. I offered to at least restock the groceries, but he tossed his head and said his wife would see to it.  

“Get going on home. I’ll mail your check when we settle up,” he said. “You’ve got a life to get back to, I imagine.”