Anacortes

Anacortes, Washington will always stand out in my memory as the town where I got on my first ship as a licensed officer.  She was the M/V Makaka, a 110 foot salmon tender.  It was August 1981 and the ink was still wet on my 3rd Mate's license and after all the months of studying and taking the exams I was broke and needed to go back to work.  Dennis Heeney came through for me and referred me to Ocean Beauty Seafoods who need a chief mate to replace a man who was quitting before the end of the salmon season.  So I arrived on the docks on the north end of town, on Guemes Channel, with my seabag and my license in hand.

The departing mate met me on the dock.

"Good luck on there.  He can't handle the boat fer shit.  Every time he gets near the dock he does the 'Makaka Mambo'.  He's all over the place."

With those reassuring words about my new captain's capacity as a boat handler I climbed aboard.  The captain was an older gent with a beard.  He asked me if I had any boots or rain gear.  I did not.  He sent me off to Marine Supply & Hardware where I got myself a pair of crotch-high wading boots and a full yellow rain slicker and a pair of orange rubber insulated gloves.  The next morning we set sail up the Inside Passage en route to the Alaskan village of Klawock.

The route was one I'd traveled many times before, but this was the first time I was in charge of the navigation watch and alone on the bridge.  I was sailing solo for the first time.  We sailed up Rosario Straits, past the San Juan Islands and into the wide waters of the Straits of Georgia, past Texada Island, through Sabine Channel.  We passed log tows, log carrying freighters bound for the far east, and large tugs towing tandem wood chip barges en route to the paper mills.  As we approached Campbell River we slowed and waited for slack tide to make the passage through Seymour Narrows.  Currents can reach up to 16 kts in Seymour and it was nothing to be trifled with by a small ship only capable of 9 kts.  We loitered south of Cape Mudge watching the water boil with the current flowing out of Discovery Passage.

Most of the names along this route were given by the explorers on the expedition of Captain George Vancouver in 1792.  It has always seemed to me that Capt Vancouver was a rather depressed chap.  The names he gave some of the places in the NW and BC include: Useless Bay; Point No Point; Deception Pass; Desolation Sound, and the like.  But his legacy of exploration is indelibly etched upon the Inside Passage.

Once the currents subsided we joined the other vessels that had been awaiting the turn of the tide and made our way up Discovery Passage towards Seymour Narrows.  Inevitably we met southbound traffic that had been holed up north of the narrows awaiting slack water.  All the vessels squeezed through the slalom course of the narrows.

Seymour Narrows is like the portal to the North Land.  From this point northward we were enveloped in the green forest darkness of the wilderness.  The towns were smaller and fewer, the currents stronger and waters deep, cold, and dark blue.  We passed Helmcken Island passing to the right through Current Passage, the current now boiling and pushing us along at almost 12 kts.  I always liked the color coded navigation lights that guide one through Current Pass, showing red to indicate danger until the ship reaches the bearing where it is safe to turn and light shows white.

From there we proceeded to Blackney Pass and on to Pine Island and Cape Caution and up the channel past the fishing outpost of Namu and Fog Rocks and into Lama Pass.  There we passed the native village of Bella Bella and Dryad Point Lighthouse.  Then past the Milbanke Sound, where we felt the swells entering from the Pacific Ocean.  Then we entered Princess Royale Channel and passed the ghost town of Butedale and then proceeded up the long narrow misty Grenville Channel.

I had the watch here and it was a pitch black night.  On the radar, the Grenville extended like a narrow crack in the mountains and forest, leading onward ahead for miles.  I turned on the searchlight and shone it on the bank to my right.  The trees were so close it scared me.  I swung around the light to the left bank and those trees weren't that much further away. I decided I was better off with the light off, and continued to steam ahead by the flash of the radar and the occasional twinkle of a lighted navigation mark as we passed them.  It was a long, quiet, lonely watch, sailing through the Grenville.  The next morning we past Prince Rupert and made our way north crossing Dixon Entrance and into Ketchikan.

As the previous mate had warned me the captain struggled to put the boat alongside the wharf in Ketch.  To and fro revving the engines and lots of hollering and finally we were alongside.  We tied up to the NEFCO-Fidalgo Salmon cannery and took on stores, fuel and cash.  We were a cash buyer for the Cannery.  We would head out to the fishing grounds and buy fish directly from the fisherman.

The next morning in a drizzle, under a heavy gray overcast, we headed south to make our way around Cape Chacon and then up Cordova Bay to Tlevak Strait, a narrow rock strewn passage between wild wooded islands.  Low wispy stratus clouds lingered on the hillsides touching the treetops.

The channel narrowed and the current picked up.  We had missed slack water at Tlevak Narrows and the captain decided to run it anyway or we would be late arriving in Klawok.  As we approached the narrows we could see the buoys laid over on their sides with large wakes coming off of them as the water rushed through the narrow passage.  The boat was flying now, we were doing 16 knots!  The channel makes an almost 90 degree turn and the captain put the helm over hard.  The little ship came about smartly and the current caught the stern and we kept on coming and it looked like we were headed right at the bank.  The captain frantically spun the wheel as the ship laid over on her starboard in a 15 degree roll.  Suddenly the rudder caught, the ship[ righted herself and we swung away from the rocky shore and back into the channel.  Then we shot out the west side of the narrows and rapidly slowed as the current dropped off.

We sailed north past salmon seiners and arrived off of Klawock.  We anchored and seiners began tying up to us.  We set up our yard and stay cargo gear and rigged a brailer net and a scale on the hook to load the salmon into our chilled brine tanks.  I took my first shift running the cargo gear.  I'd swing the brailer down to the hold of the seiner and the fisherman would sort and toss the salmon (most of which were pink salmon, or "humpies") into the brailer.  When it was full, I hoisted it over the deck, noted the weight, swung it over the brine tank and dumped the salmon.  After 12 hours of this operation the deckhand relieved me. I was exhausted and went off to bed.  After 3 days we were full and headed back to the cannery in Ketchikan.  There they used a fish pump to unload us.  The humpies were pretty much worse for wear after their time in our tank and going through the fish pump, guts hanging out, flesh falling off, some of them green and discolored.  They all went up the conveyor into the cannery to be canned and cooked.  It was a long time after that experience before I was able to eat canned salmon ... and I still regard it with suspicion.

After a few weeks the salmon season was over and we steamed south to Seattle and in through the Lake Washington Ship Canal locks and tied up in Ballard.

An interactive Google map of the Inside Passage is available at: www.davidcmartin.com/map.htm