Earlier this week, several hours close to sundown, I drove by our harbor, looking at all the empty berths, bearing witness to the fact that our local fisherman and packing houses had finally caught a break from the shortened season last year. I say shortened, but as a local fisherman, with 35 years notched on the prow of his Hogslayer IV, Ron Otremba, told me, “What the State don’t do to to ya, Mother Nature sometime finds a way.”

An affable fellow and former Del Norte High sports champion, with some track records still intact, Ron also finds time two nights a week to teach and coach amateur boxing, while traveling to all of his boxers’ competitions. He went on to tell me how the crabbing season traditionally runs from December 1 to July 15. However, this year, the meat-to-shell ratio imposed by the state was less than required during the month of January, which cost him and the rest of our local crabbers that month. He added that that was a good thing, because you didn’t want to be putting bad crab out to the public. On top of that, he explained that the months of January and February saw really heavy seas, with some rolling swells reaching 25’ and more, making the crabbing impossible.

Later that night, listening to the channel marker’s clang and the barking of the sea lions, I recalled the morning of March 11, 2011, receiving a call from the County CEO, informing me of the Japanese tsunami that was sending a 9 foot surge our way. Scant hours later, at the harbor, I watched some of the boats we’d attempted to tie down being pitched on top of each other, as others we’d helped untie had made it safely out to sea. There’s a lot of things sad in this world. That day, watching grown men grow misty eyed upon watching their livelihoods disappear, rivaled the others.

Later that evening, I walked up to the back side of the Battery Pt. Light House, a place where I go when I want to toss some things around. I sat there on the heavy beams facing North, looking out to sea. The night had that kind of wet cold that has a way of seeping into you, the stars complimented by a horizon, dotted with the lights of a several vessels setting and pulling their crab pots.

Closing my eyes for a minute or two, the rush of the shore break below my feet and the salty breeze whipping around my face, the pages flew and, of a sudden, I was back in the Outer Banks of North Carolina decades ago.

Pulling 80 crab pots a day for Maryland Blue Jimmies from a 14’ skiff in the Albemarle Sound had led to working 20 to 30 day trips on scallop dredger, cutting boats out of Wanchese and a widow-maker named Oregon Inlet, which was our gateway to the infamous “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” I’d been working a couple years on the pride of the Daniels Seafood fleet, the 87’ Amazing Grace, for Captain Rex Etherige, where empty fuel or water tanks were the only thing that kept us from staying out and filling our hold. We’d fished all the way up the Eastern Seaboard, at times steaming above New Bedford and, rumor had it, dangerously close to Canadian waters a time or two. With two four man watches, you worked 6 hours, then slept 6, on and off, until it was time to steam for home. You could gripe about a four week trip, the grub, missing home and the arthritic “grip” you got from shucking scallops, all that, but never a dry run, because Captain Rex fished hard and he fished good.

They say that a good sailor fears the rocks more than the sea and Rex Etherige was testament to that, knowing when not to flirt with the treachery of the bar at Oregon Inlet that had claimed more than a few lives and vessels over the years. You never worried with Capt’n Rex in the wheelhouse, but during one week in early September of 1979, that confidence was replaced with ice water-gut fear.

We’d put the Grace up on the rails for an overhaul and the Company had flown me, the owner’s son and first mate Joe Love to Aransas Pass, just north of Corpus Christi, to pick up a 57’ shrimper they’d bought, to take around the Keys and up the coast to the OBX, where they’d convert her to a fishing boat for the winter. After three days of ripping out the quick freeze units and an engine check, we set out to cross the Gulf of Mexico. A day and a half out, making good time in a calm sea, we got reports of a tropical depression south of the Cape Verde Islands, working its way up to tropical storm intensity the next day. The swell rose from 5’ to 10’ to 15’ as we watched the barometer heading perilously south to 27.95, while the winds approached steady 75 to 90 m.p.h..

Six hours later, we’d dropped our stabilizer “birds,” racing for the Keys. Joe was on wheel watch, when I heard him yell out an expletive. I looked up through the galley to see Joe diving into the chart cabinets as a wall of sheer black water broke over the entire boat, blowing out all the wheel house glass, which sent a river of shards roaring through the galley, as I dove into the sink, clutching the fixtures to save my legs.

We had run into a 35’ rogue wave, which ushered in Hurricane Frederic with 140 m.p.h winds right behind her and an eye that was later calculated at 50 miles east-to-west. Taking on water, with all our instrumentation gone, we pulled out the bin boards in the hold and, with safety lines tied around us, crab walked the open deck, attempting to screw them over the open wheel house windows. Three days and nights, we bobbed around the Gulf, ending 100 miles off the Tortugas, until the Coasties and our Cummins bilge pump saved our bacon and got us into Ft. Myers.

We got her back to the Banks and I went back to the Grace, until a couple months later, when a ‘greenie’ deck hand let a ’14 foot dredge swing, knocking me out into the Chesapeake in late November and 50 degree water. Luckily, the first mate put an eye in the line they tossed me, because my hands were freezing up, and they dragged me up the side of the boat. Two broken ribs and the fact that I could eat, but not fish, got me some per diem, an overnight at Norfolk General and the notion of graduate school. 4 years later, while finishing up law school, I got a call that the Amazing Grace and her entire crew had been lost at sea with no survivors.

I returned to my perch on Battery Pt., looking back to the inky horizon, where our crabbers are on deck hauling back, culling or setting out, while their counterparts on shore will later do the unloading and packing of the bounty that ends up on our tables. It’s easy to see that there’s no sure thing in this business of working that very fickle lady out there. And, like logging and much of life itself, it can be a crap shoot, with no guarantees. You could understand if they walked and found the steadiness of the 9-to-5, and many, especially those with families and the need to have a steady and safe gig, do. But it’s a calling and part of who and what they are and indeed, the rugged, no-quit heroism of this country. Paul Simon once asked:

“Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

To which I reply, “Joltin Joe’ hasn’t left and gone away. Tonite, he’s a mile or so offshore of a place called Crescent City.”

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Jon Alexander, Crescent City, Calif. Jon can be reached at jonalexanderlaw@yahoo.com.

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