Tucker “What’s wrong dude, you don’t like it?”
Drew “No. Just worried about getting seasick.”
Tucker “You won’t get seasick.”
Bunny “Me too. I’m not going to eat.”
Tucker “Oh my God, what pussies. Bunny, you better not be a pukey mess and embarrass me!”
We left King Cove at 5pm, and expected to get into Dutch Harbor at about 5pm the next day. It got dark fast and we sat around and watched movies and hung out for a while. Maybe an hour into the trip, we hit some choppy seas. Nothing horrible; like five-foot seas. But it was very noticeable to me, and the room was moving a lot.
On the show, the fishermen are always loud and obnoxious and hard-living. And that characterization is true. But they are also understated in how they deal with people they don’t know. They don’t tell you what to do, because they aren’t that type of men. That’s why they’re fishermen—because they don’t like taking orders from people. But they will tell you what you should be doing, even though it’s in subtle, understated terms. As the seas rose, Bunny didn’t feel well. And I wasn’t feeling the best either.
Neal “Maybe you guys should lie down.”
Scottie “Lying down helps you get over seasickness.”
Tucker “Nah, I’ll be fine. How bad can it be?”
Nils and Bunny took their advice and lay down. I didn’t, because clearly I know more about the sea than people who have fished their whole lives.
As time went on, I got worse and worse. But I tried to ignore it. Some people learn by watching others. Some learn by making mistakes. I learn by getting my ass handed to me. Feeling really sick, I decided I needed fresh air, so I went out on deck.
At 7pm, the dark, empty deck of a crab boat is a strange place. It’s pitch black and there’s no land, no life, nothing whatsoever. It’s complete, barren, unforgiving void. It’s just plain disturbing. The water frothing beneath the sides of the boat is literally black. Dying that way—by falling in and freezing—must be horrific.
I didn’t have much time to ponder this, because almost as soon as I got out there, I realized I had to puke. I went to the rail, and booted all over the side. As I recovered from my vomiting, I was still leaning on the rail. The boat hit a wave, nothing big, but big enough that I lurched a little, and found myself having to hang on to not fall over. Then I realized something:
I am leaning over the side of a crab boat that is moving pretty quickly through the Bering Sea. It’s completely pitch black out. The water is 34 degrees. I am alone out on this deck.
Umm … does anyone even KNOW I’m out here?
Even though I was no longer in any immediate danger, I threw myself back from the rail like it was a pissed-off rattlesnake, then scrambled inside the cabin, and upstairs to the wheelhouse. Andy was at the helm, and Drew was talking to him. Apparently, I did not look good.
Drew “Jesus.”
Andy “You OK man?”
Tucker “No. I just puked.”
Drew “I didn’t hear anything.”
Tucker “I was out on deck. I was there for about 15 seconds before I realized that maybe I shouldn’t be out there by myself. If I fell overboard, you’d never know, would you?”
Andy “You wouldn’t believe how long it takes greenhorns to figure that one out. If you fell off the deck without us knowing, you might as well just swim to the bottom so you can die faster because there’s no way in hell we’d know you were gone in the first place.”
I had little time to think about how close I came to potentially dying, because I had to puke again.
Tucker “Andy do you have a garbage can over there or something?”
Andy “Just open the window and hurl right out.”
I sat in the other captain’s chair, opened the window, and let loose a stream of vomit like I hadn’t done in years. This was an old-school, body-getting-revenge-for-too-much-drinking type of vomit. I am not sure how long I held my head out the window, or how much I puked, but it felt like forever. I looked at the clock, wondering how much longer we had left on the trip. Judging by how much pain I’d been in, it had to be like 2am or something.
It was 8pm. Only three hours into the 24-hour trip. FUCK.
At some point, Neal replaced Andy on wheel watch. Drew was up and as chipper as could be, talking and hanging out. Drew is a great guy, but goddamnit if I didn’t want to punch him right in his smiling fucking face. There is nothing worse than being vomitously ill and having to be around someone who is happy.
Drew “How’s it going?”
Tucker “Wonderful. Have you been sick yet?”
Drew “Not yet. I feel fine. I’m surprised as hell too, I figured I’d be death on wheels the entire way.”
I promptly popped the window open, stuck my head out and puked again.
Neal “Tucker’s barkin’ at the seals.”
Drew “Pretty sure he’s scared em all off.”
Tucker “Oh shit. I puked right on the Time Bandit logo.”
I hadn’t noticed it before, but I had hit the skull and crossbones logo dead in the face. It looked like the logo had booted.
I eventually stopped puking. Mainly because I had nothing left in my body. I went downstairs and lay down as the waves violently crashed over the galley portholes. Bunny was worried we’d sink. I’d have accepted death if it made the puking stop. I had to hold on to the bunk sides to stay put, but eventually I fell asleep.
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I do know what woke me up: a crash of glass, a LOUD horn blowing in my ear, and someone screaming about getting on the survival suits. I jumped up to find a broken coffee pot on the floor and Johnathan laughing his ass off at me.
Johnathan “Did you break that, you fucker??”
He was obviously kidding—the coffee pot broke because we hit a rogue wave that knocked it off the counter—but I was so dehydrated, sick, and confused that I honestly thought for a second I was in trouble. Then we hit another wave, and I had to puke again. Fast.
I ran into the bathroom and puked right in the toilet. It was one of those awful vomits that are nothing but bile. I heard some scrambling outside, and in between vomits, looked up to find Scottie Hillstrand (Johnathan’s son), filming me vomiting in the toilet. Thanks guys, that’s awesome.
I couldn’t sleep anymore. It was around 7am, and still pitch dark outside, so I went up to the wheelhouse. Andy was back at the helm, and Drew and Fourtner were up there too.
Drew “Tucker, I’ve heard of people looking green with sickness before, but this is was the first time I’ve ever actually seen it in person.”
Tucker “Fuck off. Have you puked?”
Drew “Nope. I feel great. How many times for you now?”
Tucker “Five. I think. I want to die.”
Andy “You’re lucky we left yesterday. There’s a storm behind us, if we’d have left today, we’d have 15- to 20-foot seas the entire way.”
The waves hit the boat in groups of seven. The first one wasn’t too bad, the second one was worse, the third progressively worse, and so on. By the time the seventh wave hit the boat, the Time Bandit was literally 90 degrees different from lowest to highest pitch. At the low side, the window next to me was almost even with the sea. At highest pitch, the window was like 60 feet above the sea.
Tucker “So let me get this straight. You guys are out on the deck crab fishing in waves like this?”
Andy “This is nothing. It gets a lot worse than this.”
Fourtner “Oh man. I’d pay good money if our whole season was like this.
Man that would be great, wouldn’t it Andy?”
He sounded almost wistful. About waves that seemed like fucking tsunamis to me.
Tucker “What are these, like 40-foot waves?”
Andy “No no no. They’re probably 10–15 footers. Maybe a 20 every once in a while.”
Tucker “Oh fuck off!! Are you kidding? This isn’t bad? What’s bad? How much worse before you stop fishing
?”
Andy “Oh probably 40-foot seas things start to get pretty dicey. At 50-foot seas, I pull’em in.”
Tucker “50-FOOT SEAS!!! Three times higher than these? How high is that? That’s like over the flag pole!”
Andy “Yep. That’s what people don’t understand who watch the show—it’s not the fishing that’s hard. It’s doing it on a pitching deck in 40-foot seas that’s hard. The cameras are bolted to the deck, so they pitch and roll with the boat. You see the guys slip and slide, but you don’t see the boat move. They have to do it that way, or the viewers get seasick watching the deck go all over the screen, but people don’t understand the degree of difficulty that the pitching deck provides.”
Tucker “No fucking shit. This is ridiculous. Andy, you know that job you never offered me, as a crewman? I’m turning it down.”
Andy “Ha. Really sorry to hear that man.”
Tucker “No fucking way could I do this. You know, watching this on TV you think, ‘Oh sure I could do that if I had to.’ Absolutely fucking not. I could not do this.”
Fourtner “Hey Tucker. Would you rather be seasick for 24 hours or bang a fat chick?”
Tucker “I’d rather fuck a whale. Literally. An actual honest-to-God whale.”
Andy “We’ve got those out here too.”
The flag on the front of the boat, which had been new when we left King Cove, had started to shred. I’d heard Fourtner make reference to winds that would cause the flag to shred but I thought it was some kind of figure of speech or something. The flag was actually shredding itself in the wind.
Drew “How fast are the winds going out there?”
Andy “Hey Fourtner, lean out there and find out how fast the wind is blowing.”
Fourtner stepped outside with a wind gauge (with just shorts and t-shirt on). He stepped back in, a puzzled look on his face as he examined the meter.
Andy “How fast is it blowing out there?”
Fourtner “I don’t know.”
Andy “Didn’t you just take a reading?”
Fourtner “Yeah. It broke.”
The plastic fan on the top of the meter that measured wind speed was broken. Two of the fan blades had blown off. The meter said “67.3mph,” which was the last measurement before the wind, which was apparently moving much faster than that, had shredded it.
Something you may not understand about this conversation—Andy and Fourtner weren’t being dramatic or fucking with us or bragging or anything like that. The way they talked about these conditions—which seemed like something out of The Perfect Storm to me—was totally matter-of-fact. This was nothing to them, because they really do work in conditions WAY worse than this. I’d seen it on TV, so I knew that, but I’d never felt it—and feeling it changes everything. You can watch all the porn on the internet, but until you stick your dick in a pussy, you can’t really understand why everyone on earth is obsessed with sex.
At that very moment, I felt ill again. I popped open the window and puked my brains out. Right into the wind. Ever heard the phrase pissing into the wind? Well, I mouth-pissed into the wind.
Tucker “BLEEEEAAAAARGHHH AAAAAAAAAAHHHH FUCK ME ITS ALL OVER THE PLACE.”
Everyone collapsed into hysterical laughter. Apparently, looking at vomit all over my jacket and face was HILARIOUS. Thanks guys, you can all go die. There are many, many people on Earth who would have paid good money to watch me get my comeuppance in this manner.
Andy “Hey Tucker next time you need to puke, do it out the starboard side of the boat.”
Tucker “What’s starboard?”
Fourtner “Jesus Christ.”
Andy “The side where the wind isn’t blowing directly into. The opposite side of where you just puked.”
Tucker “OK, right. Good idea.”
About an hour later, I needed to puke again. I tried to cross to the other side of the boat but it was pitching so hard I made it about halfway across before I was literally thrown back to the port side.
Tucker “Is there a garbage can over there?”
Drew “Yeah lemme get it.”
Andy “Nah don’t waste a perfectly good garbage bag. Open that door behind you where Fourtner was and puke out the back.”
I opened the door, leaned out, and then the boat pitched hard. I fell back in the cabin. Nils was in the room as well by then, and both he and Drew started to head over to help.
Andy “Just wait. He’ll be fine. But if he falls out, then go over there—fast.”
I eventually got to the door, leaned waaaaay out on the deck, and hurled with all my might. Into the wind, again. Except this time, because I was doing it through a door, half of it blew back into the cabin.
Tucker “BLEEEEAAAAARGHHH AAAAAAAAAAHHHH FUUUUUUUU UUUCK GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.”
I gave one last huge hurl, slammed the door shut, and held onto the doorknob for stability. Not only was I covered in puke but I was drenched head to toe in sweat, rain, and seawater spray. I looked like a drowned rat, staring down at the floor at his puke blowback in resigned horror. Fourtner was choking he was laughing so hard.
Tucker “Andy, I am so sorry about this.”
Andy “No worries man. You’re not the first to do that; you won’t be the last. Plus that was entertaining.”
Tucker “I wasn’t even this bad the first time I got drunk.”
I collapsed into the other chair, exhausted, wet, covered in vomit, and tired as hell. My complexion was a distinct shade of green. This inspired Captain Jonathan, who decided that now would be the perfect time to blast me with a full can of silly string. PSSSSSSHHHHT. I didn’t even twitch. I just sat there.
Jonathan “OK Tucker, give us your ATM card and PIN number or we’re staying right here out at sea.”
Tucker “Jonathan, if I thought for even a minute that would actually get me on land, I’d fucking give you everything I owned right now.”
You don’t think of fishermen as environmentalists. But really they are. If anyone would care about the environment, it’s the people who deal with it every day and make their living directly from it. Two exchanges we had as we crept into the dock really brought this point home.
We passed another shipping vessel, something that looked way different from the crab boats. Fourtner said they were net draggers. He called them “drag fags.”
Fourtner “They deploy these massive fishing nets that have wheels on the bottom and roll along the bottom. I hate those things. Those guys absolutely obliterate the sea floor. They just destroy every goddamn thing in their path.”
Drew “So environmentalists aren’t wrong about those ships then?”
Fourtner “Nope. They’re terrible.”
Drew “How come they don’t regulate them more tightly then?”
Andy “Because they feed 66% of the world’s population with drag fishing like that. That, and they’ve got real good lobbyists.”
Drew “On the show I see you guys having to measure the size of crabs to see if they’re big enough, and you also toss back all the females. They don’t regulate the by-catch at all on the draggers?”
Andy “No point. It all comes up dead.”
Fourtner “Fucking drag fags.”
Of course, they aren’t always environmentally conscious. Later on, we were taking pictures of some ducks.
Jonathan “Those ducks out there, they’re endangered.”
Drew “Really? Why’s that?”
Jonathan “Because they’re delicious.”
Neal “Taste like tenderloin.”
Tucker “How do you know what they taste like?”
Neal “They weren’t always protected.”
PART 4: DUTCH HARBOR
I could probably write a 20,000-word article just about Dutch Harbor, and the city of Unalaska that surrounds it. It’s one of the most contradictory and compelling places I’ve ever been. It’s both completely modern and really old at the same time, but in weird ways. For example, it was an important base during World War II (it
was the only place in America other than Pearl Harbor that the Japanese bombed). The island is covered in all sorts of abandoned, overgrown pillboxes and bunkers. Many of them sit next to huge logistical cranes used to load massive freighters. It’s the largest fishery port in the United States; the island is basically nothing but boats, warehouses, and processing buildings. But only about 4,000 people live there year-round (the population more than doubles during certain fishing seasons, due to all the people who fly in to work at the processors). There are only seven miles of paved road on the whole island, but there are at least a thousand vehicles there. The airfield is so small they have to close the road that runs next to it when planes take off, so they don’t clip passing cars. There are only two bars, but they’re always packed. The island is incredibly naturally beautiful and filled with all sorts of endangered and protected animals that all but interact with you. We would eat breakfast every day next to an inlet where otters were diving for shellfish and dozens of eagles would perch not even ten feet from the windows.