mastercraftsman

We've got to respect our elders. I'm thinking back now to the most painful realization of this I ever had....
Once upon a time there were five crab fishermen, all "highliners" in Alaska, best of the best, could get a job on any boat, or captain their own vessel outright. But they were undefeatable together, with their various specialties. I was one of them, making over $100K a year for maybe three month's work. We were tight. You get that way in the world's most dangerous profession. And being with the same guys 24/7 and awake 21 of them you get to know each other pretty well. Our plan was to go down in history. Tap a new resource, a new craze, make millions, sail off in our personally built yatchs and hunt for sunken treasure.
I learn of Geryon fenneri, a new species of crab being studied at U of F. They are fucking deep. But plentiful. And highly prized, it seems. The only shellfish that doesn't turn red when cooked. Instead it turns bright GOLD. It was just after yet another #1 boat performance in the Bering Sea when I am phoning all over the planet tracking down the guys....
We gathered at my place in South Beach before heading to Key West. It was a clandestine operation, as we were paranoid some local powerbroker would smell a Rooster in the Henhouse. We doubted anyone else had the knowledge or skills necessary to harvest these crabs anyway, cocky as we were, but we agreed to leave the sports cars at my place and get a couple beat up old trucks. We also got haircuts, as we all looked like Jesus Christ with long hair and beards. We bought a rusty old 65' Shrimper hull for ten grand, in a lobsterboat yard on Stock Island, just over the bridge from touristy Key West. It was perfect. You know, grown up trailer trash yards with junk everywhere. No one would notice us....
We spent the next three months researching. Also fitting out the F/V Windjammer. Ransford, our engineer, used to build and race Dragracing cars, and spent lots of time in the engine room, his shrine. I used to install and troubleshoot the most sophisticated submarine hunting technology in the world, so I handled radar, sonar, navigation computers, and electronics. We all did our thing, like always, on any boat we crewed, and things just kept klicking. I smacked a high five to Ran when we splashed it, looking new and floating on her lines, that which a naval architect betted us was too low. We busted a bottle of Jack across the bow and allowed ourselves one night of revelry in town. That in itself was an adventure but I gotta keep rolling with my story....
Our first few shakedowns we tweaked things to our content, and concentrated on the Gameplan. Already Jim had buyers, and even Red Lobster hinted at some backing if we could produce what they needed. The first sets were encouraging, and eventful....
A highlight: "What the fuck is THAT?" We're looking at a creature that looks like a giant roly poly centipede thing with GLOWING Oakley shade looking eyes. We pull this up over a MILE deep. Mark is on hydros, who normally looks like Captain Morgan on the rum bottle, plus a gold tooth, but is still a commanding prescence baldheaded and tanned. He has a deep bellowing voice. "Haul gear, you faggots!!! We got a 120 to go and it's starting to whitecap out there!!" We are using collapsible compact stacking traps we designed, and need to empty them. "Get that fucking thing outta there." "YOU get it outta there." I shake the trap but the ISOPOD, which we find out later is a recently discovered animal that was thought to have been extinct even before the dinosaurs(descendent of the trilobyte) clings to the webbing. I run to the pilothouse to change course as the boat is violently swinging around and in danger of parting our mainline. Ran is poking at it with a gaff when I return. "Just fucking grab it you pussy." "It might be poisonous our something..." Just then the pressure from the deep and his poking caused it to explode and spurt a foul smelling brown snot all over Ran's face. He screamed like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz, so Carl blasted him with the deck hose.....
"Fifteen hundred pounds, not too bad." We dubbed them GOLDEN CRAB. "But they're dying" "Circ system is too warm, it's like thirty degrees down there." "So fuck it and ice 'em...." Turns out they live on ice, out of water, amazingly, for days....
The real problem is the Gulf Stream. Current and depth present dozens of problems. Lines breaking from the drag, floats, even hydrodynamic KITES we had designed couldn't rise to the surface. Radio beacons were expensive and we lost a lot. Gear hunting was getting old, and at ten grand a string not cheap. Sometimes found them ten miles from where we set them. Finally went to no surface bouys. Just a long line, on the bottom of a mile deep of fast current, which we'd have to retrieve three days later. Needle in a haystack is not even close to the problems. With all the math involved with thermoclines and current, diameter and pot drag, not to mention trying to analize accurate catch data that was so sporadic, we were definately being CHALLENGED....
So I was taken aback when walking the docks seeing a feeble old Cuban man, splicing and mending a lobster trap, mutter under his breath when I pass, "Congrehos. No bueno es congrehos." Fucking old dog. How did he know we were chasing crab? Just a fucking old loon....
But headlong we went. We were the best, so if not us then who. A funny moment: Here we are just off Cuba anchored to our mainline in calm seas. I am bored shitless, not being able to catch HUNDREDS of blue runners swarming under our sodium lights, using a rod and reel, because the guys say I create "too much of a ruckus on watch" and they can't sleep. They are in hammocks, swinging in fucking 6' arcs almost hitting each other. Please. Apparently too hot to sleep below and we don't be splurging on A/C.... So the Coast Guard calls, me staring at their blip on the radar and all the glowing eletronics around me on my watch. "Windjammer, Cutter Sweetbriar" "Good evening to you too, what's up?" "Captain, I show you stationary at xxx and request your intent." "We're on the hook for the night." "Captain, I read you in over 900 fathoms. You cannot be on the hook." "Longlining for a deep water species. Took a break midhaul" Thinking I should wake everyone for a boarding party... " "Hmm... no one would be making THAT up. Have a good night Captain..."
Our Hansen sheaves performed nicely ($20K) hauling in what we could snag. Imagine snagging a line three miles long in the middle and trying to haul it up as it swirls in the STREAM.
Yeah, temperments get a little short when you're untangling knots that come aboard the size of a Volkswagen....
Then snagged something unexpected. Gear that had pots, from a company that had gone out of business in the 70's...
On the way in one dawn (we only came and went during darkness) LATE, I spot an alarming sight. In my binocs I see Little Giant, one of Gunner's fleet, from the arctic. I hail. "Aye, so who are yoooooo..." Holy FUCK Gunner himself.... I'd only heard Gunner's voice from what Ran had got unscrambled on the SSB. He's a Norwegian mogul who is a genius crabber we'd been beating the past few years. "I'm Dean, I was Lee's deckboss last opie season." "A BOY? coming down here trying to do a MAN'S job?" "Good luck, sir." was all I could manage.... "But you're about to lose a million bucks, you old fool...." was what I was thinking.
We were going to sell the quarter of a mil boat at a loss, and give up. Had no clue how he found out about Golden Crab. Party on for the few months we had left. Too much turmoil. I passed the old Cuban again, and asked Ran to chat with him, as he'd been a Puerto Rican missionary durijng his teen years. Turns out someone else came down here in the 70's. Well, that explains the GEAR we found. "He says yeah, us Alasksans come down every twenty years or so trying to catch those things and end up getting our asses kicked....
Poor old man knew way more than I ever THOUGHT....