While repairing my boat Billy convinced me it was time to fish Kodiak.  Billy had grown up in a remote Kodiak native village and fished around the big island his entire life.  He barely knew the waters around Seward, but claimed to know every inch of Kodiak Island.  With the long trip agreed on, we provisioned the boat and planed to leave after the bars closed.  It was either wait until then or leave without Billy.  I'd lost the other two crew members after our collision with the freighter, so it would just be Billy and I.  I would never consider making a trip of that distance without a crew, but felt comfortable doing so with Billy.

When the bars closed I had the boat ready.  It was low tide, which meant I'd have to fight the incoming tide on the long run out Resurrection Bay, but I didn't care: I was eager to put to sea.  I'd warmed up the engine and crew quarters, made coffee and sandwiches, even untied all but two mooring lines.  All I needed was Billy, so I left the boat with the engine idling and went to collect him.

Due to the low tide, Seward's floating docks sat thirty feet below the shore.  This meant the long rolling ramp that connected the docks to the shore was at an extreme and dangerous angle.  I was loathing the trip up the ramp and praying it had been salted when a wild shout drew my attention.  At the top of the ramp, with an empty beer bottle raised as a sword, stood Billy Bear.  Before I could even think to shout at him Billy assumed a surfer's stance and stepped out on to the smooth side of the ramp.  (The left side had slats to give foot hold, but the right was smooth for things with wheels.)  As I watched Billy made a perfect standing slide down the long ramp making it all the way to the bottom without faltering.  It was an impressive feat.  That changed when he reached the bottom.  Because the ramp rolled with the tide on large metal wheels, the ramp ended with a two inch drop to the dock.  That drop caused Billy to stumble.  Momentum carried him four clumsy steps and into the cold black water.

I ran towards him so fast that I nearly fell in myself and even startled a sea otter sleeping on the dock that I always worked hard not to disturb.  It took two minutes to reach the place Billy entered the water.  He'd have been dead if not for the Coast Guard Cutter Mustang's permanent berth near where Billy went into the water.  Two Coast Guardsmen on duty witnessed Billy's slide and reacted immediately.  In the two minutes it took me to reach them they'd pulled Billy out of the water and were already rubbing him down.  It was only after I explained that I was former Coast Guard that they allowed me to take him rather than sending him to the hospital as their policy required.  Because of the trauma of extreme cold water, Billy slept for the next thirty hours.  He woke fully recovered so I gave him the helm and hit the sack.  After driving the boat for thirty straight hours through heavy seas I was exhausted.  We reached Kodiak in another six hours but I slept through it.  When I woke the boat was securely tied to the Kodiak Village dock.  Billy was long gone.  He wasn't difficult to find as he was in the first bar I came to.

Kodiak is a small village, but large for an Alaskan fishing town.  It was said to be the largest commercial fishing port in the world.  I don't know if this is true, but it's twin harbors held more fishing boats than I have ever seen.  Meaning, up until that point I don't think all the commercial fishing boats I had ever seen equaled the number moored in Kodiak.  Kodiak Village was a fishing community, which was clear when realized there were more boats than houses.  

That night I was able to get Billy out of a large and dangerous bar without a fight, but did witness several fights.  This was a win, but later encounters in Kodiak's bars would be different.  We picked up another crew member, refueled, bought bait and ice then went fishing.  Now that we were on Billy's turf he wanted to pick our course, which I readily agreed to.  So far our catch had been so small I lost money on every trip, so I was pleased with Billy's confidence.  Before he passed out the previous evening Billy explained that we needed to leave through the north entrance of Kodiak harbor and travel west between Kodiak and Afognak Islands.  When we reached the Shelikof Straight, the twenty mile wide channel between Kodiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula we'd turn south but travel south by south west.  Our target was the Alaska Peninsula.  Billy warned me to wake him before crossing the Shelikof Straight.

We left Kodiak harbor through its north entrance then turned west between the two islands.  By morning we were well into the narrow channel connecting the Shelikof Straight to the Gulf of Alaska.  To the right was Afognak Island (or another of that group) and to the left Kodiak Island, to our stern the Gulf of Alaska and our destination the Shelikof Straight off the bow.  When he came into the pilot house Billy handed me a cup of coffee and pointed out the window at the nearest point of land.  "We're going backwards," he said indicating a large rock on Kodiak Island.  At first I thought he was still drunk, but then I looked at the rock.  Sure enough, the bow was pointed west and my prop was working hard to move us in that direction, yet we were moving backward.  Billy explained that when the tide went out from Cook Inlet (which connected to Anchorage) there was a big tidal exchange.  It was in fact one of the largest tidal exchanges in the world, meaning the difference in the depth of the water between high and low tide.  When that large mass of water rushed down Cook Inlet and into the narrower Shelikof Straight, then it became a powerful force that was difficult to overcome.  The channel we were in connected to Shelikof Straight, so the same water entered the smaller channel with even more force.  "Everyone knows you can't go across the channel when the tide is a against you," Billy said.

I turned the boat around and looked for a place to wait out the tide.  Billy suggested a fish cannery a few miles away.  I don't recall the name of this cannery, but it was an interesting place.  Situated in a protected cove, the cannery consisted of a sturdy dock with multiple buildings that appeared to have been built by the military during World War II, which might have been the case.  Everything was made of wood and all of it was painted white.  The place was clean, neat and orderly.  The cannery was fully staffed as fishing season had just begun, but in the off season it had only a skeleton crew.  The majority of the cannery workers were college students, newly arrived for the season, giving the place the feel of summer camp.  It had two dorms, one for boys, one for girls, housing for the permanent staff, a building to process fish, a well equipped mechanical shop to maintain their gear as well as to work on fishing boats, a small company store, used by their workers as well as fisherman like us, and even a shower facility and recreation center.  I would learn that most remote canneries were similarly designed, but even the ones in places like Kodiak Village, Seward, and Homer were set up as a self-contained facility for their seasonal workers.  Ninety percent of those seasonal workers were college students.  Most were from the US, but some from other nations too.

Fortunately the cannery facility lacked a bar.  I took the opportunity of the cannery's machine shop to have a new mount fabricated for our gear hauler.  When the tide reversed we were rested and ready to go.  This time we went so fast I had to focus on steering to keep us in the center of the channel.  I had to laugh when we passed a fishing boat going the other way.  He was either standing still or moving backward.  It was hard to tell because we passed him so fast.  I called the guy on the radio but he didn't answer.  Billy said he was embarrassed for forgetting about the tides.  In no time we were shot out of the channel and into the Shelikof Straight.  The plan had been to run straight across the Shelikof to the opposite shore of the Alaska Peninsula.  A place Billy assured me was the spot to drop our gear.  However, the Shelikof Straight didn't cooperate.  The current pushed us so hard to the south that we couldn't cross the thirty mile wide body of water.  The second problem was that the seas there were too rough for the North Wind.  So much so that we nearly floundered.

The odd thing about this particular sea is that it was only fifteen feet in height.  I'd already experienced thirty-five foot seas in the North Wind and the boat did just fine.  But these fifteen footers were what's called a "confused sea".  The waves hit from every direction at once.  Steerage was impossible.  The only thing we could do was fight to survive and go where the sea took us.  After the danger of the waves themselves, our next problem was that the waves and current pushed us towards the rocky shore of Kodiak Island.  We finally won the fight when we were pushed into the relatively calm waters of Larson Bay.  That was fortunate as Larson Bay is just about the only safe harbor on the entire west side of Kodiak Island.  In the time I fished the waters of Alaska I saw thirty-five foot seas more times than I could count, forty and fifty foot seas a dozen or so times, and one horrible night a pair of seventy foot high rouge waves.  Despite those mighty seas, the fifteen foot confused sea of Shelikof Straight that day was the second most dangerous seas I experienced on the North Wind.

Larson Bay was large enough to lay gear, so we fished there for four days.  With a decent catch we reversed our course, stopping at the remote cannery to sell our catch before returning to Kodiak Village.  From there we made multiple trips out into the Gulf of Alaska and down the south east side of Kodiak Island.  All of those trips were dangerous and dramatic, but not equal to the really bad ones, so I'll skip over them.  My next noteworthy event occurred after taking the boat to Homer for a few weeks to see my family.  It was on the return trip, from Homer to Kodiak that I saw the largest waves of my life.  That is an epic story I will tell.