Seaworthy (18 page)

I adjusted the throttle and the main spool's hydraulic valve to achieve the correct angle of line from hauling block to water, then tweaked the jog stick back and forth to get the correct angle in the other dimension of boat to gear. Hauling gear is not pulling all forty miles to the vessel, but rather driving the boat along the string while winding the line up and out of the water. A snap broke the surface. The leader was slack, indicating nothing on the hook. I grabbed the snap from the main line and handed it to Arch, who stood beside me at the rail. Arch clipped the leader to the messenger line that ran to the stern, where the leader was received by Dave Hiltz, who coiled it neatly into a box. “One down, seven hundred and ninety-nine to go,” Arch said.

Hauling back is the time to ditch the rose-colored glasses you've donned while setting out and replace them with the 3-Ds. The physical realm of boat and gear is all-dimensional. The line wanders around just below the surface in every direction on the compass and at different depths. And the boat follows it left and right, but in rough weather it may go up on a wave and down into a trough when the gear is doing the reverse. The emotional side of hauling gear is all up and down, and dramatically different. While the mental state during setting out is relatively buoyant, the mind makes so many transits through the multitude of psychological altitudes during the haulback that to refer to a roller coaster doesn't even come close. Constant retallying of our status, measured in a number of ways, is how we mark time during and along the hauling of the string.

I don't wear a wristwatch, never have. The time of day is insignificant (except for 10:00 A.M., when we're fishing among the fleet and radio checks become necessary). I don't often ask watch wearers for the time. I ask, “How many floats to the next beeper?” “How many fish did we have that section?” “How much did that fish weigh?” The answers to these and other similar questions are factored into the fluid equation of how things are going. If we catch three fish in the first section, I multiply that by ten and figure we'll have thirty for the day. If we catch nothing on the first section and four fish on the second, I figure either we'll average two fish per section or we'll have eight on the third and sixteen on the fourth. Of course, if the third section has nothing to show, I have to recalculate down to more realistic numbers. There is absolutely no fancy math in my method of marking or predicting. Yet it's as accurate as any other formula would be. Although there is no way of knowing until the last hook comes aboard how successful the set was, that has never stopped me from averaging, multiplying, and speculating. The 3-D glasses are worn from the first hook to the very last, up to the tippity-top of every hope and down to the pit of every disappointment. The only certainty is that there is no certainty. I learned that the hard way, and it's the only thing I really know about fishing.

For the next six or seven weeks, we would be living in the Grand Banks bubble, which has its own bizarre relation to time. Most of my nineteen-year offshore career had been spent in that bubble, and I now realized that the ignorance and protection afforded by the total envelopment in a world apart was a lifestyle that I had chosen, too, by residing on the tiny, remote Isle au Haut. The island bubble is every bit as impenetrable from the outside as is the fishing bubble. Little news filters through from the world outside. The only news that's considered worthy is that generated from within. When I was at sea, I wouldn't be touching base with the island and they wouldn't waste their time wondering what was happening here. Time of day and day of week were of no consequence out here in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. What mattered were how many gallons of fuel remained in our tanks and how old the bottom of the trip, or first fish caught, was. Days were not scheduled around mealtimes. Meals were taken when there was opportunity, regardless of the hour, the number of hours since the last meal, or gnawing hunger. Lunch was not included in the Grand Banks vocabulary. A candy bar or a bag of chips could be gobbled during haulback while you were searching for the end of gear that had been severed by a ship, chewed by a shark, or stretched beyond breaking strength by the tide, making part-offs disconcertingly welcome late in the afternoon.

Life in the Grand Banks bubble did not require a calendar. Here there exist none of the constant shoreside reminders of holiday gifts to buy, appointments to schedule, or medications to ask your doctor about. There was no sudden shock of realization that you had forgotten to pick the dog up from the vet, water the plants, or get the car serviced. There was no church service, no minute of silence, no day of rest. Although men of the sea are prayerful at times, worshipping of gods is antisocial, personal, and soundless, done in absence of the nudge from Sunday. During this trip a presidential election would take place, and we wouldn't vote, and the results hardly caused a ripple—literally—in our waters. People could die, be buried and eulogized, without our ever hearing that they'd been sick. During the course of some careers on the Grand Banks, babies of friends and family had been conceived, been born, and graduated from high school, and nary a gift was ever sent. This was the epitome of existing in the moment, I thought, the here and now. We would live, breathe, eat, and sleep swordfishing. Being nonparticipants in the larger world is twofold. Fishermen are absent from that world much of the time, and even when present, they don't seem to care.

Within fifteen floats I was completely comfortable in the physical dimensions of driving and hauling as a southpaw. The orange floats suspending the line at five fathoms below the surface and marking the gear came alongside faster and faster. I pulled snaps and steered float to float like someone playing a game of connect the dots. Although we weren't catching anything, I would describe my mood as one of total bliss. I like hauling gear, because I do it well. Setting the gear out is the most important part of my job. It's where the financial payoff is. But hauling the gear is what keeps me coming back. Of course, hauling gear is more exciting when fish are being caught. But I enjoy the process. Like shooting a single birdie in many eighteen-hole rounds of golf, the feeling I get during haulback erases whatever badness has preceded. Hauling longline gear is fun—plain and simple. I would prefer to haul forty miles of blank sword gear than to pull traps full to the doors with lobsters. That's not to say I don't care about money. I do. I love money. In fact, I need money just like everyone else. And when I'm making money fishing for sword on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, there's nothing better. Don't we all dream of making money doing what we love? How many of us actually get to try? Although it's fatiguing, especially in heavy weather, I have never regarded hauling longline gear as work. Hauling gear is really
driving
the boat, rather than riding aboard it with the autopilot engaged. Now, as I was turning the rudder to starboard to follow the gear around a corner, the deck moved under my feet at my command. Leaning into the port rail with my left hip, my legs pushed the
Seahawk
away and around the bend back to port. I've never been on a surfboard, but I suspect that it's the same sensation in a miniature version.

Machado graced us with his sleepy-eyed presence shortly after we began the second section. “Bring 'em on, Linny,” he said, smiling. “I'm ready!” He spit on a sharpening stone and ran a knife in and out of the goo until it was honed to his specifications. Things were going smoothly. The crew hustled to coil leaders and wind ball drops onto their small spool. Except for there being no fish yet, this was as happy as I could be. I now knew that we could run to the east and fall into a position among the fleet. All we had to do was wind up the rest of the gear. We would be done when the sun reached its peak, and headed to where the big fish live. I had never before been skunked, and I knew that today would not be a first in that department. We still had many miles to haul, and the set had looked too good to come back empty.

“Fish on!” I yelled as the line tightened and the angle out of the water increased. I stopped the drum from turning, threw the boat out of gear and then into reverse, stopping our forward motion so that the taut leader was completely vertical and directly beside me. The heavy snap created a sharp V in the main line that moved along the line as the snap slipped with the fish tugging down and away. “It's green. Get gaffs,” I said, referring to the fact that the fish was indeed lively and would need to be gaffed when I managed to finesse it up close enough to the surface.

“What is it?” Hiltz asked as he stood poised with a ten-foot gaff pole, ready to strike.

“Swordfish,” I said confidently. And I knew it was, even though I hadn't seen what was now tugging the line deeper. I just knew from experience how a swordfish acts on longline gear. The fish was taking the line deep. A shark would run line on the surface, and a tuna either would be pulling much harder or circling or would have sunk a bunch of gear. The difference is difficult to articulate. But once you've felt a few fish, there's no mistaking a sword for anything else. Sharks and tuna just feel and act completely different. I opened the valve to turn the spool slowly and soon had the snap out of the water again and within my reach. Arch reached for the snap. “Leave it on the line. If the fish takes off, we won't lose it or pull the hook.” I wanted badly to haul the fish myself. But with Archie being the age he was, and with the experience he had “wiring” fish, I just couldn't brush him aside the way I always had younger crew in the past. Arch squeezed the leader with one hand, then the other. He pulled with his back, gaining a few feet of the monofilament aboard with each bend and twist at his waist. The slack mono fell at his feet. He stopped pulling when the fish decided to dive, and allowed the slack to run through his hands and back into the water. When the fish stopped, Arch began again. I took the opportunity to instruct Hiltz in what Arch was doing right, knowing that Hiltz would be wiring live fish at some point. “All you can pull with one hand. And never take a wrap. Let the slack fall onto the deck. But don't ever move your feet.”

Like two players in a game of tug-of-war, Arch and the fish went back and forth with the leader for some time. When the leader began swimming in circles rather than diving straight down, I knew that Arch had the upper hand. In the fifth death circle, I saw a flash of color that sent my heart into overdrive. “Nice fish! Next circle, when it comes out from under the boat, it should be close enough to gaff. Make sure you get it in the head,” I instructed both Tim and Dave, who now waited anxiously on either side of Archie. The fish came out from beneath the hull. Two gaffs were sunk expertly into its head simultaneously. The men led the fish aft a few feet to the door and pulled it onto the deck. Silver, pink, and blue, the fish's sides glistened in the sun. Its back was royal blue, darkening to nearly black in the dorsal fin. The fish flopped a couple of times the way fish do, and then lay motionless. The grape-Popsicle purple pigment ran out of its bill with the last pump of its gill plate. I restrained my emotional high, knowing that we had many miles of possible lows to navigate. But in my mind's eye, I pumped a fist.

Machado severed the sword from the head with a meat saw, then the head from the body. Blood spurted and then ran in a small stream onto the deck, forming a thick puddle that was washed away with the deck hose and out a scupper. I estimated the weight to be around 150 pounds, said, “Good job,” and turned my attention back to the controls and hauling. I couldn't wait to feel the next sword. The men stood and admired the beautiful fish. We had come a long way to get to this point. There were some high fives behind me and some very relieved voices. Arch pulled a camera out of nowhere and snapped a few pictures as Machado gutted and cleaned the magnificent fish. I wished the men would hurry back to their respective stations, but I remained quiet while they reveled in the glory of their first fish. So maybe we could do this.

“Greenhorn! Time for the greenhorn's initiation!” Machado announced as he pushed the swordfish's heart toward Hiltz. “You have to eat the heart. Otherwise we'll have bad luck.” We all laughed at the prospect of bad luck in light of how unfortunate we'd been so far. Hiltz grabbed the heart and took a bite out of it as he would an apple. He chewed and swallowed, smiled and went for another bite. Before he could sink his teeth back into the heart that was still pulsating in his hand, Arch batted it away, issuing a warning about getting sick. Hiltz chuckled as he wiped blood from his black-bearded chin with the back of his glove. I was sure that he would have consumed the entire heart. He actually looked like he'd enjoyed the bite he managed to get down before Arch intervened. I turned back to the hauling station, glad I didn't have to witness any more of the eating ritual. I recalled many a greenhorn puking at the rail at just the thought of nibbling a heart freshly cut from a fish.

“Hey, Linny!” Arch yelled. I turned to see him aiming his camera at me. I flashed a big, cheesy, toothy smile, then quickly turned my attention back to the job of getting the gear aboard. I hauled and clipped leaders to the messenger line as the men continued to ogle the fish. Hiltz made a comment about his only desire being to catch fish, and we all laughed. I had never known such a feeling of relief. Sure, I was excited to see the fish. But the feeling of freedom from worry was much stronger. We were able to haul the gear. Machado was already placing a tail strap on the fish with which to lower it into the hold and pack it in saltwater ice. The evil spell was broken. The demons that haunted the
Seahawk
had been exorcised with the letting of sword blood on deck. We had caught a fish. I love my job, I thought.

“Shark!” There was no mistaking a leader that held a menacing blue shark. They nearly always swim to the surface. I caught a glimpse of the tail fin as it poked above the top of the water. It was limp rather than rigid like that of a sword. I grabbed the snap from the main line without stopping the boat or the drum and pulled the leader until the shark was right against the hull. Bluish gray with a white underside. I hoped we wouldn't see many of these. There's no market for blue sharks, and when they come in numbers it can be a huge nuisance, as they chew up the gear. “Cut it off as close to the hook as you can,” I said while Arch leaned over the rail with a knife. The weight of the shark being towed made the monofilament stretch tight and kept the shark's head above the surface. One touch with the knife to the leader and the shark swam off with a circle hook in its lower jaw. The hooks we use are made of fairly soft, inexpensive steel that rusts away quickly. Even so, I had caught sharks in the past that sported as many as three hooks sacrificed by other fishermen. So I've decided that blue dogs (as we call them) are either very hungry or very dumb.