The two guys settled down at Billy's threat.  I said, "Cut the gear.  If this passes then we'll come back and pick the other end.  But right now that gear's got us anchored to the bottom in a nasty sea.  One wave from the wrong direction and we're all dead.  Cut the gear.  Now."  They grumbled but filed out.  Billy gave me the gun then went to help them.  The guys were stopped by Billy's act long enough to think.  They were seasoned enough to know that they had to follow my orders.  If they didn't they would be guilty of piracy on the high seas.  All I would have to do is call the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard wouldn't be able to get to our boat in this mess, but they would have two armed Coast Guard Petty Officers waiting on the dock when I got in.  They would detain the two and hand them over to the FBI who would arrest them on federal piracy charges.  They knew this, so they backed down.

They were not, however, happy about it.  I put the pistol in my waste band, moved the rifle closer and watched them close.  Billy actually cut the gear.  Once he did the boat was no longer anchored to the sea bed so I was able to turn it into the sea rather than be swamped sideways by the waves.  The results was an instant relief.  The two crew guys came in, walked past me without a word and went below.  Billy followed and stood with me.  I handed him the pistol and thanked him.  Billy simply nodded and said, "I hope you made the right call."  I wasn't surprised that Billy backed me up, but I was taken aback that he questioned my judgment.

We were running west towards Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island when I heard the Mayday call from the skipper we'd been fishing near.  I called him back but there was no response.  Multiple times I tried with no response.  "Get those guys up here," I told Billy.  They were bitter and angry, but didn't argue when I told them what I'd heard and that I was turning back to look for survivors.

The seas had become so bad in the time since we cut our gear that the simple procedure of turning around became complicated and dangerous.  In my eagerness to save those guys I made my turn too tight and nearly lost the boat and our lives.  It took me twenty minutes to reach the place I had last seen the other boat.  Once there we didn't see any sign of the boat, nor any detritus from it's sinking.  Repeated calls on the radio went unanswered.  Visibility was low due to wave foam in the air, so Billy climbed our mast and tied himself on.  Multiple times we were covered with waves so large that Billy, tied to the mast nearly drowned.  After two hours of searching I finally gave it up when one of the crew came to me in hysterical tears begging me to make for shore.

They had a right to be scared.  I was scared.  The seas were crazy.  "You sure you guys don't want to drop gear and fish," I asked.  "You wanted to keep fishing earlier, now you're begging to go a shore.  Which is it?"  In tears the guy said, "Shore, please.  Shore."  There are very few times in my life when I felt like I'd been a bully, but this was one.  I'd done everything right that day except for the way I treated this scared and broken man.

When I called Billy in he was soaked and choking on sea water.  He was also smiling.  He said he wanted to do that again.  The seas were so bad it took us twenty-two hours to travel ninety miles to reach Three Saints Bay, then another six hours to reach Old Harbor at the end of the bay.  We tied up to the processer ship anchored there and sold our catch.  As I write this I can't remember how much we made, but I do recall it was the best pay day I'd had in quite a while.  Despite everything else, the crew was happy with their share.  When I paid them the two guys apologized for what they had done and told me I'd been right, if we stayed on our gear we'd be dead now. 

We thought the other boat had sunk.  I believed this until while researching for this book I had Becky pull up the names of all the fishing boats that had sunk in Alaska.  To my great surprise there wasn't one in the time frame I recall off the south east corner of Kodiak Island.  This is a mystery I don't understand.  I've spent my life believing I should have searched longer, so I'm relieved to find out that those guys didn't die out there.  One less thing to feel guilty about.

When we tied up at the Old Harbor dock I wanted nothing more than to pass out in my bunk, like the rest of my crew.  I couldn't sleep yet because I knew Mary would be worried so I had to call her.  I didn't look forward to that long walk to the village of Old Harbor and the only phone within a hundred miles.  I was so tired that I forgot to bring a gun on that dangerous walk through the woods.  Fortunately, I didn't encounter one of those nasty Kodiak Grizzlies.

When I reached the store I used their pay sat-phone to call home.  Mary's friend Suzie answered our home phone and she was crying.  Suzie told me Mary was at the hospital with Cody.  I didn't get the whole story, but Cody had been run over by Mary's Chevy Suburban.  As I was trying to get the story out of Suzie I heard the distinctive sound of a small airplane doing a preflight run-up.  I didn't realize Old Harbor had an airstrip, but I knew that sound, so I hung up on Suzie and ran towards the sound.

When I reached the short gravel airstrip a single engine Cessna had just begun it's roll after the pilot released the breaks.  The plane leapt forward and I ran out in front of it with my arms raised.  The wing hit my forehead and knocked me down with force.  Everything went black for a few seconds, but when I looked up the pilot had stopped.  I ran to the plane as he got out.  As I tried to explain what was wrong he unloaded gear he had strapped into a rear seat.  Before I'd gotten my story out he had me strapped him.  Guy was an experienced bush pilot.  He knew that whatever was wrong I really needed on his plane, so he dumped whatever he'd been carrying and left it right there on the end of the runway.  Another passenger gave me his handkerchief, which I used to stop the blood flow from the gash on my forehead.

I quickly told the pilot my story.  He was headed to Kodiak Village so he called ahead and made arrangements with an Alaska Airlines flight due to take off for Anchorage.  When we landed at Kodiak we taxied up to the Alaska Airlines jet that had its stairway extended waiting for me.  As soon as I boarded the plane took off.  After we reached cruising altitude the pilot came back to speak to me.  Alaska Airlines had called the hospital in Soldotna and he had a status report for me.  My son was in stable condition.  In Anchorage a local commuter airplane, a propeller driven Twin Otter waited for me on the tarmac with its engine running.  I took the stairway off the Alaska Airlines jet to the commuter and we were off the ground in minutes and we were in route to Soldotna.  This pilot also had an update from the hospital. 

There was never any discussion about paying for my flights.  This is what I would call a typical Alaskan reaction to an emergency.  Mary had been in the hospital for about an hour when I walked in the door.  She thought I was still at sea, so she was shocked to see me.

The accident had been rather unusual.  Mary had ran into a shop owned by a friend of her's for something leaving Kelly, Luke, Janie and Cody in the car.  Mary only did this because the shop had a large window and she could see the kids.  Janie squirmed out of her car seat and stood at the steering wheel for a moment before grabbing the gear shifter and dropping it into neutral.  The Suburban was on a slight hill so it began rolling back towards the street.  Kelly was too young to know how to stop the vehicle so she wisely jumped out and had Luke pass Janie to her, then the baby, Cody.  Luke says it was his fault for passing his siblings out too fast, but whatever the case, the Suburban rolled backwards with a slight turn because the front wheels were turned.  The open door hit Kelly while she had Cody in her arms, knocking her to the ground and forcing her to drop the baby.  The front left wheel, angled just right, rolled over Cody's back and Kelly's ankle.

At the hospital I could still see the tire track and puncture wounds from the studded snow tire across the center of Cody's back.  But God is good and babies and children are amazingly resilient.  Cody wasn't harmed nor was Kelly.  They were both released from the hospital shortly after I arrived.  For years I worried about some hidden injury that would manifest later in life, but Cody has never shown any ill effects from the bizarre accident.  Cody trained and fought mixed marshal arts through undergraduate school and is now completing his second year of law school, so he's still good, well, healthy.

I never learned what happened back in Old Harbor.  Since the pay phone was on in the little store's enclosed entry porch, I don't think the woman who owned the place realized I used her phone.  To my knowledge no one in Old Harbor other than the few people on the plane saw me, and I'm not sure if any of them were from there.  My sleeping crew knew I was walking to the store to call my wife, but nothing else.  When they woke I was simply gone.  A few days later I learned from the harbor master in Kodiak Village that my boat had been tied up there, but I never learned anything else.  A week after I flew out of Kodiak so suddenly I road the State Ferry from Homer to Kodiak (cheaper than flying) leaving my truck in Homer.

When I got to my boat everything was in order.  My expensive rifle and pistol were still there as were the boat's easy to steal and sell electronics.  I searched Kodiak's bars for Billy, but no one had seen him.  That was about as unusual as everything else.  I figure Billy found a slot on another boat and was at sea, but I never saw him again.  I've always wondered about his side of what happened when I disappeared, but doubt I'll ever hear that one.

I fueled up and took the day long trip from Kodiak to Homer alone.  Thankfully the seas weren't' too terrible.  It would be the last time I would ever see Kodiak Island.  I have mixed feeling about whether or not I want to see it again.  Kodiak is a beautiful wild place, but it's a hard place.

In 1989 thirty commercial fishermen died at sea in Alaska, forty-two in 1990, and  thirty-six lost their lives to Alaskan seas in 1991.  Commercial fishing in Alaska has always been a difficult and dangerous occupation.  I hadn't known it when I bought the boat, but I would have been safer flying a bush plane.  I'm not one for second guessing things, but I do wish I had bought the bush plane instead of a fishing boat.