Things I have hit

Any time that you hit anything while on a boat, it feels as if the world is about to end. I don't care if it is just a stick, log, or a rock. It's makes a loud noise and the boat shakes like David Wells' gut after going down some stairs.

Now, while being Captain I have hit everything from lobster buoys to channel markers. Undoubtedly, the two funniest ones that I have been involved with were as a crew member, not running the show. If I were the captain, it wouldn't have happened and if it did I sure as hell wouldn't be telling you degenerates about it!

Anyways, the first full-time commercial fishing job that I had was on this boat named the Jerri Ann. Jerri Ann was a big ole girl with a wide ass, and you should have seen the boat! (insert rimshot here, please)

Well, we used to leave the dock at 2am everyday and have our first string of gear hauled just in time for all of the pretty little tuna boats to show up and play "fisherman" between cocktail parties and fundraisers just long enough to fuck us up. Unfortunately, the owner of the Jerri Ann(my boss) also owned one of those pretty little boats and he would also go tuna fishing during the summer with one of our crewmembers firmly in tow.

Our job on the big boat, which I thought was catching fish, was to supply him with a 100lbs of fresh bait everyday and a few swimmers, to boot. He would leisurely wake up at 5am, stroll on down to the boat and steam out to where we were fishing in a third of the time that it took us, the bastard.

What he would do when he got out there was pull right along the stern, I would hand him down the box of herring, and off he would go to catch a huge fish, make a ton of money and be at the dock by noon. Not that I'm jealous or anything..

We had a nice little system going and it seemed to be working out well...until "Crash" (as we later called him) had a slip of the wrist, so to speak.

The morning had started out normally enough, we left early, got Massa his precious bait (god forbid he actually haul a bait net like everyone else) and then he pulled up to get it...

-------------------------

Now, the Jerri Ann is a big boat...at the time it was one of, if not THE biggest gillnet boat around. It was 65' in length, 22' across the stern and stood about 7 feet out of the water. The boat that Massa was on was a little piss-pot of a rig. It was about 35', which is decent enough, but it was narrow at the stern and only stood out of the water about 2' from rail to water.

-------------------------

....the transfer of bait from our boat, down to their boat went fine. It was when I stood up and waved to the Captain that everything was all set, that it all went awry.

It seems that while we were jockeying for position, the last move that Derek (captain) made was to put the boat in reverse. When he saw me wave, he instinctively rammed what he thought was the gear shift from the reverse position, forwards.

Well, that was the wrong lever.

Instead of putting the boat into forwards, he grabbed the throttle lever right next to it and put the boat into full-speed reverse. .

It all happened in such slow motion. I was yelling "wrong way!"....Massa's eyes getting as big as pie-plates...his crewmember clinging onto anything that he could....

Then the impact.

We hit that tuna boat at what seemed like 30mph, but was probably more like 3mph. The problem arose in the fact that the Jerri Ann weighed around 70 tons while the tuna boat weighed about 6. The tuna boat spun around in a circle, lurched over so fast that captain and crew went tumbling ass-over-tea-kettle and water began pouring over the rails sending gallons of water through the wheelhouse door (my personal favorite).

After what seemed like an hour, Derek realized that he had made a bit of a boo-boo and threw the boat into "forwards", thus ending the calamity before we sent Massa's tuna boat down to Davey Jones' locker.

While we were pulling away, Massa asked me "Why'd he do that?", kind of like Derek was playing a practical joke on him or something. At that point, I was just trying to hold it together...you know, because of the seriousness of the situation. I don't know why, but him asking me that made me lose it entirely and I ended up bursting out laughing, much to the chagrin of my Massa.

---------------------------

Massa, Derek's Dad, is a total asshole to everyone and everything, but to no one more so than Derek. He had been extremely hard on him about everything while he was growing up and not much had changed after he grew up.

With Derek smashing into his "baby", who knows how he was going to react?

We all gathered around the VHF speaker outside the wheelhouse to hear the conversation and have a few laughs. After a few minutes, we finally heard the call...

"You on there Derek?"

visibly shaking..."Yeah, Dad"

"You want to put out a few fenders next time?"

That was it! We couldn't believe it. I had never been so let down in my life.

I don't know if he was on some high dose of elephant tranquilizer that morning or what, because normally that would have cause his head to explode like that dude from the beginning of Scanners.

Throughout some conversation the rest of the day we found out that Derek had hit the tuna boat so hard that he ripped a few of the bunks clean off the inside of the hull. He also knocked some stuff off the wall of the engine room, but nothing too major. As far as the Jerri-Ann was concerned, we had a 2-inch scratch on one of the letters on the stern.

Next time, I'll share the other "crash story" that didn't involve me at the helm. It was much more spectacular.

75 foot party boat going 20mph + big rock = cool blog entry