Whale Passage

I had gone back to Kodiak in the Spring of 1980 for reasons that I don’t remember now. Most of my life following the military, I had spent running from one thing or the other. I had freedom, and no one could tell me when or where to go.

I probably was running from something, more than likely myself.

It was a rainy spring, as most springs on Kodiak are. I spent a great deal of time in the little bar adjacent to the bowling alley, drinking Christian Brothers Brandy (“someday I’m gonna make a pilgrimage to Reedly California where the good monks produce their fine elixir”), playing music and in general neglecting responsibility which was better attended to. Somewhere along the way I scored a term aboard the Bold Lady, a refit ugly old gulf coast, Benders shrimper that had been tanked and converted for multi use fishing in the Alaskan Waters. On April fools someone had left a seacock open, and the big white boat sank at the moorings. Flooding the engine room before being able to be raised, the main engine underwater, a major rebuild was now in order. The crew which consisted of the Chuck the skipper, Chucks brother, Hank (“Uncle tape”) and Glen Ingvie (who had owned a boat which had sunk the previous year) were busy rebuilding the big 12 cylinder diesel in order to retrieve the crab pots which were left in the water following the mishap. They were anxious to get that done in order to rig for shrimp season which was coming up.

So I got to watchdog the boat with the understanding that if anybody quit, I would be next in line as crew. It was a pretty groovy job, all I had to do was make sure the thing didn’t sink and that no unauthorized people came aboard in exchange for a warm place to sleep and cook meals. I would fish regularly, catching flounder, ling and bass right there in the channel where she was moored, side tied. Once the scalloper tied in front of the Bold Lady turned me on to a gunny sack full of giant succulent scallops, just waiting to be shucked and fried. The rain fell with regularity, mostly a light mist, as the island awoke from its winter sleep, and boats made their way up and down the Near Island channel to or from fishing grounds. The Alaska Star Cannery was busy pumping out the end of the season Dungeness and Tanner crab, and clouds of steam from the processing permeated the town, mixing with the smell of the ice cold Pacific, the surrounding primal forests mosses and lichens producing a nourishing almost edible smell that still lingers in my memory, and possibly always will.

Chucks brother decided to cash it in, and so I became a crew of the notorious Bold Lady. We finished overhauling the big engine, and finally one day we were ready to get out there and bring back the gear. Our first trip out, we rounded Cape Chiniak, a very rough stretch even on a good day, when the rudder post decided to snap, leaving us without steering. Chuck and I descended into the lazarette in pitching, rolling thirteen foot seas, and I held the two parts together, as best I could while Chuck welded them, both of us standing in shin deep cold water. The repair held, and we retrieved a portion of the gear near the southwest part of the island under gray skies and gray seas.

Delivering the gear to town, I felt like a king to be fishing again. We had tanked the few crabs that were in the pots (even though they were out of season), and sold them under the table to the Kodiak VFW. Back in town, we offloaded the gear (and illicit crab), split the money and lived like pirates for a few days, partying day and night.

The next trip out, we headed over to the Shelikof Strait, another bad piece of water, the large pass between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. Leaving in the late afternoon, we hit Whale Passage around 2200. Whale passage is an area where, when the tide turns, the entire Shelikof Strait / North Pacific channel necks down to a funnel like the center of a giant hourglass. Whale Pass only lets one through on slack or standing tides. At the tidal change it becomes a howling, raging torrent of energy with great swirling whirlpools big enough to eat large ships, sucking them into the oblivion of the depths.

I had the first watch, everyone else was asleep down below, and I was simply minding the autopilot, making small corrections here and there as we steamed east under fair skies, a crystal sunset and glassy waters. Near perfect conditions.

Around 2300 were well clear of Whale Passage, and the night had fallen to a blanket of ink, with just the profiles of the jagged peaks framed like cardboard cutouts on a quilt of black. Scanning to the port side, I noticed a group of three elongated oval lights which seemed to be hovering above the mountains in the distance several miles away. I figured that they were just a Coast Guard helicopter hovering, out on night ops, or maybe a SAR. I watched for a minute with barely any interest, when almost instantaneously they accelerated, moving toward the starboard across our bow at a speed that I could not even comprehend, and were just as quickly gone, out of sight. As they crossed our bow, the autopilot suddenly kicked off, the rudder went hard to starboard, and the Bold Lady started chasing her tail. I shot below, woke up Chuck who reset the thing. I told him the story, but was met with skepticism, so I quickly backed off, saying no more.

The rest of the trip went uneventfully except for the return through Shelikof Straight, when we were in the midst of a raging storm, and the swell had kicked up to some 25 feet or so. I had the night watch then too, and was watching an approaching boat on the radar, watching him close on us down range, closer and closer. I couldn’t see shit through the driving spray and mountains of water. Out of the blackness to our port passed the target, another fishing boat no more than a couple of hundred feet away….way too close for comfort in those conditions. We made it back to town, offloaded the gear again and rigged for shrimp.

I learned how to mend net sitting there in the parking lot with the guys, singing a-capella to the rhythm of the net needles and twine. My tenure as a shrimper didn’t last long. On the first trip out, with barely 3000 pounds in the hold, the main engine broke a connecting rod, shot it right through the block with the sound of a hand grenade exploding. When we went below it was a surreal scene, broken piston rod playing hide and seek in and out of the engine block, spraying oil on everything like some mechanical artery had been severed. We were towed back in, and had to wait at Whale Passage while the tide turned. It was the first time I had ever seen that, and I suppose my own eyes were the size of dinner plates, as the tranquil scene was replaced by utter chaos from Neptune.

I got my three hundred dollar check for three months work, booked a cheap standby ticket and flew back South. Haven't been back since.