Sunset On The Bering

My favorite time of day is just before the sun sets on the water. From the deck I can see the golden light that dips below the grey clouds and touches the navy waters to turn them turquoise. The golden-crested swells roll relentlessly as the vessel topples over each one. They play an endless game of hide and seek with the horizon. The sparse rays of dwindling sunlight shine over the moving swells, onto the rails, and through each droplet of water clinging to the net.

Sunset at sea could be anywhere. Without land, boats, or birds I can imagine I’m home, only just out of sight of Catalina, or that I’m visiting far away foreign waters in Asia or Antarctica, or even, that I’m on another planet entirely, with alien creatures lying in wait below the surface. It is familiar and not, it’s exciting and boring, frightening and comforting. It is a blank slate upon which you can only project your own emotions.

In this ever-expanding desert of water, I find comfort in knowing and experiencing an untamed wilderness.


Took this photo out the back of the wheelhouse window a few weeks ago.



Blogging Off-road

Hello from Dutch Harbor,
 I have not forgotten you or this blog! Unfortunately I have learned that when you travel to crazy places like the Bering Sea internet is NOT a given, and I have not been able to post on the blog because of this small hang up. I only have internet on a shared computer in the plant office, so I can't sit there hogging the computer writing on the blog. I have continued to write posts on my own computer, and will put them up as soon as I have sufficient opportunity & internet speed. On the plus side, I'll be able to post appropriate photos along with the post at the same time! So this story will continue, you'll just have to experience it a few months behind me. From now I guess you could say I'm taking a step off the virtual beaten path and blogging off-road!
 Since my recent annexation to intnet-less BFE, I've been keeping a list of things about boat life that should probably bother me, but don't. I figure it's a good way to portray everyday life while remembering to appreciate how not completely horrible boat-life is all the time! It certainly has its ups (watching orcas from the office window!) and downs (having the fish freeze solid to the deck while I'm trying to sample aka work).

Without further adeau:
Things that should probably bother me about living on the Bering Sea, but really don't:

• The cold (surprisingly)
•  Constant motion (think about showering in a tiny little bathroom on 10ft seas, and I STILL haven't been seasick!)
•  Never knowing where I'm going to be in 10 or 15 hours, let alone tomorrow or next weekend 
• Odd-ball hours (Yesterday I waited for my offload all night, ate "breakfast" at 4:30 am, and then went back to my boat to sleep from 5-9 am and woke up to eat "lunch" and edit some data) 
• There are no windows in the "house" part of the boat
•  When its dark, its PITCH BLACK DARKNESS on the boat, in "town" and on the water 
• Its light until 10pm but dawn isn't till 9am My "room" is a tiny bunk in a stateroom 
• I share with the rest of the crew. (I mean tiny, I cant even stretch out my arms above my head while laying down, and I'm Short! ... But I can sit up so that's a plus)
•  Food at the seafood plant is tasteless, at least its a change-up from greasy boat food, sometimes they even serve "tacos"
•  I'm pretty sure everything smells like fish .. but i can't really tell, cause everything smells like fish 

Small things that actually drive me crazy in boat life:

• There is NO crunchy peanut butter 
• All the good seed/wheat/healthy bread is always gone 
• I've been listening to the same 400 songs on my ipod since February
•  I have yet to see whales from my boat/on the sea (but I did see a laysan albatross one day!) 

The only things I really miss are:

•  Riding my bike Solid mexican food - Margaritas and Street tacos are all I want in life 
• A nice glass of CA red wine 
• Waking up to sunshine through the window And of course all my friends in CA :)

So yeah that's a little update, I've just been sampling, working and hanging out on my boat. We're on land about 40% of the time and out to sea the rest. Its not that bad, I read probably two books a week. Let me know if you have any book suggestions! I'll post again when I can, but I'll continue writing while I'm out here so you get the full story eventually!

This is what Dutch Harbor right now: (Not my photo, couldn't load my photos at this time, they'll be up as soon as I can manage it)

Bering Sea Birthday

Location: Bering Sea

Temp: 29F

Swell: 1 ft

Yesterday was my first full day on my assigned vessel … and also my birthday. Yay?

There are good and bad points of spending my birthday here, but I figure this is an experience worth the sacrifices (And this is a happy post, so I don’t want to linger on the sacrifices I’ve made.). I can, and fully plan on celebrating with family and friends when I get home in the spring. As if we need any excuse to make a round of margaritas or crack open a nice bottle of wine! The moral of the story is: no regrets on the Bering Sea Birthday!  

 Anyways, here I am on my boat (yes in the middle of the Bering Sea)! It’s a small boat with far fewer than 10 crewmembers. I think it works for the boat, they seem to function well together and generally like each other. It makes the whole boat seem more like a team than a WORK STATION. They are all from the same town, and they keep all the clocks on the boat turned to their home time, which I think its great, although at times, confusing.  It’s funny, every night when a few of the guys turn in they always say “Thanks for comin’ to work.” … as if going into our little cubby-hole bunks bears any resemblance to going home.

Speaking of home, the boat, my home away from home for the next however many days, is really amiable! No one on the crew smokes, (I think a few are trying to quit. Good for them!), the house is kept very clean, and they make pretty good food! We had pizza subs for lunch yesterday. It must have been the first time I’d had them since probably 6^th grade, and now I’m wondering why I deserted them for so long? Plus, I lucked out in the fact that I have internet, so I can continue to post to the blog even while out on the water! (No photos unless I’m on land, but that’s ok, cause I’m not allowed to take photos of catch etc anyways.) Overall I think this is an awesome assignment, and I’m very happy to be with a crew of good people.

We’re running out to the fishing grounds now. Should take a while, so I have time to write! I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the sight of the Aleutian Islands. As we left Akutan we passed through a channel bordered on both sides by steep cliffs. Snow covers all of the islands except where these steep cliffs meet the water; there, with binoculars, you can see massive icicles dripping down the cliff like frozen blue waterfalls. It really is stunning. 

One of my favorite pastimes as of lately is staring out the window. This morning I stared at dawn … at 9:30am. The islands turned pink as the sun came up over the other side of the bay. The water was like glass – and then I realized it was because there was a thin sheet of ice along the surface … it might as well have BEEN glass. One of my favorite sights is watching the sea otters tease bald eagles with their snacks of snow crab. Yeah, you read that correctly, the otters eat snow crab and try to keep it from the bald eagles like we keep our french fries from the seagulls at home. Though if the gulls from SoCal made it up here I think they’d die of a heart attack from the cold shock (French fries may have been a contributing factor.)… or starvation, cause god knows they’ve lost all natural hunting instincts. They call the bald eagles here ‘Dutch Harbor Pigeons’, and they’re everywhere!

So to sum up my day I leave you with this Haiku:

Ice, otters, eagles

Pink dawn on snowy mountain

Bering Sea Birthday