Never Cross the Lines
published in the National Fisherman Quarterly, North Pacific Focus, summer 2014

 
   So you want to be a deckhand on a gillnetter? This is What You’ll Do:
   Before the season starts, you’ll drive to the cannery every day for two weeks, park your car in a cloud of dust or a muddy drizzle and climb aboard the boat you’re deckhanding on. Your skipper may or may not be there yet. The boat is in the yard, up on barrels, where it spent the winter. The ladder you will use to get on the boat may or may not be there either. You’ll likely find it lashed to the cleat of another boat twenty yards away. This ladder will become an important element in your life for your first weeks of “fishing.“
   You’ll go up and down it at least a dozen times each morning, and twice that in the afternoon. You’ll go down it to go the carp shop for wood to patch a hole in the cabin door, for galvanized screws, or to borrow a coping saw from the boat next door. You’ll go up it when you come back from the machine shop for engine oil, and you’ll take the old oil back down it in a 5-gallon bucket, trying not to spill it all over you. You’ll chase down coolant, hydraulic fluid, transmission fluid, bondo to patch fiberglass, splashzone to patch over snags under the boat that might catch the net, 5200 to stop leaks. You’ll bring back zincs, bolts, nuts, washers, lock-washers, cotter pins, fan belts, duct tape, black tape, plumber’s tape, stainless baling wire, and more. You’ll be sent back when the bolt is too short. You’ll be sent back again when it’s too long.
   While you’re doing all this, you’ll be getting to know the carpenter, the port engineers, the beach gang, the machinists. There’ll be at least one guy who will be outright unfriendly and mean. He’ll be the one who’ll ignore you when you need something from him, and he’ll ridicule your ignorance of the way things work. He’ll send you back to the boat empty-handed, asking the skipper if he wants to borrow the left or the right-handed grease gun. You’ll learn to hate going on errands where he works.
   You’ll go down the ladder on your way to the company store for your deckhand’s license, soda to bring back to the boat, and an ice-cream sandwich on the single hot day without a cold wind that will have you remembering what summer used to be like. You’ll go down the ladder to duct tape a hose to the sea-water intake valve so the pump doesn’t burn up while the skipper runs the engine. You’ll go back up again because you can’t hear what the skipper is yelling from the engine room, then go back down again to turn off the water pressure. You’ll run to the port engineers’ shop to get electrical fittings, solder, butt-end connectors, and silicone to seal them with to keep the salt air from corroding the wires. You’ll haul tools up the ladder from your skipper’s pick-up, sometimes carrying boxes in both hands as you climb, balancing on the balls of your feet. You’ll haul up sleeping bags, raingear, boots and electronics until your feet and legs ache. You’ll memorize where the missing rung on the ladder is, and you’ll vow to fix it when you get time. You’ll never get time.
   You’ll be sent to the skipper’s locker in the old web loft to gather up buoys, survival suits, a worn block of paraffin wax, some black paint, and old brushes wrapped in aluminum foil. You’ll wax the survival suit zippers with the paraffin. You’ll paint the boat name and license number on the buoys. You’ll have to go to the carpenter’s shop to get paint thinner to clean the brushes, and to the store again for more aluminum foil...and another ice-cream sandwich.
   You’ll be sent to town for the stainless screws and clips the cannery doesn’t stock; while you’re there, you’ll be asked to pick up some beer, some burgers and fries, or maybe some pizza. When you come back, your skipper will be nowhere to be found. He’ll be bs’ing with some other fishermen who just came in that afternoon. You’ll be expected to find something to do anyway. Pick up the trash accumulating under the boat. Cleaning the cabin is always a good idea. Don’t put anything away – especially tools near an unfinished project. Just straighten. Clean the windows. Get some water in a bucket from a spigot nearby and wash the dishes.
   You’ll learn to budget your errands so you’re near the mess hall when the mug-up whistle blows. Homemade cinnamon rolls and muffins in the morning, pies and cake in the afternoon. And always fresh-brewed coffee, hot chocolate and juice for the kids. Mug-up is where you’ll learn to keep your mouth shut and listen. The fishermen will talk about their boats, their nets, who’s working with whom, the upcoming season, the price of fish. You’ll hear terms like stuffing box, Grundens, Uroko, dog gear, hynautics and flying bridge. With any luck you’ll start putting them in context and figuring out what they mean. But everyone will agree - mug-up always is too short.
   You’ll learn that fishing nets are called shackles, and in Cook Inlet each boat fishes three of them clipped and sometimes sewn together. You’ll load them on a four-wheeled cart and pull them out of the warehouse, coiled in nylon or canvas net bags, where you’ll heave them into your skipper’s truck. You’ll drive them to the back of the boat and open them one-by-one and clip the ends to a piece of line - not rope. Never rope on a boat - a piece of line coming off the reel.  You’ll stand in the truck and feed the net out of the bag and up over the stern of the boat and onto the reel. The reel is powered by a bit of magic called hydraulics, and while the boat is running, your skipper can make the reel turn by stepping on a treadle board near it. As the net comes on board, he will guide the web, the corks and the heavy line called a lead line onto the reel in a neat package, taking care not to cross the lines over each other. This is hugely important. Your skipper will likely impress upon you how important it is not to cross the lines. Remember this.
   You’ll start to wish you had a truck.
   There’ll be at least one guy (if you’re lucky), who’ll take to you. He’ll joke with you and tell you what a garboard plank or corking is. He’ll tell you who to avoid, and whom to seek out. He’ll always be good for a cup of hot coffee and a rickety chair next to his wood stove on a wet, chilly spring day. Whenever you get the chance, take him a cinnamon roll, or an extra burger and fries. Better yet, show up at his shop before he closes the door at 5:00 o’clock with a bottle of Jack to drink with him out of the coffee mugs.
   By now you’ve been fishing for two, maybe three weeks. Your skipper will keep talking about “when we finally get wet.” You haven’t been paid a dime - remember, you’re paid by the percentage of the fish you catch, and you haven’t even seen a fish. You’ll swear as you knock a Philips screwdriver off the cabin to land on the gravel below while you put up an antenna in the cold drizzle. One more trip down that damned ladder and back up again. By the time the boat is launched, you’ll hate that ladder. 
   Welcome to fishing.