I was instructed by the skipper Donald bark earlier on how to read the radar screen identifying all the silohuette of land marks apperaing on the greenish illuminated screen. I was told of the verticle and horizontal lines and how far a distance they actually represent in actual nautical mileage, that eash was two nautical miles from the next line, the center was of the screen was the Iceland, the boat, me! All I had to do is maintain a course according to the compass and not deviate from the exact number given and keep an ey for any flahing blips on the screen as it meants that there is another vassel in the vicinity. That was about how much I was made to understand about na
vigation on the high seas and the final advice was scream for help if something is not right.
I was in the pilot house of the fishing vassel 'The Iceland', a sixty five footer wooden hulled vassel out of Sand Point,Alaska, the Iceland being one of the oldest vassel in the fleet out of this small fishing town. She was build by a Norwegian by the name of Paul martinez who it was recorded had constructed twelve wooden hull vassels in all and having all their names ending in 'Land' like Iceland, Wonderland, Dreamland and so forth. The Iceland was one of the remaining of the twelve that still sail the Bering Sea is search of fortune in the fishing industry. She used to be 90 feet in length I was told and was involved in shrimp fishing untill the Bering Sea ran out of shrimp. Her length was shortened to 65 feet so that she can be used for Halibut and salmon fishing later on. Many stories were told about the weird things that had been happening on the vassel by her crews from the past to present, they agreed that the vassel was haunted and that the late Paul Martinez had his prescence on her. Hence she became the whisper of the the fishermen who fished out of Sand Point. But to the five crew members of the old wooden tub the Iceland was as unique a vassel as she was old. She was a part of the fishing history of the fleet and stood more than just an equal among the more sophistcated fibreglass vassels with their state of the art nautical gadgets.
On the night in particualr we were headed for Dutch Harbor, Alaska considered the Western most of the United States of America that is inhabited and was at one time the only part of the United States the Japanese ever attacked during WW2. Today it is the fish processing town with a ahrbor lined with old battle ships that were permanently anchored and turned into floating cannaries. The Iceland was loaded with twenty five thousand pounds of Halibuts in her hatch and was headed for Dutch harbor to offload the catch of which the largest fish was seven feet six inches in length and weighed almost 450 pounds which was named 'Big Bertha' by the Skipper, Donald Bark. Halibuts are bottom feeders and average about 60 to 180 pounds they have a very strange shape as both eyes are located on the top of their heads like mud skippers. The bottom part is pure white while the top is deep sea green. To catch them baited hooks of salmon heads and herrings sometimes when available octopus tantacles were used and these were laid out in what is called a long linning method of fishing.
Anyone having fished in the Bering Sea for any length of time will tell you that it is no joke as far as hazardous work is concern for your life is worth twon minutes if you fall overboard, not from drowning but from the frigid cold waters. The weather was also something that fishermen gamble with where their fate is concern, where a gail warning issued can mean a matter of survival within minutes from a fair to a perfect storm. For one who had never fished in the ocean before this was quite an experience that i would not wish to repeat for i was wretched with seasickness on the first few days out at sea and had wished that I had never left land. But having had the experience I can today claim that I fished in the Bering Sea of the Pacific NorthWest and survived. I survived the Pefect Storm, the Rip Tides, the Sea Sickness, the Tempers and Frustrations, the slime and grime of commercial fishing. HOW MANY MALAYSIANS CAN MAKE SUCH CLAIM?
The Skipper was from Teanaway Valley in Washinton State and lived in a beautiful wooded valley where he also collected 'out houses'. All over his yard were old outhouses or toilets some used in the old days of the wagon trails. I had the oportunity to stop by his place on the way up north from Green Bay, Wisconsin in the early month of may in 1982. My friend and I drove in his car a Chevy Nova all the way from Green Bay in the Midwest to Seattle, Washington which took us three days or so. We drove through the States of Michigan and Minnesotta, Wyoming and North Dakotah and thn when we were passing through Spokane, Washington we had to drive through thick dust from the eruption of Mount Saint Helen a few days earlier. We left Green Bay on the 1st of May, Robert Serge and I in a car that could only hod a quarter tank of fuel at a time in its tank because the tank had a leak in it. Before leaving Wisconsin, we stopped by Little Suamaco and ehlped grew some
baby pine trees together with a small community of nature lovers, Robert's friends.
I met Robert at Belin Hospital in Green Bay where we were supposed to have a two man show, he with his photogrphy while I had my printmaking works. I was astonished by what I saw of his works, the pictures he had hung on the walls were out of this world. I asked Robert where he had taken them and he told me of his annual fishing trip to Alaska. I immediatly insisted that he took me with him that summer and nothing was going to stop me, not money nor the ordeals that laid ahead as spelled out to me by Robert insisting that it was madness for me to do so. Not to mention the cost but the trip itself would demand that I have some sort of accomodation if not a job lined up before I could even think of making the trip. But my mind was made up and partly due to the fact that I had to leave Green Bay for one reason or another at the time. I had graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay the same year, my son and his Mother had left to live in Germany and my love life then was headed for the rocks. There was no excuse for me to hang around the Packer Town any longer without drowning myself into drunken and disoderly despair.
As I stood in the wheel house of the Iceland my hands clutching the wooden wheel and my eyes peering out int the darkness ahead of me with and occansinal glance at the greenish illuminated face of the radar screen, my thoughts floated into all kinds of reminascents of my life past and future. Sometimes I would be elated from the factthat i was able to do whatmany in my own country had not and most probably would never have a chance to do in their lifetime. Sometimes I would feel the sadness and loneliness of the fact that there i was all alone as alone can be in thw middle of nowhere and no one to talk to least of all my loved ones or my family. If anything were to appen to me then there was no way anyone would know how to let my family back home in malaysia know excep for my exwife who was then living in Germany. But thee were just thoughts hat haunted me due to the solid darkness of the environment around me and save for the hum of the boat engine which by then had seeped into my being to become unnoticeable there was total peace and quiet.
I noticed the blip of a light cming downwards from the left hand corner of the radar screen about two squares away from the center. I was almost excited that I had company, I was not the only one awake piloting a vassel in the dark onf night, something I had never done in my entire life and was doing it for the first time be it day or night. I watched the blip moving downwards in a straight line at what would be four nautical miles if what the Skipper explained was true that each square represents two nautical miles distance. I was well safe away from whatever vassel it was that was floating silently pass by me, the center point on the radar screen. I almost felt like saying goodbye when it almost disappeared off the screen at the bottom but to my amazement the blip did not fell off the screen bottom but decided to start climbing right back upwards!! And what was more astonishing not to say frightenning was the fact that it was moving at an angle and head for the center of the screen, Me!
As I watched in disbelief and mounting fear I realized that it was less than half a square from the center point of the radar screen and that was I pressed the panic button and started to yell and screamed for the skipper who was sleeping in his bunk on the othe side of the wooden wall that seperated us. At the same time i was spinning the wheel like I knew what the hell i was doing to stear the Iceland away from the oncoming whatever vassel. The skipper was at the wheel without me realizing it shouting and screaming obscenities while I was stunned by the bright light that bathed the whole area in and around the Iceland and it was coming down from above the vassel. I stared in disbelief up at it through the cabin window while the skipper kept spinning the wheel and as I watched the huge what seemed to be a searchlight slowly became two huge searchlights!!
Then things started to happen like in slow motion of disbelief. The next thing I knew I was staring at the rear end of a huge ship, grey in color with all its lights on and the deck clearly lighted but no a single soul in sight. The ship slid away silently ahead of us leaving behind in it wake just a reflection of bubbles and like what ships normally leave behind in their wake. Then it was all dark again and the skipper told me to hit the bunk without as much as a word of what the hell happened. Later in the morning i found everyone sitting in th galley in silence and I thought I was going to get my head chewed but that too did not happen and from that day on no onetalked about it ever till we parted company. The only person who ever mentioned anything of the incident later was JR the Skipper's nephew who told me that he caould not sleep that night and was in the galley and watched the whole thing but could not register what truelly happened except that the ship whatever it was appeared out of nowhere and isappeared just as mysteriously into the night. He had told the Skipper of this and was told to not dwell on the incident too much.
Till this day even as I write I still could not belief that what had happened really did happened and I hve told and retold this incident to many but the more i talk of it the less i am beginning to believe in it myself. However it does make a great 'Fish Tale' after all anyhting can happen in the Unimack Path of the Bering Sea or so the Alaskan Fishermen used to say. Considered among seafarers to among the most treacherous stretch of water, the Unimak Path is often compared to the Bermuda Triangle and the Tip of Cape Horn.
vigation on the high seas and the final advice was scream for help if something is not right.I was in the pilot house of the fishing vassel 'The Iceland', a sixty five footer wooden hulled vassel out of Sand Point,Alaska, the Iceland being one of the oldest vassel in the fleet out of this small fishing town. She was build by a Norwegian by the name of Paul martinez who it was recorded had constructed twelve wooden hull vassels in all and having all their names ending in 'Land' like Iceland, Wonderland, Dreamland and so forth. The Iceland was one of the remaining of the twelve that still sail the Bering Sea is search of fortune in the fishing industry. She used to be 90 feet in length I was told and was involved in shrimp fishing untill the Bering Sea ran out of shrimp. Her length was shortened to 65 feet so that she can be used for Halibut and salmon fishing later on. Many stories were told about the weird things that had been happening on the vassel by her crews from the past to present, they agreed that the vassel was haunted and that the late Paul Martinez had his prescence on her. Hence she became the whisper of the the fishermen who fished out of Sand Point. But to the five crew members of the old wooden tub the Iceland was as unique a vassel as she was old. She was a part of the fishing history of the fleet and stood more than just an equal among the more sophistcated fibreglass vassels with their state of the art nautical gadgets.
On the night in particualr we were headed for Dutch Harbor, Alaska considered the Western most of the United States of America that is inhabited and was at one time the only part of the United States the Japanese ever attacked during WW2. Today it is the fish processing town with a ahrbor lined with old battle ships that were permanently anchored and turned into floating cannaries. The Iceland was loaded with twenty five thousand pounds of Halibuts in her hatch and was headed for Dutch harbor to offload the catch of which the largest fish was seven feet six inches in length and weighed almost 450 pounds which was named 'Big Bertha' by the Skipper, Donald Bark. Halibuts are bottom feeders and average about 60 to 180 pounds they have a very strange shape as both eyes are located on the top of their heads like mud skippers. The bottom part is pure white while the top is deep sea green. To catch them baited hooks of salmon heads and herrings sometimes when available octopus tantacles were used and these were laid out in what is called a long linning method of fishing.
Anyone having fished in the Bering Sea for any length of time will tell you that it is no joke as far as hazardous work is concern for your life is worth twon minutes if you fall overboard, not from drowning but from the frigid cold waters. The weather was also something that fishermen gamble with where their fate is concern, where a gail warning issued can mean a matter of survival within minutes from a fair to a perfect storm. For one who had never fished in the ocean before this was quite an experience that i would not wish to repeat for i was wretched with seasickness on the first few days out at sea and had wished that I had never left land. But having had the experience I can today claim that I fished in the Bering Sea of the Pacific NorthWest and survived. I survived the Pefect Storm, the Rip Tides, the Sea Sickness, the Tempers and Frustrations, the slime and grime of commercial fishing. HOW MANY MALAYSIANS CAN MAKE SUCH CLAIM?
The Skipper was from Teanaway Valley in Washinton State and lived in a beautiful wooded valley where he also collected 'out houses'. All over his yard were old outhouses or toilets some used in the old days of the wagon trails. I had the oportunity to stop by his place on the way up north from Green Bay, Wisconsin in the early month of may in 1982. My friend and I drove in his car a Chevy Nova all the way from Green Bay in the Midwest to Seattle, Washington which took us three days or so. We drove through the States of Michigan and Minnesotta, Wyoming and North Dakotah and thn when we were passing through Spokane, Washington we had to drive through thick dust from the eruption of Mount Saint Helen a few days earlier. We left Green Bay on the 1st of May, Robert Serge and I in a car that could only hod a quarter tank of fuel at a time in its tank because the tank had a leak in it. Before leaving Wisconsin, we stopped by Little Suamaco and ehlped grew some
baby pine trees together with a small community of nature lovers, Robert's friends.I met Robert at Belin Hospital in Green Bay where we were supposed to have a two man show, he with his photogrphy while I had my printmaking works. I was astonished by what I saw of his works, the pictures he had hung on the walls were out of this world. I asked Robert where he had taken them and he told me of his annual fishing trip to Alaska. I immediatly insisted that he took me with him that summer and nothing was going to stop me, not money nor the ordeals that laid ahead as spelled out to me by Robert insisting that it was madness for me to do so. Not to mention the cost but the trip itself would demand that I have some sort of accomodation if not a job lined up before I could even think of making the trip. But my mind was made up and partly due to the fact that I had to leave Green Bay for one reason or another at the time. I had graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay the same year, my son and his Mother had left to live in Germany and my love life then was headed for the rocks. There was no excuse for me to hang around the Packer Town any longer without drowning myself into drunken and disoderly despair.
As I stood in the wheel house of the Iceland my hands clutching the wooden wheel and my eyes peering out int the darkness ahead of me with and occansinal glance at the greenish illuminated face of the radar screen, my thoughts floated into all kinds of reminascents of my life past and future. Sometimes I would be elated from the factthat i was able to do whatmany in my own country had not and most probably would never have a chance to do in their lifetime. Sometimes I would feel the sadness and loneliness of the fact that there i was all alone as alone can be in thw middle of nowhere and no one to talk to least of all my loved ones or my family. If anything were to appen to me then there was no way anyone would know how to let my family back home in malaysia know excep for my exwife who was then living in Germany. But thee were just thoughts hat haunted me due to the solid darkness of the environment around me and save for the hum of the boat engine which by then had seeped into my being to become unnoticeable there was total peace and quiet.
I noticed the blip of a light cming downwards from the left hand corner of the radar screen about two squares away from the center. I was almost excited that I had company, I was not the only one awake piloting a vassel in the dark onf night, something I had never done in my entire life and was doing it for the first time be it day or night. I watched the blip moving downwards in a straight line at what would be four nautical miles if what the Skipper explained was true that each square represents two nautical miles distance. I was well safe away from whatever vassel it was that was floating silently pass by me, the center point on the radar screen. I almost felt like saying goodbye when it almost disappeared off the screen at the bottom but to my amazement the blip did not fell off the screen bottom but decided to start climbing right back upwards!! And what was more astonishing not to say frightenning was the fact that it was moving at an angle and head for the center of the screen, Me!
As I watched in disbelief and mounting fear I realized that it was less than half a square from the center point of the radar screen and that was I pressed the panic button and started to yell and screamed for the skipper who was sleeping in his bunk on the othe side of the wooden wall that seperated us. At the same time i was spinning the wheel like I knew what the hell i was doing to stear the Iceland away from the oncoming whatever vassel. The skipper was at the wheel without me realizing it shouting and screaming obscenities while I was stunned by the bright light that bathed the whole area in and around the Iceland and it was coming down from above the vassel. I stared in disbelief up at it through the cabin window while the skipper kept spinning the wheel and as I watched the huge what seemed to be a searchlight slowly became two huge searchlights!!
Then things started to happen like in slow motion of disbelief. The next thing I knew I was staring at the rear end of a huge ship, grey in color with all its lights on and the deck clearly lighted but no a single soul in sight. The ship slid away silently ahead of us leaving behind in it wake just a reflection of bubbles and like what ships normally leave behind in their wake. Then it was all dark again and the skipper told me to hit the bunk without as much as a word of what the hell happened. Later in the morning i found everyone sitting in th galley in silence and I thought I was going to get my head chewed but that too did not happen and from that day on no onetalked about it ever till we parted company. The only person who ever mentioned anything of the incident later was JR the Skipper's nephew who told me that he caould not sleep that night and was in the galley and watched the whole thing but could not register what truelly happened except that the ship whatever it was appeared out of nowhere and isappeared just as mysteriously into the night. He had told the Skipper of this and was told to not dwell on the incident too much.
Till this day even as I write I still could not belief that what had happened really did happened and I hve told and retold this incident to many but the more i talk of it the less i am beginning to believe in it myself. However it does make a great 'Fish Tale' after all anyhting can happen in the Unimack Path of the Bering Sea or so the Alaskan Fishermen used to say. Considered among seafarers to among the most treacherous stretch of water, the Unimak Path is often compared to the Bermuda Triangle and the Tip of Cape Horn.
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