Monthly Archives: November 2008
Happy Birthday, Blog!
The month of November marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of Highliners and Homecomings.
Maintaining this blog for the past year has been a lot of fun. I never expected it to grow the way it did, especially when I think about its humble beginning, which consisted of sending an e-mail announcement to about twenty people alerting them to the blog’s creation. I so appreciate the recipients of that e-mail for sticking with me, and I’m grateful as well to the blog’s new readers and to everyone who’s passed along the link.
To mark the blog’s first birthday, I set a goal for the blog that involved reaching a particular number of total hits for the year by November. I’m happy to report that not only did Highliners and Homecomings meet that total number, it exceeded it by over 1000 hits!
Thank you, everyone!
The past twelve months have included much excitement, a few surprises, some laughs, and a little stress.
I remember just trying to come up with a name for the blog. As my family and I came up with ideas, we had several conversations that went like this:
“How about Jen’s Jellyfish Journals?”
“Not bad, but it’s not really a journal. ”
“Bunks, Buoys, and Babies is good.”
“It’s good, but it sounds like a blog about living on a sailboat.”
“Dock Talk?”
“Doesn’t National Fisherman already use that one?”
“How about The Wheel Watch?”
“I think there’s an entire commercial fishing newspaper by that name already.”
Finally, we came up with Highliners and Homecomings. I knew that people outside the industry wouldn’t likely understand the name, but I got around it by adding an extra page (“Why the Title?”) to the blog.
I started Highliners and Homecomings during last fall’s Writer’s Strike. I’d been wanting to get back to my writing, George was gone crabbing, and my favorite shows weren’t on TV, so each evening was free to devote to the new blog.
Of course, by the time George started coming home from the Coast on bad weather days and the Writer’s Strike was over, I was already hooked on all things blog-related and could barely be torn away.
One night, having finished writing a new post from my seat on the couch, I folded down the cover of my laptop. I looked over at a usually-patient but growing-increasingly-annoyed George to be sure he was watching. “Good night, Blog,” I said and gave the laptop a gentle pat.
“I’m going to beat up your blog after you go to bed,” George said from his chair as we shared a great laugh.
There have been many highlights this past year. To name a few…
…The way blog hits went up an astounding 248% the day after the Presidential election…when the link made its way over to a Deadliest Catch show thread last winter…when The Writer Mama mentioned my blog, posted the link, and the blog had one of its biggest days ever…when Highliners and Homecomings seemed a bit lonely, so I created its younger (and much different) sibling, The JazzerBlog….the excitement in watching the blog’s pace pick up each time I post pictures of fishing or the crew…the fun of meeting so many new bloggy friends and reading comments…
It has been a fun, exciting, and memorable year for Highliners and Homecomings. Thank you all for your support, comments, e-mails, and continued views of the blog. Here’s to another good bloggy year and to each one of you!
Cheers.
“Salt in Our Blood–The Memoir of a Fisherman’s Wife”
I haven’t read Michele Longo Eder’s new memoir, Salt in Our Blood, just yet, but I look forward to buying a copy and giving it a read. In the meantime, I wanted to make sure you all knew it was out and ready to join your library of memoir and commercial fishing-related literature.
The author’s website is well done and informative. If you follow the links I’ve provided, you can read all about Eder (who is an attorney as well as a fisherman’s wife), the book, and how to order a copy. The Oregon Coast publishing company, Dancing Moon Press, has a website as well, from which you can order the book.
I can’t remember where I read this, but I am pretty sure Eder will be signing copies of Salt in Our Blood at 11 a.m. on Friday at Fish Expo.
Eder has an impressive personal and professional record. Although her time as a fisherman’s wife (since 1988) may be considered relatively short by some, her hands-on approach and immersion in the family business, in addition to her work as an attorney on high-profile legal cases, is admirable. She is a past board member of the mighty Newport Fishermen’s Wives and is involved with other groups that support families and children.
Salt in Our Blood has been favorably reviewed by National Fisherman magazine (December 2008), Seafood.com News, OregonLive.com, and Oregon Coast Today.
The review by John Sackton of Seafood News (September 2008) is the best I’ve read. I encourage you to read Sackton’s review, especially if you are familiar with the commercial fishing industry or the Dungeness crab fishery.
I’ve spent a lot of time on Eder’s website, but not without a lot of stops and starts. The fishery she writes about (Dungeness crab) in her book, combined with the picture on her website of the young and handsome son she lost in the at-sea disaster, all ring a little too near and dear.
I’m going to push past it, though, and give Eder’s memoir a well-deserved read.
I hope you will, too.
See You at Fish Expo!
I can’t believe the week of Fish Expo has already arrived. And yes, I do know that Fish Expo had its name changed to Pacific Marine Expo a few years ago, and that it is now held at the Qwest Field Event Center, not the Convention Center.
I have the fondest of memories of the grand event, though, and it will always be Fish Expo to me. I attended the National Fisherman-sponsored Expo with my family as a child in the 80s, and then went back in my mid-twenties for a few years as a writer for National Fisherman and the Show Daily. The fun I had attending the information sessions, networking, socializing, walking up and down the aisles of exhibits and vendors, and getting in line for Spike Walker book signings was unparalleled.
Anyway, here is information on Pacific Marine Expo, copied from the Fishlink Sublegals newsletter:
PACIFIC MARINE EXPO: Pacific Marine Expo is the largest commercial marine tradeshow on the West Coast. Serving all aspects of the market, including commercial vessels owners, commercial fishermen, boatbuilders and seafood processors, this annual event covers it all. The event will take place from 20 to 22 November at the Qwest Field Event Center in Seattle, Washington. For more information or to purchase tickets go to www.pacificmarineexpo.com.
See you there!
Dungeness Crab Gear Work: Splicing Lines and Rigging Pots
After buoy painting, George and the crew move into splicing lines and rigging crab pots.
For readers unfamiliar with the term “splicing,” it involves taking apart the end of a line (rope) and weaving the strands of the end back into itself to create an “eye.”
Here is a picture of the crew splicing lines (and eating snacks while watching movies) at our house:
(Like the creative use of an extra changing table? John used it to assist in “cutting cottons.”)
The crew has also started overhauling and rigging the pots. They’ll go over and through each of the 500 crab pots, checking for holes, making repairs, putting on the new zincs, and getting them ready to load onto the boat.
Here are a handful of pictures of George and the crew (Bryan, Brett, and John) overhauling pots:
Dungeness Crab Gear Work: Buoy Painting
The Dungeness crab season begins each year with between three and four weeks of gear work before the boat is ready to go. The first part of gear work always begins with Buoy Painting.
George has about 600 buoys to paint. Some buoys are new and need to be painted for the first time, while others are older and have peeling paint that needs to be touched up.
Buoys must be painted so that the gear of each boat is distinguished and recognized from that of the other 220-plus boats in our Dungeness crab fleet. If each boat did not have its own original buoy-paint scheme, the buoys would all look the same and nobody would know whose were whose. A picture is also taken of each boat’s uniquely painted buoy and sent to the State for filing.
It takes George and the crew about five full days to paint and tie (attaching the line that will secure the buoy to the crab pot) all of the buoys.
One year, George and I were taking an easy drive through Oysterville when, to George’s surprise, he spotted one of his crab buoys attached to the buoy-decorated fence surrounding the home of a Coastal resident. Apparently, the buoy had broken free from its accompanying crab pot out on the open ocean and washed ashore. (About a month later, we got a phone call that one of his crab pots was sitting upon the dock in Ilwaco, just a little further south. Coincidence?)
Fishing wives and other family are not exempt from buoy painting.
I’ve painted buoys at the beginning of more than one season. My dad helps sometimes, and so does George’s dad when he visits at this time of year. It’s not an easy job: The weather is freezing and the work is long. It didn’t take long during my first year of buoy-painting before I marched down to the fisheries supply store and purchased the full Carhartt insulated suit to wear to keep out the chill.
Pictures of painted buoys (and our beloved Toby, who is still doing miraculously well despite his cancer diagnosis last March. That diagnosis came with the removal of his left eye and a thirty-day life expectancy. We are now eight months beyond!) :
The End of One Season, The Start of Another
We decided to kick off the Dungeness crab season, and put a welcome end to the political season, by throwing a small impromptu party here this weekend. Judging by the laughter, animated conversation, and lively debate that lasted until long after I went to bed, it was clear that everyone enjoyed a much-needed break and had a wonderful time.
My headache, which began on election night and lasted the week, has finally gone away.
Our group was small but mighty. In attendance were moms, sisters, husbands, dads, fishermen, one industry buyer, several McCain voters, one non-voter, a couple of Obama supporters, captains, crew, two dogs, and two small children. We had a wide range of concerns on our minds—house building and renovations, family, crab seasons, babies, business, bank accounts, investments, friends, exercise, work, colleagues, and politics.
A little laughter and camaraderie is good for everyone, no matter who you are or what your system of beliefs.
Onward and Upward!
Mother Knows Best
My mom is a smart lady. She was encouraged by her parents to attend college in the early 60′s, just before encouraging young women to go to college was something many parents did. She received a degree in Education and enjoyed teaching fourth grade for a couple of years before moving to be near my dad, who was temporarily stationed in Hawaii as an officer in the Navy.
My mom has devoted her life to my dad, sisters, and me as a commercial fishing wife and mother (and now grandmother). Although Mom is an intelligent and capable woman of many opinions, she refuses to enter into any real political or religious discussion. With anyone. Mom has a vested interest in keeping the peace within her household, and never could see the point in wasting her energy going around and around in circles.
After all, Mom always had more immediate concerns on her mind. For example, the many late nights she spent alone in our childhood home, wondering how the winter King crab season was going for Dad. Like, if he was still hanging on while boats to the right and the left were sinking and crews were being lost.
Mom answered the phone many an afternoon and tried to alleviate the fear of my worried grandmother, a nurse and college graduate herself, who had already spent a lifetime worrying about her own fisherman husband. Mom also had three children in front of her to take care for, bills to pay, gutters to clean.
When I told Mom that I was struggling with how to address the “election issue” on my blog, her advice was to “stay neutral.”
“Just touch on it and move right along,” she said.
She did have a point. After all, my blog is not even a political blog. It’s a blog about commercial fishing and commercial fishing families. The only reason I brought up politics on Highliners and Homecomings to begin with was the connection that Sarah Palin had to Alaska and commercial fishing. And, yes, while I don’t agree with Palin on a couple of things, I am a big fan.
“But,” I thought, “I have so many more things I want to say about each campaign and the election itself. So many points I want to address, questions I want to raise.” In fact, I want to call my opinions from the rooftops and ask the bloggers and writers about just how much joy they found in—how they seemed to relish—being so vicious the past six months.
There was much I wanted to write about the aftermath of the election, and many witty adjectives I wanted to use. I wanted to write about how so many people (friends included) honestly surprised me with reactions that seemed beyond reason.
I had to think, however, about whether it would be worth it. At this point, the only thing I’d succeed in doing would be to sound as mocking as the people, writers, and bloggers I’ve described, and I’m not going there.
The Dungeness crab crew is already here. My husband is getting ready to go do a dangerous open-ocean winter fishery, and I’ve got two little ones who depend on me. I’ve got to keep my energy focused right here, because I don’t have any extra energy available with which to keep going around in circles.
So, I’m going with Mom this time.
But—don’t worry. I can’t ever keep quiet for long.
Lunch, conversation, and a few laughs with the crab crew.
The First Unofficial Day of Crab Season
At 7 a.m. George opened the front door, walked down the front steps and across the walk to the Ford flatbed. He fired up the diesel and drove off to the harbor and the boat, exactly as planned.
And so begins the unofficial first day of the 2008 Coast Dungeness crab season. Starting out with a little web locker cleanup, maybe some crab buoy painting, lunch at noon and a beer at home when the day’s over.
I’ll be a bit like a deer in headlights until I find wherever it is I put my “semi-solo mom routine.” (Not to be confused with the “entirely-solo mom routine,” which I’ll be looking for soon enough.)
Once I find the routine I settle in just fine, but it takes a while. The most important thing is to preserve energy and organize tasks according to what can get done when kids are up, what must wait until they go to sleep, what I should get to now and what can be put off longer.
Now, I know that this sort of planning is what moms all over the country do every day. But when your husband is a commercial fisherman, you are constantly switching gears, depending on whether your husband is:
- Home and very available;
- Home but not “really” home; or
- Gone and entirely unavailable.
The frequent switching requires small adjustment periods. The trick is to take it as easy as you can until you find your rhythm again. Have some tea, move slow, play soothing music, take care of the little ones and maybe vacuum the floor (if it makes you feel better, which it does me).
When you start to find your rhythm again, you can add other things. Learn a new Jazzercise routine. Go to the grocery store. Plan some meals and actually make them.
Speaking of soothing music, I recommend the new James Taylor c.d., “Covers.” I found his renditions of the songs “Wichita Lineman” and “Seminole Wind” to be especially touching, and I’ve been listening and writing to the c.d. all weekend long.
Every couple of years I come across music that unleashes the writing muse in a special way and facilitates productivity and creativity (a couple of years ago it was Norah Jones and Eva Cassidy, another year it was Rachmaninoff). You just never know what kind or type of music it will be, or when it will cross your path.
(Of course, in my car I’m listening to the brand new Toby Keith c.d., “That Don’t Make Me a Bad Guy,” which I also recommend if you are a country or Toby Keith fan!)
All right. Time to go make that tea and do a little vacuuming.
It was a touch too dark this morning for good pictures of G getting into the flatbed and heading down to the harbor.
Gearin’ Up for Gear Work
I’ve been bracing myself for Monday, which is when the crew arrives to begin the first official day of gear work for the Coast Dungeness crab season. George hopes to have the gear work completed in three to four weeks, and by that time, to have a firmer idea of when the season will actually start. The season is normally schedule to begin in December, but as we all know, it rarely works out that way due to all the pre-season delays.
George, who is already an extremely helpful and handy guy, always gets a little more helpful and a little more handy around the house just before he starts in on the next fishing season.
Just a couple of days ago, I came home from Jazzercise and noticed that Eva’s new coat rack, which had been lying around for at least two weeks, was now up on her wall with three coats already hanging from it. I saw that her changing table had been moved out of her room and relocated to its new spot in Vincent’s room. (That’s right—we are down to just ONE changing table in our house!) Further, the new bookcase was now against the wall where the changing table had been.
Moving into the kitchen, I saw that the dishes had been unloaded and the kitchen sink had been scrubbed with bleach. In the garage, Goodwill bags and boxes were compiled in preparation to be loaded into the flatbed for drop-off, and the garbage and recycling was on the sidewalk for pick-up. George even called back the Shade Maid and marked on the calendar the day they’d arrive to fix the shade in Vincent’s room.
“Wow,” I always say to George when he goes into this mode. “You’re really getting to it around here.”
George replies the way he always does; that it’s because he knows he is getting ready to be unavailable around here, eventually gone all together, and when that happens I will have my hands full. The household responsibilities will again be mine, and he won’t be able to offer much in the way of relief, including the most helpful of all—bits of conversation and laughter.
Because George opted out of a summer fishery this year, he was home two months longer than usual, and I was spoiled by the extra assistance with the kids and the house.
All that’s coming to an end Monday morning, though. George will be gearing up for the season, and as a result, so will I.
Deep breath, everyone. We can do it!
