Bering Sea Strong by Laura Hartema

Author:Laura Hartema
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510731523
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

11

DANGER

WHEN the weather gets rough, a choice has to be made: keep fishing in an attempt to make more money; find shelter leeward of an island and wait it out; or, in this case, pull the gear and haul our butts right through the storm. We aimed for new fishing grounds in the eastern Bering Sea. It was early May; temperatures hovered around thirty degrees Fahrenheit. Steam days, or travel days, were usually free days for me, allowing me to catch up on my data, sleep, journaling, or reading. However, on this day the winds were blowing a roaring fifty knots (near sixty mph), and the seas broke at a solid twenty-five feet. We slogged through snow falling like fist-sized wads of wet tissue. The amount of snow and polar freeze should taper off by the end of the month, but for now the weather was predicted to get worse before it got better.

I felt conflicted about being in the wheelhouse in this kind of weather. Standing eye-level with two-story walls of waves, I wondered if they’d blow out the wheelhouse windows. My muscles tensed as I awaited each crash over us. There, from deep inside the pulsing heart of the wave, I begged God to lift up our bow, to pop us up again and again. I fearfully anticipated the smack of another, maybe a rogue wave, the big daddy of all that hits unexpectedly between the regular combers. We rode out the aftershock of this earthquake of a storm. I wanted to be on the bridge to read the captain’s face and be comforted by his sea sense, but I didn’t want him to see the fear in mine.

Every external surface on the windward side of the boat—the gear, windows, hydraulics, buoys, and railings—were covered with icicles hanging like stalactites. The crew paired up for safety and took one-hour shifts on deck with mallets and baseball bats to break up the frozen layers. When the ice got too thick on one side, the captain angled the ship to let ice build on the other side, like ballast, to keep the boat balanced. We had all heard the nightmares of vessels that “turtled”—too heavy on one side so they flipped over and, like a turtle, were unable to right themselves—in storms like these. We plowed into the waves, but with each turn we battled the deep troughs with a lopsided swing. Mother Nature was giving us a beating. This was no day of rest.

By evening the weather had worsened. “Snacky Cakes,” Captain Gabe stated, “You’re gonna have to hang on. Winds are gnarly, upwards of sixty-five knots. The waves are increasing. Probably over thirty-five feet high now, some of the largest out here. Welcome to hell.”

I’d already seen waves of breathtaking beauty and docile as a summer breeze, but this night we met the beast of nature. Hurricane-force winds. A storm rarely experienced on land. Bad weather seemed more severe at night, but this evening it felt evil, as if ghastly spirits were whirling around, penetrating the air.

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