Dinner and a Movie, Ocean Style

  I'm recovering from yet another eye surgery, so thought I'd go back into some of my earlier years of commercial fishing to recall a story or two.
  I know my mind is as sharp as a tack... ok, maybe as sharp as the top of a large globe! I guess what I'm saying is that some of the details may be a bit fuzzy or not quite as accurate as when it happened.
  I was talking to my buddy Scott, who is in many of my writings. He informed me that when I write about him he has a hard time remembering it the same way I write it.
  "Was I really there?" he asks me.
  "Of course you were. You are the star of the story," I tell him.  "I may embellish a few things just to keep the story exciting. Our normal boring lives would not impress many people."
  Scott and I were commercial fishing late in August. It had been a long season and we had pounded day after day 19 to 20 hours each day. Scott owned and operated a beautiful boat named the Elizabeth Ann. she was a large horse shoe sterned 43 foot wooden vessel that had plied the Alaskan waters for many years.
  I owned and was fishing off a smaller 36 foot double ended troller named the Col. Lindy.
  If I remember right we were fishing off Cape Spenser. The Silver Salmon run was tapering down a bit on the open ocean but we were dragging our hooks from dark to dark hoping to land on the mother lode and fill the fish holds.
  Day after day we would pass each other as we fished. We would pause fishing to wave at each other. Our radio traffic was constant as we broke the daily boredom chatting about anything we could think of. Growing up in the same area and even attending the same high school gave us many topics to chat about.
  "one two, one two, Scotty are you there," I spoke into the radio mic.
  "Hey, I've got you," came the static voice over my scrambled radio.
  We had purchased voice scrambled radios so we could speak freely without the entire fleet hearing what was being said. The big trick of commercial fishing was to try and break other groups scramble code so you could listen in and get fish numbers without them knowing. Scott and I were not "High liner" boats so we doubted that anyone else really cared where we fished and what we caught, but it was still nice to know most of the fleet could not hear your conversations.
  "I've got a couple of steaks for supper tonight," I told Scott. "If we could figure a way to get together we could have a nice dinner."
  "I've got a good movie from my last turn around in town that we could watch," came his reply over the radio.
  We had been fishing hard all day and then just shutting our boats down and drifting at night. It saves the fuel of running a few hours to the shore and picking ones way into an anchorage by radar and spot lights. You then have to wake up in the dark to make your run back out to the fishing grounds early the next morning.
  "It is a beautiful ocean, maybe I could pull in close and you could jump on my boat for a meal and a movie," Scott planted an idea in both of our minds.
  We fished until the ocean was gobbling the sun in darkness before Scott brought up the crazy plan again.
  "You still up for dinner and a movie?" he asked over the radio.
  "Wow, thought you were kidding," I replied back. "Just how is this going to work?"
  We had both pulled our fishing gear but our 40 foot long poles with stabilizers were sprouting off the sides of both of our boats. When we tie together in an anchorage we would both pull a pole so we could lash the two boats together for the night. It takes very calm water to keep a couple of twenty ton vessels from grinding and crashing each other to pieces.
  "I think I could come up behind you, nose the Elizabeth Ann to your stern, you could hop aboard and I could back away," Scott planned.
  There was a large gentle swell running on the ocean that evening. A large swell would bring our boats into a very tricky situation. If Scott came in too close his bow could raise over my stern and crush my smaller boat. If my stern came up hard under his bow it could rip a gaping hole in his bow planks.
  "I guess we can set it up and see how it looks," I said with just a bit of doubt in my voice.
  I grabbed my steaks and moved to the stern of my now drifting boat. Scott edged the big Elizabeth Ann in close. The mild swells now looked like roaring waves smashing things to bits in my mind.
  I stood on the back of my boat under a cover called a hay rack. As Scott's boat neared I had to look up to see the top of his bow rail. I would be crushed in between his bow and my hay rack.
  I raced back in to my radio. "Not going to work. Your bow it to tall for the hay rack," I told Scott.
  "How about standing on your hay rack?" Scott questioned back.
  The playing field just got substantially more tricky. One thing to stand on the deck of a rolling boat, another to stand on the top of a flat roof on a rolling boat.
  I climbed up the hay rack moving my buoys, shrimp and crab pots, and other items stored out of the way up there. I tried to stand but learned quickly it was just not secure enough footing. Wow, this was going to be tricky!
  Scott once again maneuvered the big Elizabeth Ann in close. The bow of his boat and stern of my boat were not at all in sync. My stern would rise up while his bow dropped deep in the swell. We would have to have perfect timing to pull this off.
  The swells leveled just a bit and Scott throttled forward, as his bow and my stern evened out I jumped!
  I could hear Scott full throttle reverse as I left the hay rack of the Col. Lindy. I landed in the center of his bow deck and rolled onto my knees. I jumped up to see if we were clearing my stern. The tall bow of the Elizabeth Ann slowly backed away from my stern.
  We did it!
  I watched my boat grow smaller in the distance with just a little drifting mast light glowing in the darkness. My boat was now up for official ocean salvage. Once you abandon a boat on the ocean, the first one to come upon it can claim salvage rights. Not a good feeling at all to think about that.
  Scott drove us quite a distance from my drifting boat to make sure we did not drift into it as we watched the movie.
  We fired up the barbecue and had the steaks sizzling in no time.
  We shared a great steak dinner while watching a movie on the high seas of Alaska. When you have not had contact with a real person for days and days, it is just nice to be able to carry on a conversation without keying a radio mic. We visited into the pitch black of the night.
  "Well, I'd better get back to my boat for the night," I told Scott.
  We turned on his radar and waited for it to warm up. He adjusted the distance to a half mile. No blips on the screen. One mile. Still no sign of my boat. I was looking out the windows with Scott's binoculars and could not pick up my anchor light at all.
  We had lost my boat on a huge ocean!
  Scott cranked up the distance on his radar again. Three miles. The sweep went in a complete circle. No blip to indicate a boat. Unbelievable!
  The radar was completing its second sweep when a tiny blip showed up.
  "There! Is that my boat?" I asked.
  Scott brought the bow of the Elizabeth Ann around to point in the direction of the blip on the radar. I kept scanning the horizon with binoculars. We cruised a bit before the light of my boat became visible to us.
  "Whew," I let out a big sigh, "I sure am glad to find my boat again."
  Scott motored his boat to my stern again. Once again we played the fragile game of bumper boats. With perfect timing of waves and boat control, I was able to make the jump from Scott's bow to the top of my hay rack.
  "Hey we did it!" I exclaimed to Scott, over the radio. " Thanks for the dinner and the movie!"
  I fired up my boat and slowly gave distance between our two boats.
  "Happy drifting," we both told each other as we shut down our boats for a night of drifting sleep on the wild North Pacific Ocean.