Living in a Closet

Not much happened today. We came to the boat after a hasty breakfast at the Unisea Inn. We basically hung around and did nothing. We helped unload¹ and ate some of the food. We’ve talked to some of the crew and found out what we can look forward to in the next 90 days. Rob did most of the talking he’s better at meeting people I think.²

I’m living in a closet with three other guys. Rob is one of them. The other two are greg & tim from the the group we met in Seward. It’s going to be cozy³, luckily none of us smoke.⁴

We’re hearing horror stories of twenty hours of working, then four hours sleep – repeat. I believe them and I only hope I can keep up. This journal probably won’t get as many entries as I’d hoped this summer.⁵

I wrote a letter to Kira⁶ last night. I’m not real sure what I’m going to do with that situation⁷ and It’s real hard to think. I miss her though.

– 1 June 90

1. Despite what the first sentence said, this unloading wasn’t nothing. But there was a lot of down time. It was a lot of hurry up and wait mixed in with some orientation about how things would work. I remember a lot of talk was around when meals were served and about how water was limited to what was in the tanks so we shouldn’t take any Hollywood showers.
2. This is still true.
3. The cabin was two sets of stacked bunks with a few feet of floor. I think Rob and I both ended up with top bunks and there was not enough room for both of us to climb out of bed at the same time. We didn’t spend much time in the room awake, but most of the journal entries were written laying down in that bunk before I fell asleep.
4. What?!? They let people smoke on the boat? I can’t really remember, but I think maybe they did. It was a different time.
5. I managed to write a total of 15 entries on the boat, most them in the first couple of weeks.
6. For those keeping track at home this is the second mention of Kira so far.
7. The “situation” was that I was in love.

During the down time of these first couple days we were able to watch movies on the VCR in the Lounge (right off the Mess Area). There was exactly one tape available – Eddie Murphy Raw.

We haven’t started fishing yet, but they are making us work anyway. (I guess they are paying us.)¹ We had engine trouble so this morning we turned around and went back to dutch harbor. The work we did was fixing nets. Mostly we held stuff and pulled lines.² It seemed a jumbled mess to both Rob + I. We did that until about 16:00, which is also when we left port again.

Rob and I tried out our japanese on the 日本人³ crew members.⁴ They thought it was neat⁵, but kept working. We’ll get good sleep tonight for the last time. Last night we kept getting up to do various things at all hours of the night (+ morning).

We start at 7:00 tomorrow.⁶

– 2 June 90 (Day 2)

1. It was early days and I still had extra energy for sarcasm.
2. Being on deck that day with the wind and the spray is the closest I have ever come to being a sailor. This was a one time thing and it didn’t go too well. (I think they just wanted busy work for all of these college kids they just hired.) We mostly got in the way of the people who actually had a clue. Ron (my bunkmate) grabbed one of the lines and did a Tarzan swing across a section of the deck. He was immediately banished below deck. It was also during this short time on deck that a cable with a hook on the end swung within a couple inches of my head. The steel cable had a sharp metal thread sticking out and it sliced a hole in the shoulder of my flannel shirt. Luckily the cut was only shirt deep. I wore that shirt every time Rob and I went camping for the next couple of decades.
3. Nihonjin: Japanese person. I copied and pasted that kanji just now from jisho.org, but when I wrote the entry I did it free hand using what I learned from my one year of high school Japanese. Which was also the level of conversation I could hold with these crew mates.  はじめまして、マイクです。 どうぞよろしく 。
4. There were several Japanese crew members on board. They all held the title of Fish Master and they were clearly running things where the fishing was concerned. I learned later that while The Fishing Company of Alaska was an American company all of the fish was sold to a Japanese company called Anyo Fisheries. I think this is because (at least in 1990) these waters could only be fished by American boats. FCA was owned by an American who happened to be the ex-wife of the Japanese man who owned Anyo. The fish masters all worked directly for Anyo Fisheries. And I thought it was just the fishing nets that were tangled.
5. I am sure they also thought it was keen, rad, and swell. Maybe even cool.
6. For some reason I was very focused on clock time. Which is weird because time sort of lost all meaning after a while. There was working time, eating time, and sleeping time.