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Trolling on the Edge - the Story of a Noyo Fisherman

by Jeanne Duncan

210 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0215; ISBN 1-55212-815-6; US$20.00, C$23.00, EUR16.43, £11.50

The true story of a young Mendocino Coast fisherman who tells us first-hand about the life and its terrors and charms. He takes us with him on small, wooden boats to fish for salmon and albacore, and into his worst Pacific storm.

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About the Book

Reviews

About the Author

Excerpts

Catalogue Information

About the Book

What does it feel like to fish for salmon and albacore on a small, wooden boat, braving rough seas and narrow rocky harbors? Why would anyone choose this uncertain, dangerous way to make a living? A young Mendocine Coast fisherman describes the excitement and thrills of his experiences on small, wooden boats on the turbulent north pacific, and the strange appeal of this life for him.

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Reviews

WORDS ON BOOKS by Tony Miksak for radio station KZYX-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
On Air Friday, August 31, 2001 at 8:35 am & Sunday, September 2, 2001 at 7 pm.

This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books...

I've just read a very satisfying memoir about fishing out of Noyo Harbor in the 1960s and 70s. Local readers of long standing will enjoy this book because it's about everyday people and extraordinary events they remember.

The rest of us will enjoy this book because it's thrilling, and skillfully reveals a dangerous workaday world mostly hidden from landlubbers.

Trolling On the Edge, The Story of a Noyo Fisherman was written by Jeanne Duncan, based on 20 years of conversations with her brother, Patrick Robbins. Jeanne is an excellent writer with an impressive resume. Patrick, now working well away from the ocean in the high desert of northern California, for many years lived an ocean-going life of risk and adventure.

Like most books I read and enjoy, this one is patched all over with green post-it notes marking passages.

Trolling On the Edge begins with Patrick's childhood spent around the men and boats in Noyo Harbor. As a young man Patrick learned pretty much every kind of West Coast fishing there is. He worked through the last successful decades of family fishing in smaller wooden boats. He got out of the profession about the time everyone was forced to convert to steel boats, bigger crews, and a more technical style of fishing.

"To most Noyo fishermen," Patrick says, "wooden boats feel more like home, and they like the pride and skill of capturing fish fairly and knowing that enough of them always escape to assure the continued health of the fishery.... What is worse for them than rendering their boats and methods obsolete is the fact that the changes make their unique skills worthless...these changes are taking a lot of the joy out of fishing."

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About the Author

Jeanne Duncan is a California writer who specializes in communicating technical information to the layperson. She has written extensively about California water issues, including publications for the prestigious Water Education Foundation. She has also been a lobbyist and political consultant. Ms. Duncan grew up near Noyo Harbor on the Northern California coast and has a lifelong interest in commercial fishing.

The narrator, Patrick D. Robbins, was a commercial fisherman at Noyo Harbor in the 1960s and 1970s and provided the true experiences related in this book. He now finds excitement as a corrections officer at a state prison near Susanville, California, and spare time sailing. He is the author's brother.

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Excerpts

The Storm

Trips like this are rare. If they were common, most of us would probably find another line of work. This was not the "storm of the century", but it was at least the storm of the decade in albacore season when the boats were out. We lost four boats from our fleet. Every fisherman has his worst storm: this was mine.

... We go out about 220 miles, about a day and a half running time, and we're fishing albacore off Cape Blanco on the Oregon coast. We have lots of fuel and groceries-- enough for about ten days. We have water to last a month, and enough food for a few extra meals. We are with a fairly large fleet, about 30 boats, but we're not fishing together. It's a loose knit fleet covering about 50 square miles, none of which are usually within sight, but we are within radio range of each other.

Every morning when you're fishing you notice the wind. When the wind starts blowing in the morning, it never dies down--it just builds. The earlier it comes up, the more likely it is to be blowing hard by noon. It's up early again today, and Ollie is swearing. When it's blowing, you get tossed around and it's difficult to fish. I'm thinking it would be nice if it would stop so it would be easier to fish, but it's kind of exciting. It has been blowing "small craft" every day, and on the fourth day it goes to gale warnings. That's no big deal.

Weather moves from west to east, so whatever they're reporting we've already had. We're also right at the southernmost point of the range they're reporting weather for that covers the Oregon and Washington coast north of us. The reports say, "Gale warnings from Tatoosh to Cape Blanco for west to southwest winds, "etc.

Cape Blanco Lighthouse is a weather station at the southern limit of the winter storms that strike the northern Pacific Northwest coast on a very well-defined track. The storm centers regularly sweep into shore between the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Grays Harbor in Washington. Off Blanco, we're probably going to be in the outer limits of whatever is going on north of us, just on the edge of it. If we were fishing salmon we would have gone in, primarily because salmon don't bite in this kind of weather; but albacore do.

We are committed, being this far out. It's a day and a half going in and your ice melts, you use up your supplies, and you have another day and a half getting back out. But it's not much fun fishing in a gale. If we were low on supplies we would take advantage of this kind of weather to go in and ice up and fuel up.

Old Flint is getting edgy. I can tell by the way he's throwing things around on deck that my cheerful humming is getting on his nerves. I'm bustling around getting the gear ready. He threw a rope down, and then later he tripped on it and swore. You never throw anything around on a fishing boat, for just that reason. You don't even throw matches on deck, because if you do they will end up in your bilge pumps and the pumps won't work when you need them. He has been fishing for 20 or 30 years; he's obviously irritated or he wouldn't have done it. I don't say anything, but he knows what I'm thinking.

By morning the swells are getting bigger and the wind is still picking up. It's over 30 knots, and it's impossible to fish. We're keeping in loose touch with the other boats on the radio and paying a lot more attention to the weather reports. The weather reports are not very accurate. They take wind speeds on points of land, and we are far removed from whatever is going on there. There's so much difference in the weather 200 miles offshore, you could be on another shoreline. By afternoon, they are reporting moderate gale winds, 40 to 45 knots, but we're getting a lot worse than that. It's getting risky to walk around on deck, and even hard to maintain your footing in the cabin.

Charlie Holt's boat is the biggest in the fleet, an 80- footer, and it has a weather machine on it with a windspeed meter. Charlie gives us reports about every hour, and I'm starting to wish he wouldn't. They are getting scarier. The sky is darkening, and black clouds are drifting toward us. Some of the boats are heading in, and the rest are talking about it. We are thinking about it.

The normal fisherman's outlook on heavy weather is not the same as most sailors or yachtsmen have who go to sea for recreation. A yachtsman wants to know exactly how high the waves are, and how fast the wind is blowing. He wants to know just what he and his boat have endured, so he can compare notes with other sailors or with things he has read. A fisherman, on the other hand, would rather not know. If it's possible to fish, he wants to keep fishing until he can't do it any more. He doesn't want to stop fishing because the radio tells him it's a gale. When it's so rough he can't fish any longer, he wants to know only as much as he needs to decide if he can wait it out, or if he has to get in behind some shelter or go back into port. Generally, a fisherman is very focused on why he is out there. He gets all the adventure he needs day to day; he doesn't savor it like he might if he only did it on weekends- -or like I do.

Soon we're getting enough excitement even for me. I've never seen 40-foot swells before, and they are awesome. Our poles are 60 feet high, and the boat nearest in front of us completely disappears between swells. His poles are 60 feet high, too. There isn't anything in your life that prepares you for 40-foot swells--not even 30-foot swells. I can't believe I'm really seeing the keel of the other boat. We stay pretty far apart, and even farther apart at night when we drift. But tonight you wouldn't call it drifting.

Tonight before dark, Ollie and I both start nailing things down. We don't discuss it; we just start doing it. Before we shut down, all the hatches are nailed down: not just lashed down, nailed down; because it's obvious it is still building and it's going to get worse. We've never done that before.

We're exhausted by the time we finish, just from fighting the motion. The boat was pitching so much it was like trying to nail moving objects while swinging from monkey bars. We had to do everything with one hand and hold on with the other.

The Helga II has 18-inch deck rails, shin height, the perfect height for tripping you and throwing you in the briny. Most of the newer boats have waist-high rails. The lower ones are more convenient for fishing, but you have to be more careful. We always put lifelines up at waist level as soon as we start fishing. You can lean under them to gaff a fish or reach over the side for something. But when the weather is heavy, you never let go of the boom. There is a hand line on the boom to hold onto going from the house to the stern. There is never any reason to go forward unless you're anchoring, and then everything is perfectly safe. We couldn't anchor out here, needless to say, because that much rope or cable would have filled our entire ice hold. While we were nailing things down, we were grasping the handhold, feeling something like rodeo stars. It was quite a ride. There was enough water coming over to keep the decks awash and slippery even then.

Before we go to bed we hear a woman on the radio telling us the winds are a moderate 25 to 30 knots, when our steady sail is about to tear off the mast. Then Charlie reports that the windspeed is 60 knots, and that he is giving serious consideration to wasting his ice and fuel for this trip. A few more decide to head in. We tell them we think we'll see what it's like in the morning.

When we go to bed we have the steady sail up. The steady sail is a fixed sail on the boom, not designed to propel the boat, just to hold it steady. The boom doesn't move on most fishing boats; it's a brace for the mast and part of the standing rigging (unlike on a sailboat, where it's part of the running rigging). All the sail does is keep the boat heeled over slightly. The pressure on the sail keeps the boat steady. Without the sail, we would whip back and forth with every swell and bob too much. With the sail up, there's a snap to the roll of the boat on the leeward side as it rolls away from the wind, but it slows down the motion of the boat coming back up. The boat is laying in the trough, and I'm sleeping with my leg wedged against the deck beam to keep from being thrown out of my bunk.

During the night it goes to full storm warnings, and I picture a square red flag with a black center on the Coast Guard Station. They put up one flag, a red pennant, for small craft warnings, which is anything dangerous to small craft, including gusts, up to 33 knot winds. Two red pennants means gale warnings, 34 to 47 knots. A square red flag with a black center means storm, which is 48 knots and above--no matter how much above. You never see two storm flags on the Coast Guard Station on this coast, because that is reserved for winds in connection with a tropical cyclone, of which a hurricane is one type. We don't have those here, so whatever we get is just called a storm--even if it's stronger than hurricane-force winds. We have to take our storm warnings seriously.

Winds above 64 knots are characteristic of hurricanes, and those conditions mean imminent danger, death; no boats under 40 feet long allowed out of the harbor. (Which isn't an entirely necessary rule, considering you wouldn't leave the harbor if you were lucky enough to be in it.) I've never seen the full storm flag on the Coast Guard Station. I'm wishing I could see it.

We get up a few more times to listen to the U.S. Weather Service acknowledge full storm warnings, and Charlie comes on the radio. He says the wind just blew the top off his wind gauge at 80 knots and twisted the cable. He says he is going in.

Hearing him say 80-knot winds triggers a memory I have of reading a book about heavy weather sailing. It mentioned 80-knot winds, and I think it said something like, "Large ships hug the shore, and small boats perish." This is not a comforting thought.

We would head in with Charlie except that with full storm warnings 200 miles away, going in doesn't sound encouraging. Old Flint finally says we'll have to go in if the storm continues to pick up. He mentions it isn't likely, since he has never seen anything like it before. I think he says that for reassurance, for me or for himself, because that makes it sound like going in is a solution. The swells are hitting the boat pretty bad--enough to consider firing up the engine. We're lying in our bunks thinking we'll have to do something pretty soon.

We could cut down the pounding on the boat if we turned into the sea and headed into it with the engine at moderate RPM. That would reduce the strain on the boat. I think the reason he hasn't done that is because he doesn't want to acknowledge that things are that desperate. A fisherman almost never turns and heads into the storm, because if it's that bad it's time to think of something else-- like heading in and looking for a point of land to hide behind. But he's considering it, because 200 miles off Blanco is like 200 miles off nowhere. It's the Oregon coast's Cape Horn. It's a long way to anything to hide behind.

Ollie asks me a couple of times what I think we should do, whenever another boat starts to head in. I refrain from expressing my opinion. He just asks me to see if I agree with him, which I would if he pushed me for a yes or no. He's a good seaman and knows what his boat will take. But it doesn't matter to me what he does; there isn't any good choice.

I'm a little wistful for Rudy's red wine and rollicking laughter to sort of take the edge off the terror. But I wouldn't trade the company for Rudy's shallow, 35-footer in this sea.

In the middle of the night, both of us are just listening to the creaking and straining of the boat, alert for any unusual noises. We're in our bunks trying to get some rest, because there isn't anything else we can do. But even if we had been asleep, we would have heard that thunderous crash. It was loud like a sonic boom, like something hit the boat. The boat shuddered, and everything on it creaked and strained and cracked. Whatever it was, it was a heavy blow.

Our bunks are in the fo'c'sle, so we have a minute or two on the way to the deck to imagine what that big bang was. The forecastle, or fo'c'sle, is the forward-most portion of living quarters on a boat, all the way up in the bow. The term fo'c'sle isn't used much anymore, because most modern boats have their water tank or fuel tanks there, or the engine that far forward to make room for their ice. But we had a fo'c'sle; we slept with our engine.

It's likely that the boat is breaking up--that's what we're thinking--but there are some other things it could be. Like a drifting log. We see those once in a while in the daytime, and you can't watch for them 24 hours a day. You could run into one of those clear out in albacore waters. That's often the speculation when a boat simply disappears during the night and is never heard from again. Another possibility is that another boat has hit us, and we're expecting to see a tangle of poles. There is a fair chance of another boat drifting into us in a sea like this. They don't shut down within two miles of you, but that can be too close. Sometimes one will get into an unusual current and drift five miles farther than anybody else during a normal night--which this isn't. That's one of the other possibilities.

As we run up on deck to see what is demolished or what is missing, we're thinking in terms of the mast, or poles, or both. We have those 60-foot poles, outriggers, that we use for both salmon and albacore. For salmon the poles have stabilizers attached to them, but they would slow us down too much for albacore so they are secured on board. Noyo fishermen call them "flopper stoppers", and on a calm night we'd put them in the water to steady the boat, but in this sea there's too much risk of them hitting the side. We don't have them out in this weather.

When we see what it is, there's some relief to our anxiety. What has happened is serious, but not hopeless. A wave has broken over the side and hit the steady sail about dead center. With all the guy wires from the poles, and the standing rigging attached to the mast, it is like one solid unit with the boat; very rigid, not at all flexible. So when the wave hit it, it was just as if a solid object had hit the boat. It was immediately apparent what had happened, because it had completely covered the deck with water when it hit, and even after we got up there it was still completely covered. It wasn't white water, it was green water; not mist, a wave. It hit the side of the cabin too, but that didn't shake the boat as bad as hitting the sail.

When that happens, if the water doesn't run off fast enough it can take the boat over. The next wave might put it down forever. This boat has a severe crown to the deck, so much so that walking to port or starboard, in either direction from the center of the boat, you can actually tell you are walking downhill. The design of the boat is close to a full circle, which is what makes the boat so strong. I'm thinking about that crown to the deck, and how fast the water can run off, and trying not to think about the vulnerable midsection where the next wave might hit if the boat doesn't right itself before the next wave comes.

It is unusual, but not alarming, for the boat to lean enough to take water in the ice hold, which has a 2-foot coaming rim above deck level to keep waves from splashing in. It's nailed shut now, so we aren't in danger of taking water in the ice hold, but we're leaning like a sailboat. The strength of the boat is like an egg, as long as it is intact and the forces are equal. A strong wave over the side could break the rail off and still not sink us, because there is a strong junction where the deck beams meet the ribs. But if another wave of that force hits us while we're still down, it will hit right in the middle of the ribs. So, how fast the boat can right itself will determine whether it comes back at all.

We have to get that sail down, fast.

We have to fire up the engine. We can never get the sail down with that kind of wind pressure against it. My heart is in my throat. This is fun--action. This should happen every day. It gets the adrenaline going. You could do anything. I don't think Ollie is thinking this as he starts the engine, but he's movin'. Being on deck in this storm is exciting.

It's also extremely dangerous. There's a big risk of being washed overboard, and any yachtsman would be wearing a harness. When you consider that waves like this can knock the cabin off a steel boat, we're a little foolhardy to think we can hold on. Fishermen don't think like sailors. To begin with, a fisherman thinks nothing on a sailboat is heavy enough. He puts a lot more confidence in brute strength, including his own. A fisherman will tie on a line if he has to be on deck alone, but resists it for the same reason a lot of us resisted seat belts in cars. You think, am I protecting myself or trapping myself? It's irrational, but we prefer one risk to the other. We're hoping to get positioned so we can get the sail down and get back in the cabin before anything else hits.

There had been three other boats in view, off and on, when we shut down for the night. When we got on deck, we saw something else spooky. We looked around and saw no other mast lights. Most of the rest of the fleet, except for a couple of boats, had been running for about two hours toward the beach. They couldn't be making much progress, because you can't run even half speed in this kind of sea and still control the boat. And a top speed of 10 knots (12 mph) is impressively fast for a fishing boat.

We had slipped on our oilskins and our "fishermen's Romeos"--just slippers with heavy soles, high enough to keep your feet dry in normal conditions. (Romeos is the brand name.) They have no heels, just high soles and elastic sides. Fishermen use them because they're quick to slip into after taking off your boots if you have to go back on deck. When you stop fishing at eight at night after fishing all day, minutes count between dinner and bed. I'm wishing I had my boots on. There is some danger of filling them in this kind of weather, but this is definitely a time for boots, and I'm aware of it every time I try to find someplace to put my feet where they will stay with the deck awash. Every time my feet go out fromunder me, all my strength goes to holding myself steady with my arms. We're getting drenched, even with oilskins, but they keep the chill out. It's raining some, but most of the water is coming over the side.

We have to head directly into the wind to keep any more water from hitting the sail and to take the strain off the boat. It will take both of us to drop the sail and tie it down, which doesn't leave anybody to steer. So we have to turn the boat in the direction of the wind and then put it on automatic pilot, which is risky. The automatic pilots commonly found on small boats--and on this one--don't respond to the helmfast enough for heavy weather. When it's this unpredictable, we always do our own steering. We are facing another adventure, but it probably won't be any worse than laying in the trough and waiting for disaster.

As soon as we turn, the difference is dramatic. There is much less strain on the boat, and for the moment the danger has passed. We keep heading into it ten minutes or so to see if the setting we put the automatic pilot on will keep us heading as close as possible to directly into the wind. You can't be sure until after it's on a heading for at least a few minutes.

It seems far milder now because of the heading. The fore and aft motion is much less violent than with the boat laying in the trough. But it's still a lot of action. I'm wishing it were daylight so I could take some unbelievable pictures with my rusty Instamatic. That would make Ollie testy at a time like this. It isn't an option, because we are operating on deck with two 100-watt light bulbs. That isn't adequate to see what we're doing, much less take pictures. We do everything in the shadows, by feel. Lights aren't important on this boat, since you don't fish salmon and albacore at night. On a drag boat we would have quartz iodine flood lights a foot square. Those would be handy right now for getting the sail down--if we could see through the spray.

It is more than challenging, fighting hurricane-force winds to subdue a flapping sail. While we try to get it down, the wind keeps whipping it out of our hands. We have to furl it as it comes down so the whole thing can be lashed down on top of the mast. It takes us quite a while, probably not as long as it seems. Probably about 20 minutes.

Once we get the sail tied down, we go back in to try to get a weather report to see if there's any sign of it letting up. We don't expect to learn much, since the reports for the last three days have considerably underrated this storm. They generalize for the area, and apparently we've been lucky enough to be right in the eye of it. The reports are still full storm warnings, 60 to 70 knot winds.

Neither of us has any thoughts at this point of trying to stick it out. Boats much larger than us prepared for 30- day trips have headed in. We hear on the radio that one boat has broken up during the night and three men are lost, presumed drowned. Debris was reported by another fishing boat. There was no search; the Coast Guard couldn't get a plane or a helicopter up. It broke up while they were asleep, undoubtedly, because they didn't even get a Mayday out. They probably heard a crash while they were in their bunks, like we did. You can't swim to the radio.

The wind still seems to be picking up, if that's possible. Now that we've decided to go in, the question is where. It depends on what direction we can run safely, and whatever harbor is not out of range...

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Catalogue Information

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