The slack slowly came out of the line as the Eagle Eye II eased a distance of about fifty yards from us. The line tightened, and off we went, still unsure of where Scotty was taking us. As of the last conversation, we were splitting the difference between two ports, knowing that a decision was still in the making as to which we would enter for repairs. I supposed there was no urgency in the details of our destination. We had a minimum of eighty miles to go and were making less than seven knots. So I had at least ten more hours to think. I sat back in the captain’s chair and stared at the stern ahead of me as it bobbed slightly up and down in the shallow swells. Outwardly I displayed the apathy of a casual by-stander. I yawned. Beneath the surface, emotions roiled.
Being on this end of the tow rope was disheartening. It was demeaning. It represented the total antithesis of what I was about. Independence, self-reliance, and strength shrank as the strain on the line between the two boats grew. Captain of what? The Shithawk. My mood wasn’t made any lighter by the bickering that rose from below. The crew sounded like young brothers in the backseat on a long car ride. I didn’t much like fishing right now.
One by one the men came topside under the guise of offering to stand a watch. But what was clear to me was that they were really coming to get information that I could not provide—where were we going? Or they came to lament our joint baneful existence. One at a time, they hashed over every tiny thing that they had endured at the hands of Jim Budi, Malcolm, and Putz. No longer in command of my ship, I had become a middle manager with the hooking up of the towline. The litany of problems aired ran the gamut from work with no pay to expired dates on batteries. The complaints were getting paltry when Machado ran out of breath at the condition of the paint on the deck. I’d mention it to Jim Budi, I promised. I had heard from everyone except Archie. I didn’t know what to do other than listen and show some compassion by agreeing with all they said. If I’d felt like their captain, rather than someone manning a barge, perhaps I would have put an end to what was sounding more and more like nothing more than bellyaching. If I’d been under my own steam, I would have responded to complaints with “Suck it up,” “Toughen up,” or “Shut the fuck up.” Maybe I had softened in the last decade.
Was my present mood a form of grace under pressure? Or was this newfound diffidence a result of the natural process of aging? There was a certain inconsistency, to boot. As thrilled as I’d been with my crew just a few short hours ago, I was now second-guessing my own choices. Perhaps my first thought should have been to hire a seasoned diesel mechanic. Maybe having friends as subordinates (and perhaps insubordinates) was a bad idea. How could I possibly chew them up and spit them out? How could I savagely berate them with one of my earsplitting, foulmouthed rants, known to make grown men wish they’d never been born? Who could I take my frustrations out on? Would any of that make me feel more in command? Being on the wrong end of a towrope zaps a gal’s resolve. I sat and stared at the stern ahead of us for what seemed like hours, listening to the voices from down in the galley. I couldn’t hear words. The tone was hostile. The laughter was cynical. Maybe I would have been better off with a bunch of idiots as crew, instead of these nice, smart, capable men. I knew how to handle idiots.
I wondered about my present feelings of uselessness and hoped they would soon pass. Perhaps jumping back into this world after such a long absence had been a mistake. I hadn’t grown gracefully into this role of the more mature, rational captain. It was more like an abrupt dropping in from another era through some evil time warp. My words and actions were numb, mechanical contrivances. And nobody cared. Surely I had been aware that there were problems inherent in returning to this profession that I had known only as a younger woman. But I hadn’t anticipated these heavy feelings that were perhaps born of my absence. Going fishing had always been so carefree in the past. It had always been a financial gamble in which losing had no real consequence other than pride. I’d never had a mortgage when I fished before. Everything I’d owned could be shoved into a plastic garbage bag and slung onto the deck from the back of a truck. And what about my responsibility for Sarai? I was indeed putting her security in jeopardy. Sure, we wouldn’t starve to death if this ended badly. But there were things I wanted to be able to do for her and give her that were possible only with adequate income. Most important, I wanted Sarai to believe in me and be able to count on me. I had lived a fairly selfish life before Sarai made her entrance. I didn’t want to let either of us down.
“Hey, Linny! Wow, he’s towing us along pretty good,” Arch said as he entered the wheelhouse. “What are we making, six knots? Not bad.”
“I won’t know where we’re going until morning,” I said, anticipating the question.
“It doesn’t make any difference to me where we get fixed up.” Arch smiled. “I’m not the one quitting and going home.”
CHAPTER 5
Adrift
Attrition, a fancy word for jumping ship, didn’t usually begin this early in a trip. But so far this trip was anything but usual. I had to consider the fact that this was the earliest opportunity to lose crew that I had ever experienced. It is not unheard of for a man to have a sudden change of heart about fishing in general and to beat feet when a boat hits the dock. But the boat isn’t supposed to hit the dock after just forty-eight hours at sea. And we hadn’t set even a single hook yet. No one had real reason to be alarmed or any inkling that paychecks would be scarce or thin. This was so premature and unwarranted that I would have to consider it a bailing out rather than a graceful exit.
I recalled a similar situation aboard the Gloria Dawn. The mate came up to the wheelhouse, as Archie had just done, and announced that one man was considering hitting the road. I fired the entire crew in an instant, mate and all. Looking back, I could now see that I’d been extremely impetuous. Being stupid and counterproductive had never fazed me before. The mass firing had been a matter of principle. But now I couldn’t remember which principle. I didn’t have it in me to be so brash any longer. It would be much smarter to be composed and calculated and less spontaneous. “Who’s quitting?” I asked calmly.
“Machado is sitting with his cell phone and waiting for coverage. He says he has bad vibes and wants to cut his losses. Dave may follow him,” Arch had confided, in what I knew was sincere concern for how abandonment might affect me emotionally. Little did my friend know about me. I would nip this in the bud.
“I can’t say as I would blame them if they headed home. Please find out what their intentions are so that I can line up a couple of guys. We can’t waste time at the dock waiting for crew. We’ve got fish to catch!”
“Yeah.” Arch paused to think. “Yeah, you’re right. I know a great guy who will jump on a plane headed anywhere to go fishing. Want me to call him? I can call Marge and have her arrange flights. In fact, I know two guys. I should call them now and put them on standby. Want me to?”
“I have a list of guys in mind who wanted to come if I had room for them. I didn’t then. Now I do. I assumed that Machado and Tim would be the guys bailing out. Hiltz is a surprise,” I said.
“Tim is here for the duration. Don’t you worry about him. He’s solid. As long as I stay, he stays. And I’m not going anywhere until you do. Machado is sort of miserable, and I think he’s making Dave nervous.”
I knew well, from experience with hundreds of hired hands in the past, how infectious attitudes are—how one negative influence could impel an otherwise complacent member of a crew to ditch. And perhaps that knowledge had led to as many firings. It’s much better to terminate one man’s position than to lose two quitters. There’s too much time to think while a boat is steaming. Too much rack time, too much idle time, and too much time to sit around the galley table acting as “fo’c’sle lawyers” (as my old mentor Alden Leeman had always referred to the malcontents) never resulted in the development of positive attitudes. One disgruntled man could plant a seed, and downtime—especially like this—could nurture the most fragile point of stri
fe to full-grown petulance. Like bedsores, small complaints fester and spread with a little agitation and chafing. Putting salve on bedsores had never been my method.
“Someone aboard here is a Jonah!” I said, referring to what mariners consider a person who brings bad luck to a boat. “It’s got to be Machado or Hiltz. Can you get confirmation now that they’re quitting?” I asked, as optimistically as I could, knowing that Arch would see through my psychology but would also go along with it in trying to call a bluff. “I really need to know how many replacements to get.” Being called a Jonah was a real slap in the face. Now the ball would be in someone else’s court. I may have forgotten a lot in the last ten years, but the basic game was still the same. And I believed that I was still the reigning champ of head games played at sea. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed that they’ll both go home.”
And with that, Arch essentially took on the role of first mate. He became the go-to and the go-between, effectively relieving me of running up and down between three decks. Archie carried out my wishes and orders even when he disagreed with them. Now he went below and returned with the anticipated results. No one was quitting. We were all in, from dock to dock, as they say. “Oh, that’s too bad,” I said. “I don’t suppose I have grounds to fire either of them. They haven’t actually done anything wrong yet.” Arch was quick to agree that I certainly could not fire anyone. But I knew he would smoothly slip that concept into his next visit to the galley table.
I sounded like a bitch, but this was actually one of many mind games that fishermen, and men of the sea in general, play to occupy nonworking hours. I preferred having the men nervous about the security of their jobs to me worrying that they were quitting, and scrambling willy-nilly for adequate understudies. This was a lot more entertaining than measuring the depth of dips the stern of the Eagle Eye II made with each bob, which was the only other amusement I had. This drama had real potential. The theatrics inherent in life in a small, tight-knit island community had nothing on life aboard a commercial fishing boat. I knew that as soon as we all got busy going about our business, things would be A-OK. We would be so busy working once the engine was fixed that the games would be delayed until the next dull moment. This was just like home.
In spite of the men’s multiple offers to take watches, I stayed up all night. It wasn’t until Scotty called the next morning and said that he was delivering us to Sambro, Nova Scotia, that I gave in to boredom more than sleepiness and went to my bunk. We were fighting a bit of tide and would, according to Scotty, arrive outside Sambro Harbor that evening at around ten. At that time we would drop the tow and pick up lines from a Canadian coast guard vessel that would escort us right to the dock, where a certified Cummins mechanic would be waiting. With a solid plan in place and everything seemingly organized, I managed to get a bit of sleep, waking to the sight of a thin, gray line of land off on the distant horizon.
Just before 10:00 P.M., we dropped Scotty’s towing bridle from our bow. And like a dog suddenly liberated from a taut leash, he was gone without so much as a whimper, free of the sixty-three-foot hunk of steel that he’d been tethered to for nearly twenty-four hours. Adios, amigo, I thought, and imagined that his reply would have been more of a good riddance—and rightfully so. As the lights of the Eagle Eye II disappeared behind a headland, a sharp twinge of anxiety swept over me quite unexpectedly. Depending on how long we were laid up, Scotty would be gaining a real advantage. He’d certainly reach the grounds before I did, giving him first dibs on the water. He might make several sets before we arrived and have part of a trip aboard before we landed a single fish.
The old familiar wheels of competition had begun to turn. My competitive spirit in the past had always been driven by hunger. “A hungry dog hunts harder” is what Alden used to say. Now, it wasn’t exactly the case with me that I actually wouldn’t eat if we came up short on the catch. My hunger wasn’t literal. I wanted to be on the water for many reasons—not just financial. I wondered if competition just for the sake of it would be enough to drive me now. The only thing I really had at stake was my reputation. My crew would not suffer unduly without huge paychecks. I reminded myself that I had never fished for the money. I fished for the love of it, and I imagined that the competition was part of what I loved.
But, I realized, I had never fished when I wasn’t living from hand to mouth. Desperation was always good motivation, but it came at a price. Some part of me was glad to know that it wasn’t life or death, but another part of me was relieved to feel the burning in my stomach when I thought of Scotty getting such a jump on me. The desire to outfish my comrades came quite naturally. I felt myself slipping into the comfort of more familiar ground, less acting and more being captain. I wished the Canadians would hurry up.
The small powerhouse of a vessel out of Sambro was manned by several Canadian coastguardsmen. The warning-orange boat was alongside and throwing lines to my crew before my impatience could be verbalized. Secured to the Seahawk’s hip, or made fast to our port aft quarter, the smaller boat had no trouble manhandling her incapacitated rescuee. Absolutely smooth and professional, Canadian mariners were among the best in the world, I had always believed. The Nova Scotian captain really put on a show at the wharf. A couple of thrusts of his engines and there we were, without creating so much as a ripple. Dock lines were heaved to men waiting to receive them. The towboat cut loose and pulled away to its berth across the harbor.
Among the guys on the dock stood a tall, gray-haired gentleman wearing a jumpsuit. A large steel toolbox rested at his feet. “You must be the Cummins man,” I said, looking up from the deck.
“I am.” And that was the end of the dialogue. Timmy helped the mechanic aboard by grabbing the box of tools, and they both disappeared through the entryway and down into the engine room.
I was greeted by a cheery man in a wheelchair who introduced himself as my port agent. His last name was Henneberry, familiar to me as a family of highliners, or top-notch producers, on the international fishing scene. The tide was low enough to prohibit me from climbing up or him from sliding down. So I reached to shake his hand and receive some paperwork required by customs and immigration. “Just fill in the blanks, and I’ll be around tomorrow to pick them up,” he said. I thanked him, bade him a good night, and headed for the warmth of the galley, where I spread the forms on the table.
The same basic immigration and customs forms I had filled out time and again when entering any foreign port, they mainly asked for names and passport numbers. We had no booze or guns. Machado was our only smoker, and he claimed three cartons, which were supposed to be kept in a locked compartment. The process was laid-back relative to what happens in larger ports.
After supplying me with his passport information, Machado requested permission to leave the boat. He had a friend on the dock and had been invited to “go out.” This “going out,” in my vast past, had often led to nothing good. But I really couldn’t tell a forty-year-old man that he was grounded. He promised to be back aboard first thing the next morning and was gone. I was a little nervous about the games I had dabbled in earlier and sincerely hoped that Machado wasn’t headed for the airport in Halifax. He’d certainly get the last at-bat if that were the case. I wished that I trusted Machado. He had given me no reason to distrust him, but I didn’t know him well. What I did know, or at least believed, was that he was smart in a streetwise way about the ropes, hoops, and loopholes in the unwritten rules engaged in by captain and crew in what sometimes is more of a battle than what is normal in conventional working relationships. Compared with Machado, the rest of the crew were naïve in the ways and wiles of this salty workaday world. Liking Machado was not a struggle. He was eminently likable. There was just a little something there—a cleverness that put me on edge—that I found challenging. His range of experience in commercial fishing put him in my league. He might even have a few moves I hadn’t encountered. And if Machado outfoxed me, it would cost some time. Lost time would equate to Scotty’s gett
ing more of a head start on his trip. I couldn’t have that.
Archie and Hiltz seemed content to hang around the galley with me. We listened to Timmy screaming over the generator and were amused that there was never any response from the mechanic. “Maybe he’s using sign language,” Arch suggested. Hiltz nodded and flipped a double bird. This seemed very funny at the time. We laughed hysterically until tears formed. Looking back, it doesn’t seem a bit humorous. But I’m sure that we were stressed to the point of silliness and needed some comic relief. And Machado, who was our usual supply of jokes, had left us to our own devices. When the weight of anticipation got to be too much for me and my belly ached from laughing, I reluctantly decided to descend to the engine room to check on progress and hear the prognosis.
Before I made it halfway down the stairs, I met Timmy coming up. Glad to put distance between me and the noise again, I hurried back to the galley with Timmy close on the heels of my rubber boots. “How’s it looking?” I asked.
“The mechanic is great,” Tim said as he wiped sweat from his forehead with a paper towel. “So far he’s found two bent push rods that appear to have been caused by the hasty rebuild. Every bolt securing rocker arms had backed out to finger tight. It’s a wonder we didn’t trash the entire engine.”
“So we didn’t trash the entire engine?” I asked nervously.
“No. He’s still checking, measuring, tightening—but I think we’ll be fine. He brought rods, and so far he hasn’t found anything that will keep us from getting back out tomorrow. Or is it today now? It’s a good thing we didn’t run the engine any more than we did. It could have been a lot more serious.” This was the best news!
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