Lost at Sea

ON MY FIRST TIME OUT AS A COMMERCIAL FISHERMAN, MY SHIP SANK, MY CAPTAIN DIED, AND I WAS LEFT ADRIFT AND ALONE IN THE PACIFIC.

- Alec Frydman

The Evening was small in the shadow of the other boats. When I arrived at the dock, it was well past midnight, and a misty rain was falling the edge of a storm far out at sea. Mick, the captain, was blunt and salty; not old, but weathered. He led me on board and pointed down the ladder to the hull, where I immediately got into bed and fell asleep. When I woke up, Mick had gone into town, and I began to look around in the mute light of the overcast morning.

Our plan that October was to fish for albacore off the coast of Washington State. These would be short trips-four or five days at a time to train me up for the summer, when I'd join Mick for a real voyage. I'd taken a Coast Guard course at a community college and had my Merchant Mariner certificate, but I'd never worked on a fishing boat before. In the daylight, the Evening looked ramshackle, as if it had survived 80 years in the northern Pacific more by luck than design. I found a few photos of Mick's family, and the Evening's Coast Guard certificate. "Constructed 1941, 43 feet, commercial (uninspected)." On deck, fishing lines were tangled with seaweed. Scattered everywhere were about a dozen rubber doormats stamped with the words THANKFUL, GRATEFUL, AND BLESSED. On a workbench stood a statue of the Virgin Mary.

We spent a few days waiting for the weather to clear. Mick did paperwork and chores and I tidied the boat. One day we took the catch he had stored in the hold's briny ice to a cannery on a spit of land between the ocean and Grays Harbor. Water from the Chehalis River flowed into the harbor, forming a standing wave where the two bodies met. I watched a ship leaving the harbor.

When it crossed the river bar, it pitched and rolled. Mick and I would be taking the same route in a few days, but the Evening was half the size of that ship, old, and made of wood. The wave looked large enough to swallow us.