Alaskan update .6

Wednesday(11) continued: so Bryan just quite and we need a new deck hand, and there is talk of another female coming onto the boat! Yay! But you know what’s strange? I started feeling a weird emotion I have never felt before in my life… jealousy. I am never jealous! Never! Then suddenly just because this new 25 yr old bartender who happens to be very attractive might be working on the boat my hopes just plummet and I get very depressed for about 3-4 hours… want to know why? Because with this new attractive older female onboard, I’m not going to be the main female anymore… all the guy’s attention is going to be directed towards this new girl instead of me… I love being the only female on the boat! Well, yea, at first it was a little awkward, but I got to know everyone, and every got to know me, and now I’m doing very well with them all, Allen and Dave are two good natured guys who I enjoy hanging around with even if they don’t want this little 16 yr old female tailing them… and with a new female onboard? Who just happens to be closer to their age? Little ol’ me gets left in the dust. So when I heard about her age and how attractive and pretty she was from my aunt, I was feeling pretty glum indeed. Then we find out she has to give a weeks notice to her boss at the bar before quitting, so we need someone to either fill in for a week, or we need a new, permanent deck hand. Uncle mark and I head up to the house in Homer and let Dave go home to his wife for the evening (which happens to be a hour to an hour and a half trip one way). And tell him to be back at the boat by 7 am. Then uncle mark changes it to 8 am before we drive off.. Then as we leave I yell out the window that uncle mark changed it to 9 am.

Thursday(12): Well today we run around town getting parts and food for The Star and The Poseidon and finally head back down to the docks at around 11… I walk onto the boat with the groceries and find Dave sleeping in his bunk. Turns out he was here at exactly 9:03 and waited a half hour, then hit his bunk to catch up on sleep. “Sure, be there at 9 he says,” Dave exclaims with a scowl “but don’t show up until 11?” hehe, he wasn’t too happy about that! So we rope Aunt Linda into running the skiff so we can make a couple sets off of Neptune. So we drive out there on The Poseidon then transfer over to the jitney to fish the smaller net in the shallower waters and Dave gets to stack the led line! He was so happy that he got to stack the net ^_^ Skiff men always wish they could stack the net because when your in the skiff there is no one to talk to, and you end up either talking to yourself or singing to yourself. So we make a set in Neptune for cost recovery and we end up getting a huge gigantic load of fish! Granted the net was so full of sea spinach that this one set felt like five sets, because Dave and I had to basically pull the net through the block because the hydraulics were not strong enough to pull a couple hundred lbs of sea weed and net through… so we finally get the net closed and the purse line up and we brail it into The Poseidon. We attach the jitney to an anchor then haul our plugged boat over to the fish docks so we can get it delivered. We tie up to the docks and Dave and I remove the hatch covers then I head off to use a ‘real’ restroom and to use the pay phone. Well I call Mein Vater and gab to him a bit, then I call my mother again… wow, big surprise! I get her answering machine again! So I leave a message then head back over to the docks and before I can shimmy down the ladder to get on my boat Uncle mark stops me and tells me that he found a new deck hand and that he is down in our hold pitching fish for Icicle. So I head down there and see that it’s Randy, who is 17. The guy who pumps the fish out of The Star is Tim, and this was his brother. I like Tim well enough so I was hoping that Randy would be something like him. Let me tell you something, I was thanking the goddess t=right then and there for getting us this deck hand instead of that other female.

Friday(13): Aunt Linda grabs Randy this morning and takes him to go get him a fishing license, rain gear, and some boots for the boat, and also to prepare him a bit for what its going to be like on the boat. While they are gone I start to clean out the fish hold when Dave comes back. We goof around until I finish up the fish hold and get out. We are putting on the fish hold covers as randy walks up with my aunt Linda. I can tell right away that he is used to cussing… a lot. Every other word to every word that comes out of his 17-year-old mouth is the F word to bitch. Joy. Well uncle mark comes down and we head out of the harbor to go and see if we can do any common property fishing… so we drive around for about 3 hours before he decides that there is no fish to be got today so we head back into the harbor. Meanwhile Dave is sleeping in his bunk and Randy is teaching my two-player solitary. We are headed back when I remember that Corah is coming back from Florida tonight at midnight and that I want to go over to Dave’s house to I can see her this weekend, so I head up to the top and ask uncle mark if I can go to Dave’s house this weekend. Not to mention I needed to talk to his wife about the tattoo I am attempting to draw and transfer some music from Dave’s computer onto my MP4player. So I ask him and he says he doesn’t know, and that I will have to ask my dad first because Uncle mark is responsible for me up here and if he lets me go and something happens then my dad will chew his head off (Which I know isn’t true cuz dad trusts me and he’s just awesome like that) and because Corah has ‘boy problems’ and ‘cant keep her legs closed’ which I think is a horrible thing to say about her! I know she does have ‘boy problems’ but I also know that she is a virgin. So I of course, defended my friend as best I could then I called me dad. Well no one picked up the phone so I called Rachel (his girlfriend from California who was down this week) but she didn’t pick up either, so I told uncle mark I couldn’t get hold of him so he asked me to get Dave. So I get Dave up from his nice long nap to talk to uncle mark about taking me to his house this weekend and confirm what I had told him. Then I try my dad again and get a hold of him. “Why does he want my confirmation?” Mein Vater asks me, “You know I trust you to make the right decisions.” Which I happened to tell uncle mark. “Ya sure, you can go”. So when we get into the harbor Uncle mark lets Dave and I go ahead and head home. So Dave and I go to his Pontiac Trans Am and we are out of there! Oh, My, Goddess!!! I fell in love today… with Dave’s car… I am so going to get a muscle car when I get back to Oklahoma! It was sweet.. If you go the speed limit all the way to Dave’s house it takes about an hour thirty, but if you ride with Dave in his Trans Am then it takes you about an hour. We passed vehicles at 100mph! That car is totally awesome!! When we got to his house his wife was waiting for us at the door and handed me the new Dean Koontz book! I was thrilled. Dave has 4 children, Page(5), Jonathon(3), Hannah(1) and Mathew Allen(one month). They are all adorably cute!! I love them all!

Saturday(14): Saturday I end up sitting on my butt watching movies all day. I have never sat on a couch for that long! Dave was insistent that I want some movies… because I haven’t seen so many of them, lmao. I saw Corah and her new Dutch hound puppy! Also adorable.

Sunday-Friday(15-20): Nothing much happened this week except a little bit of common property fishing but nothing more than that. Oh, and I want to slowly murder and kill Randy. He is so annoying, he cusses like no other, the only jokes he knows are sexual slurs, he stinks horribly, very ‘ripe’, I believe he talks just to hear his own voice, he thinks he was a genius IQ! Ha! Wonder who lied to him! And… this is the worst part.. He enjoys torturing fish. I almost pushed him off the boat in the middle of a set when he was in full rain gear. He grabbed a small flounder that had fallen from the net, placed in on the deck, and proceeded to stomp on it with his boot. Why? What good does that do! You could have just thrown it overboard and continued stacking! Du Arseloch!!! Das Est Bockmist Du Soukerl! I want to give him 50,000 paper cuts, rub salt in the wounds, stick him is as small a box as he can fit, then fill it with fire ants. Then after that slowly burn off his fingers one by one after ripping his finger nails off, gouge out his eyes, then drown him. Oh and of course I would attempt to castrate him but I don’t think there is anything there to castrate. But of course I couldn’t be the one to kill him so I’m going to hire a big murderous thug from prison. The bunks now stink like none other thanks to him. I don’t think he ever takes a shower or washes his clothes. Du Soukerl. Dave and I were so happy when the weekend came… we didn’t exactly need a brake from fishing, we needed a brake from Randy. I headed back with Dave again so I could talk to Tiffany (Dave’s Wife) about that tattoo and to transfer some music from his computer onto my MP4player.

Saturday(21): I love his car. When I come back to Oklahoma hopefully I will have enough money to get a vehicle like his 79 Pontiac Trans Am and my motorcycle… well today I only watched one movie and I transferred a boat load of music over onto my MP4player. I now have Buck Cherry (YAY!!!), Korn, Godsmack, Linken Park, some music for Brittany, and some others. I talked to Tiffany about the tattoo, and then we went and watched the new Harry Potter. The Graphics were awesome! The visual was great! The movie sucked! Lol. I hate the Harry Potter movies; they leave so much out of the movies! I also got a new watch, its kick arse! Its Union Bay, and Camo!!! Got to love the camo. Its not digital, which is fine, and it shows the date. No alarm, but that’s fine. Thank the Goddess I have a watch now.

Sunday(22): Today Dave and I got to sleep in until 10:30! Well, that’s the time that we had to leave his house by so we could get to the boat by noon. So I got up at around 8:30 and took a nice hot shower before putting on my clean clothes and then headed into the living room by around 9. Dave was snoozing on the couch half watching the television and half sleeping… I snagged an apple and a banana for breakfast before we headed out at 15 past 11 o’clock. We got to the boat somewhere around 30 minutes past noon and no one was at the boat when we arrived, so we were safe. We then headed out with the boat when uncle mark and Randy came a couple minutes later and made another huge cost recovery set in Neptune that plugged The Poseidon. We then headed back to the harbor and put ice over the fish because there was no one there to process the fish we had to wait until the next morning.

Monday(23): This morning Dave and I take the boat over to the Icicle Sea Foods dock and have Tim suck the fish out of the hold. Well water had gotten into the fuel pipes so I help Dave with what ever I can while he attempts t fix it and mark goes and gets some parts. Then we switch around nets with Paul and that basically is it for today.

Tuesday(24): Wake up, and we head back out to Neptune to finish up cost recovery so that Common property fishing would be opened tomorrow morning. Then we fix up some more things on the boat later that evening and I get a little bit of internet time in to check some of my messages, then I head to bed at around 11:30.

Wednesday(25): We get awoken at 4:33 am by the alarm clock on the boat and we head out to do some common property fishing because it opens at 6 am this morning. So we get out there along with Paul, Robert, Chris Perry, the Hanta Yo, and the Shrike. And everyone one is just jockeying around for positions when the Hanta Yo sets two minutes early! And as we try to block him off he rams The Poseidon! So now we have a splintered deck rail. You can bet uncle mark was not too thrilled about that. And then Paul set inside his set because he set to early so Paul gets all his fish instead of him, which is good for us since we (Paul, Robert, Chris, and us) are co-oping together. Well we make about 4 sets today and get an ok amount of fish for our work then we head back into the harbor to deliver. I catch word of going back to Chenic on the tender to fill it up with cost recovery fish, then common property fish, so I have my hopes up, I enjoy traveling. We deliver our fish by 4:30pm then we dock. Uncle mark tells us to start transferring food and our personal stuff over to The Star because we were going to be heading out to Chenic in an hour. So we start moving our things, and I immediately claim the bow bunk and tell Randy that he gets the bunk in the cabin. Dave is happy because between my snoring and Randy’s annoyingness and stench, he would choose my snoring any day. As I unpack my junk into the bow I look on the side of the wall and guess what I find? A real nice, very used, open pocketknife, made by Master Knives. I figure it was one of Roberts crewmember’s knives, but if they were that careless to leave it laying out, open, in the bow, then they didn’t deserve to own a knife as good as this one, so it acquired a new owner. Well turns out we are not leaving in an hour; instead we will be leaving at around 9. So Dave takes Allen to the laundry mat so he can wash and dry some of his clothes and I come along for the ride, (Anything to get away from Randy) and we meet this chick who works at the laundry mat who knows Billy (the crew member who quit) and turns out he didn’t go to jail… like we told him… and that he had a court date rescheduled for a later time… like we told him… so he didn’t really need to quit fishing and let us get stuck with Randy! Well Allen sticks his clothes in the washer and we head out to McDonalds to get some of their ‘crack-fries’. Dave gets a ‘McKinley Mac’ and a large fry, Allen gets two double cheeseburgers and a large fry, and I get a southwest salad. Well Allen and Dave just dump out their fries together onto a try and share them, and I polish off my salad and watch them eat oily, greasy, yummy, McDonalds French fries. They keep telling the other to get up and go get some more sweet and sour sauce to dip the French fries in but neither gets up to get any and I just sit there chuckling while they eat dry French fries. They tell me that they have it down to a science, and then they both start pushing the tray towards the other saying ‘go ahead Dave, they’re all yours’ and ‘no no Allen, I insist’ and pushing it back. I’m just watching all this with a grin on my face. When they finally finish with their shenanigans we head back to the laundry mat and collect his clothes then head back to the boats. We get there and Dave gets a nice parking spot and I decide to use the rest room one more time before we get on the boat again so I start walking towards the public bathrooms and Dave and Allen follow me “Where ya going gabby?” and “We’re following you now” and I just laugh and tell them then they get on either side of me and say “we’re your personal body guards” and Allen starts looking around real suspicious like and states “who’s this? Why this is Gabby!” then we get to the bathrooms laughing and I go into my side and they go into theirs. I come out a little while later and head back to the boat, not bothering to wait on them because I figure I’d give them some time to themselves with out this goofy little 16 year old female tailing them. Well 9 o’clock comes around and Paul and Mark decide that the weather is too bad and that they would wait until tomorrow morning at 4 to leave. So I head to bed in the bow of The Star.

Thursday(26): I wake up at 4 am to Dave’s alarm going off… let me tell you something, his alarm? Is the most annoying alarm ever, I wake up wanting to find it and destroy it. This is when I figure out that not only is Dave down here in the bow bunks, but Allen also just happens to be sleeping with him on the same huge bunk. As we are getting ready to actually get up and out of the bow Allen states “If we weren’t fishing this might actually look bad…” which it would come to think of it! One lone female, sleeping in the bow with two guys, 10 years older than her. Hmm… it does look a little wrong. And then Allen stretches his legs in a sexual way and states “Man I haven’t stretched that way in years!” and we all proceed to crack up laughing. I love those guys. We get The Star untied from the dock and Allen goes to his boat The North Star and we meet them outside of the harbor so we can attach a line to his bow and to our stern so we can tow them along behind us. I get stuck with the first shift so I drive from 5 am until around 7:45, then I get Uncle Mark up and hit the bunk for some more sleep. I sleep deeply until 10 then I doze in and out for an hour and a half before getting up. I then get out of the bow and head into the cabin to see what I can concoct for breakfast. Turns out Dave already made breakfast… scrambled eggs and chicken… yum. So I proceed to throw the rest of it out the window, then I make some big cinnamon rolls for everyone. At 2 o’clock we arrive and unhook The North Star from The Star and Paul takes his boat to catch the fish that are jumping everywhere. He makes his set as we get the tender ready to brail fish into the hold and then Uncle Mark gets the tender close enough to The North Star for Randy and I to jump onto the other boat and help pick fish out of the net. We gilled some more fish. When we had it all pursed up we started brailing fish into the tender. I got the self-assigned job of pushing the boats away from each other so that the brailer could fit in between the two and scoop out the fish. Well we also caught some Dog Sharks, the ones that uncle mark grabs by the tail and bashed on the rail then throws back over so that they don’t come back? Well this time everyone basically just throws them over cuz they don’t have the time to mess with killing them first… but arselock Randy stops what he is doing, grabs a dog shark and just hold it by its tail staring and laughing at it. I wanted to strangle him when he started slowly banging it on the rail then throwing it back into he water, then he gets another one and repeats the process and this time bangs a little harder because the last shark ‘swam off’. So I attempt to grab sharks and push the boat away. By the time we had finished brailing my back hurt from using my body to separate the boats. Well this load only filled up the front hold so Uncle Mark tells Randy and I to hop on Paul’s boat so we can help pick fish out of the net as we are pulling in the set. So Randy and I go and proceed to do just that. This set then fills up the back fish hold and we start heading back to Homer to deliver fish. Dave makes a wonderfully delish’ dinner that consisted of baked Halibut and corn. Wow that fish was good! Dave has a way with fish that makes me envious… well I get the first shift again and drive from 11:30 until 2:37

You know what I just realized? This week is almost over and then I only have one more week of work then I fly to California for a day then I fly home the next day. Just a week and a couple days and I’ll be back home in Oklahoma… wow. I’m not ready to come home yet!!! I don’t want to go back to Oklahoma! I love it up here! It just doesn’t seem like I’ve been here long enough… I’m going to miss the people and the friends I’ve made up here badly… and I’m going to miss joking around with the crew members, and with Dave and Allen, and I’m going to miss Dave’s family, and just everything in and about Alaska in general! There is no way I am not coming back next summer!