I was young and naïve to the job that awaited. My older brother had secured a spot on the boat for me, and although I was excited to go out on the ocean for 21 days, it was with mixed emotion that I went, as it meant leaving behind a very special person in my life for that amount of time.
Groceries were loaded up and the holds were filled with crushed ice as I started to meet my 15 or so crew mates. There was Bad Bob, Wolf, Hollywood and the first mate/enforcer, a giant who went by the name of Bubba, among the many other interesting and suspect new friends I had. There was one guy who shared my name, but it turns out that was just an alias he chose to be known by. There were rumors that he was a wanted man down in Texas for a capital offense. I don't think many people really wanted to question him about his history or the strange tattoo on his hand.
There was a lot of work to be done, or maybe it seemed so to me, as I was the only greenhorn on the boat. I was introduced to the tool used to repair and replace the heavy steel rings on one of the 5 ton dredges, which was used to drag the bottom of the ocean for scallops. Seasickness was also described in detail to me and I followed along intently as I started to feel my mouth get watery and my stomach get queasy as we were steaming across the dead flat, calm bay.
I had finished up busting my butt crimping those steel rings in place and headed to the galley where several other people were hanging out. We had left late in the afternoon and I was informed that the trip out to the Grand Banks would take about 30 hours traveling at 9 or 10 knots, so I sat at one of the benches that surrounded the galley table on three of its sides. There was a magazine rack attached to the bottom of the bench and I reached down and grabbed one, figuring I would kill some time before I got a little sleep. The magazine I pulled out was Penthouse. I stuffed it back in the rack and pulled out another, this time it was a Playboy. I figured that either I was reading one of those or reading nothing, so I layed it on the table opened it. The magazine flipped open to the centerfold, as I'm sure it had been opened to that page many times before. As I said, I was young and also in love with someone very special, so I felt some guilt as the magazine started to open. That guilt lasted for the entire one second that the magazine was on the table and open in front of me.
The instant that it opened, I thought God was talking to me, and not in a particularly happy tone of voice. Some things to consider; I was young, in love, a greenhorn, tired, it was a very heavy steel hulled vessel, ten knots, getting dark, and what I was about to look at. At the exact same moment the magazine opened, everything went flying horizontally across the galley. I fell over and there was a very loud, menacing, crunching and ripping sound that went right through me. We had hit a reef and come to a complete stop in the blink of an eye. I later learned that the hull ended up with a four foot crease and that a hole had also been ripped in it that was about the size of a cat's head. Everyone got up off the deck and there was a lot of yelling, running around and confusion for several moments before the engineer informed us that we were taking on water and sinking.
As soon as I heard the word sinking, my thoughts went to my brother. He had taken up residence in a little room in the boats forepeak, downstairs and near the damage, and he couldn't swim. I grabbed a life vest and bolted in that direction to find him. I admit, I was so scared for him that I had forgot to grab a life vest for myself, which turns out not to have mattered. The boat was perched and balancing on top of the reef, so it wasn't going down yet.
As the water (relatively) slowly started coming in the front of the boat, we started taking a slow nose down attitude and slipping off the reef. These guys were all seasoned offshore fishermen and got that 5 ton dredge off the boat and down the other side in a matter of minutes to help anchor us in place. The water was still coming in and the electrical, electronics and batteries were now submerged so we had no way to radio in for help, but we seemed to be stable.
We had a little time to kill and a bunch of us were starting to get hungry. Although the galley was partially submerged we were still able to get in and grab some hotdogs and also some wooden furniture to make a fire to cook with. We brought it all up on top of the wheelhouse, got the fire started and were well into cooking, when we all of a sudden discovered another problem. The fire had heated up the steel roof deck and ignited the insulation and paneling below, so now we had a sinking vessel that was also on fire. Time to abandon ship.
Everyone got off the boat safely and piled into 2 life rafts, 7 in one and 8 in the other and we started paddling away. I think we were floating around for a few hours before a big yacht pulled up along side us. By that time, we were far enough away from our boat that it couldn't be seen. The folks aboard that nice, dry, comfortable yacht, presumably packed with food, would not let us board. They thought we were pirates - turns out that recently (back then) down in the gulf of Mexico, there had been the same scenario a few times; yachters picking up people in life rafts who turned around and killed the crew and stole the yacht. I guess I couldn't blame them, the yacht owners that is. We did finally end up in a Coast Guard station on one of the islands off Cape Cod later that night. Of course they had very little food to offer as they were waiting for a food delivery in the coming days. I had one stale, white powdered donut to eat and then went to sleep on the dining room floor.
A few weeks later, I found a spot on another boat and actually made it out fishing. That was my first trip that I actually made it out to the open seas. It was also the trip that I took my first wheel watch and the trip that I encountered my first hurricane out at sea, but that's a story for another time.
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