A quitting story in Alaska in 1977

It was when I was about 20 or 21 years old, and I had just finished a season working as a deckhand crab fishing in Crescent City. That was after my first failed attempt to finish college. My parents didn’t have the money to send, me and I didn’t want to borrow money to do it. Stupid. The skipper only needed his usual deckhand for salmon season, so I needed to find another job. He told me his brother had a 55’ boat and needed a deckhand for the upcoming Black Cod long-line season fishing out of Petersburg, Alaska. Even though Petersburg itself is inside waters they would be fishing the open water Fairweather Grounds in the Gulf of Alaska. Also, I found that a 55' boat is considered to be a small boat for the waters we were to be fishing and couldn't have agreed more.

I called him up and he said that he was leaving the day after next, and if I wanted a job be at the boat in Seattle the next evening. Well, being the impetuous youth that I was I got on the next plane to Seattle and found the boat. I don’t remember how. All I remember is working on the boat the next two weeks with 3 other crew while it was tied to the dock while the skipper was at a nearby bar drinking.

Finally we took off up the Inside Passage going up to Petersburg. It was a beautiful trip up and we only had to pull into a cove once because of bad weather. I do remember waking up the next morning anchored so close to the beach that I could have thrown a rock and hit the gravel. Meanwhile there was about 300’ of water under us. We later rowed ashore and dug a bucket of butter clams on the beach, brought them back to the boat and steamed them. As I remember it took about 3 days to run up to Petersburg.

We only stayed in Petersburg long enough to ice up and buy bait and then took off for the fishing grounds. I do remember on the way to the open water we pulled into some little island community (about 4 houses and a dock) that had a hot springs tubs that anyone could use. We did. On the way out we went by Glacier Bay and saw huge pieces of floating ice that had calved off the glaciers.

Finally we arrived at the fishing grounds about 10 miles offshore and it was really rough and sloppy. We were out there rolling around for about 5 days trying to fill the boat. All the while I was praying to God to not let me die as I knew I would. The weather was worse than any I had fished in in Crescent City and I was wondering what I had done in a previous life to deserve this. It was long-line fishing so we laid out 2 mile long strings of baited hooks and let them soak while we rolled around and tried to sleep for 4-5 hours. We then ran the gear, baited it, put it back in the water, processed the fish, and did it all over again. Since I was the new guy I got all the really lousy jobs again and again. I never saw the shore nor had anby sense of direction for those 5 day.s

When we had caught a sufficient load the skipper decided to run back to Petersburg and delivered our catch. It took us about 28 hours of running to get back to port. There were guys at the dock that unloaded so we didn’t have to do that. I got paid about $1,000 cash and walked around town to see what it was like while the skipper and crew went to the bars.

I had decided to quit, so about midnight went back to the boat and packed all my stuff up and had to climb back up about a 30’ ladder because of how low the tide had fallen. I found the Post Office the next morning (I don’t remember where I slept)  and mailed my extra stuff and raingear back to Crescent City. A ferry from the Alaska Ferry System was in port and I remember walking on without a ticket like I owned the joint. I fell asleep on the ferry and woke up in some town about 12 hours south of Petersburg. I walked off the boat and bought a ticket on the next ferry going north to Skagway. I got off at Skagway and hitch-hiked to Fairbanks. It took we about 3 days. Then I bought a train ticket and rode the train to Anchorage. I remember staying in Anchorage visiting a shirt-tail relative of Dad's that was an airline pilot.