SMOKING AND LACING
It’s early June and I’m going back to Boat Land. I’m going back up to Alaska for the 25th year in a row. Not to say I have not exactly been living, breathing, eating Nautical for the last 6 weeks in Interbay’s Fisherman's Terminal. Myself and my fellow crew mates had been engaged in Preseason: the infallible purgatory of not-quite-employed, unemployment.
I quit my cafe job in Fremont to work for free on preparing the boat and the net 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., five days a week. Standing, baking in the net lanes day in day out, on the hot soft asphalt, crews of other boats working next to us, all moving up and down, lacing, lacing, seizing, mending, filling needles, smoking, lacing.
We were all broke. We all were broke through May, through June, through most of July. We were given draws in the form of $100 checks every other week or so starting mid-July. Money received as we edged closer to paying off food, fuel, expenses. Inching into the black.
If I would have known how the summer would go I would have accepted money only to pay for my phone bill, my credit card payments. I would have bought nothing, spent nothing- eaten rice on the boat every night. Saved every cent to see that final check in September tick up.
The five of us deckhands prepared the boat: painting and cleaning, organizing and reorganizing. We stripped down the net and stood, all gathered around a hand drawn diagram for reassembly gifted from a more senior captain on the optimal hanging of a net, half of us actually seeing meaning or a path forward in the drawing. Thousands and thousands of dollars spent on exhausted hardware, on line, needles, twine, and an entire back deck worth of Costco goods. For five weeks we prepared.
The early summer heat in Seattle is always so distinct, the smells so fresh, ripe and bright, especially when reflected on months later in the cold, in the mists, in the rolling seas, in the torrential rainfall. When we're in Southeast Alaska, deep in the season.
On June 11th, five of us departed, our personal lives postponed and/or condensed into an area the size of a coffin, contained to the timbers of the boat. Over the next three months one of us would fly home for a death, one of us for another more lucrative fishery, one of us for promising work in the Lower 48.
