Before going home I walked to the North Wind and gave her a final inspection. She was too small for Alaskan fishing and too small to accommodate a crew for a week at sea. The Perkins diesel engine would have to be completely rebuilt and the boat would need all new electronics: marine radio, radar, depth finder, fish finder, loran (what we used to navigate before GPS) and even new lights. It would also need a generator, a cook stove, heater, hydraulics line-hauler, seven miles of ground line and thousands of size 10 fish hooks, and a dozen other things. It would take money and hard work to make the North Wind a seaworthy fishing boat. On the positive side she would be safe, slow but she'd bring me home. The North Wind was the ugliest commercial fishing boat in the northern Pacific Ocean, but I loved her. After discussing it with Mary I bought the North Wind.

The engine would take three weeks to rebuild so I used the time to drive to a computer job in Chicago. While in Chicago Larry flew home for a short visit and decided to take his son Jamie to Alaska with him. I drove to Ohio and picked them up so the three of us drove the Alaska Highway together. That trip would be my seventh time up or down the Alaska Highway.

The engine was complete when I returned. It took me another week to set it up for fishing. There were many things the boat lacked, like a GenSet and heat stove, but I was low on money and needed to get started. The boat was moored in Seward so I used it as my home port. For a crew I hired Larry's son Jamie. I'd known Jamie since he was ten, but he was now eighteen and a strong man with a good work ethic. I also hired a guy I knew on the Kenai. Jamie was the perfect guy to crew a fishing boat, but the other guy was a mistake. He had many faults but the one that affected me the most was that he was terrified of the sea.

Seward sits at the back of Resurrection Bay, which is twenty-six miles long and averages a mile or less wide providing natural protection from the brutal Gulf of Alaska. The first few trips were uneventful and unprofitable. On my first run out of Seward I saw what looked like small killer whales shooting straight at my bow. It was dark (it was winter so it was nearly always dark) but I could see bright white patches maneuvering off my bow. I gave Jamie the wheel and went to the bow for a look. It was a pod of dolphins. On TV dolphins are always grey, but in Alaska they have a brilliant black and white pattern, very much like a miniature killer whale. I'd noticed this same type of dolphin in northern Atlantic waters from the Coast Guard ice breaker. I assume this type of dolphin is a cold water variety. What I do know is they are playful and a threat to watch. I laid on the deck with my head over the bow and watched the dolphins play tag with the North Wind. One would position herself near the bow, touch it with her back then jet off to be replaced by another. They would play this game until they tired of it. I loved to watch them play.

The Gulf of Alaska seas were always brutal, but some times they were worse. Our third trip was one of those times. The one crew member was terrified of the sea, which came to a head when he got Jamie to take his side in demanding I take them home immediately. Immediately didn't work for me. We had words with threats of violence. They backed down, but I did return as soon as it was feasible. This was life changing for me because I'd threatened my best friend's son. I loved Jamie like a son and as a man I considered him my friend. We tried to patch things up, Jamie, his dad and I, but our relationship would never be the same. I will always regret this.

I needed a new crew so I searched the bars and restaurants of Seward without success. I spent an entire day and night in a bar frequented by fisherman until I found my first experienced crew member: Billy Bear, a Native American, a true Alaskan. Billy learned to fish long-line from his father and at thirty-one it was the only work he'd ever done. The only reason I was able to hire a fisherman with his experience was that Billy Bear's personal life was a mess because he was an unrepentant alcoholic.

I'd offered the bar tender one hundred dollars if she would help me find an experienced crew member. When Billy Bear staggered into the bar she pointed at him and said I owed her a hundred bucks. I was skeptical but paid her then introduced myself to Billy Bear. Billy accepted my job offer without asking questions. He was out of money and needed a boat. He didn't care about the details. What he needed was an advance so he could get drunk before we left. He looked plenty drunk already. I wouldn't give him an advance, but would buy his drinks. While he drank I interviewed him. Billy had more experience than anyone I could hope to hire on my small ugly boat. I expressed my concern about his drinking, but Billy assured me he didn't drink at sea. He said he'd sober up as soon as we hit the water. I stepped aside and asked the waitress about this. She had heard Billy was a good fisherman, but no one could stand him on shore. She assured me he would work out if I was patient with him when we docked.

An hour later Billy passed out on the table. I didn't hesitate. I tossed Billy over my shoulder and carried him to the North Wind. As I passed the boat skipper I'd talked to about my problem he said, "I thought you needed two." I said, "I could only find one." He laughed and said, "You mean you could only carry one." I dropped Billy in a bunk then started the diesel engine to warm it up. I called Mary and told her I had a crew and was heading out, then went to sea. If you think I shanghaied Billy Bear, well, that's not far from true. After an hour of cruising down Resurrection Bay I began to feel guilty about carrying a drunk guy to my boat and then putting out to sea while he was still passed out. He did agree to crew the boat, but he was so drunk he wouldn't remember. In Coast Guard boot camp I took classes on maritime law and remembered shanghaiing was a federal offense. I was about to return to Seward when Billy stepped into the pilot house with two cups of hot coffee. Billy had lit the cook stove and made coffee. He even seemed sober. After drinking a cup of coffee he explored the boat then went to work. Billy Bear was a drunk, but he knew boats and he knew fishing.

It would not be the last time I carried Billy Bear to the North Wind. Over the next year I would bail him out of jail everywhere from Seward to Kodiak. I had to fight to protect him in three bar fights, and one knife fight on the docks of Kodiak. I've even found him passed out behind a store's dumpster. Billy Bear would be stone drunk every time he returned to the North Wind, but he would always wake on his own a few hours later, make coffee, then go to work. Most of our trips were more than a week at sea, yet Billy never tried to bring liquor on the boat and he never showed an ill effect from not having a drink. However, when we tied up, no matter where it was, I couldn't keep Billy on the boat. No matter how mush work needed to be done or how short the stay would be, the minute the boat was tied to a dock Billy would fast walk down the dock in search of a bottle. It took a great deal of effort to keep Billy out of trouble when we were in port, but at sea he was worth every busted knuckle I got fighting his battles.

Billy and I made the first trip by ourselves and didn't do well. It's difficult enough to keep a boat safe at sea with two guys, but to fish we needed three, preferably four. When we returned I gave Billy twenty bucks to get him started while I went to the cannery to sell our small catch. When I found Billy he'd signed up two green horns, meaning guys with no experience. They bought him drinks, which convinced Billy they were able seamen. After the bars closed we went to sea. The new guys didn't know anything but were fast learners. We made two uneventful trips then ran into a storm from hell.

The North Wind was tough enough to ride the storm, but we were near Resurrection Bay so I opted to shelter in a small protected bay at it's mouth I'd used before. In addition to thirty foot seas it was fifteen degrees below freezing, the wind was blowing forty knots and it was snowing so hard I had zero visibility. The combination conspired to freeze my radar antenna, so I was completely blind.

Loran usage in Alaska was far from exact. The numbers on the machine were generally within a few miles of the numbers on the chart, which was fine in open seas, but not so much traveling blind into a narrow bay. On a previous trip in good weather I had noted my exact loran coordinates as I entered the bay through the north side's narrow opening above the island, marked the loran numbers for the route to the protected cove, then into the cove itself. So I was feeling pretty smug as I navigated in zero visibility with no radar into the narrow zone between the island and the north part of the mouth of Resurrection Bay.

After the long hard trip my three man crew slept below deck while I fought to stay awake. With the seas calming in the lea of the island I began to relax. I was confident in my loran numbers and my ability to pilot my boat on instruments. This was what I was thinking when I noticed light reflecting off the snow ahead of me. I was so tired it took two beats to realize I was looking at lights from another vessel. When that realization set in I reversed my throttle and put my engine in an emergency reverse. The maneuver slowed us, but not enough to avoid slamming into the cargo ship. With the rear of the North Wind raised by a following sea, my bow impacted the steel hulled ship at it's water line, then as the following wave continued its roll, the bow went under the ship a few feet before kicking back up. The initial impact buckled my forward deck in two places. When the bow pitched under the freighter 500 gallons of sea water entered the boat through the pair of breached openings.

Try to imagine this from the perspective of my crew. They'd worked twenty hours in heavy seas, fell asleep two hours earlier completely exhausted. All the time they felt and heard the consistent drowning of the diesel engine as well as the forward movement and throw of the sea. Then suddenly they hear a sound they've never heard as I suddenly threw the engine in reverse, followed by a very different sound from the high-speed reversing propeller. If all that wasn't enough to startle them, that was followed by a hard impact and then the piece de resistance, 500 gallons of freezing sea water thrown on them while they slept in their bed. It was reasonable for them to think they were going to die.

The first guy out of the crew berth was completely naked. He held his Mark IV survival suit in both hands and was moving as fast as humanly possible. I shouted at him to stop but he couldn't hear me so I caught a fist full of his long wet hair which stopped him so abruptly that he fell on his bare butt. The next guy wasn't much slower but at least he had on paints. The naked guy on the floor slowed him down enough for me to tell him not to jump over the side. Billy casually stuck his head around the corner and asked if he had time to make coffee before we sank.

At this point I heard a call on the radio that was so strong it had to be from the large vessel I'd just met. He didn't know my boat's name so he identified me as the vessel entering the passage (a name I don't recall). I answered with North Wind so he'd know who it was that sunk under his hull, which seemed likely at that point. He suggested we switch to a different channel so we did. He didn't have to tell me why he wanted a discreet frequency. Coast Guard cutter Mustang was twenty-six miles away in Seward constantly monitoring marine channel 16. "I've stopped and reversed," he said. I could no longer see the ship so this was good to hear. "Do you require assistance?" "Unsure," I said. "Going to check now, thanks for hanging around." He clicked his mic twice to acknowledge. Smart guy. He realized I was too busy to chat.

I did a quick but thorough inspection of my boat's structural integrity. Using a flash light I crawled through the bilges and didn't see any sea water coming in. My bilge pumps had done their job and had nearly completed the task of pumping all the water that had entered through the deck holes. As far as I could tell the only damage was on the forward deck, which had buckled and split in two places. When I came back on deck the skipper of the 180 foot steel hulled freighter had managed to backup and was stationary beside the North Wind. His crew had tossed us a line so we were tied together. His crew was clearly ready to take us aboard.

"Figured we'd be better off not talking on the radio," he said across the distance. I agreed. A collision at sea with a vessel his size would require an investigation by the NTSB. They would blame someone and if it were him he'd lose his captain's license. I would probably go to jail with all the North Wind's safety violations. He nodded towards my mast, "I see your radar froze up. Mine too." We both looked at his mast but couldn't see the radar antenna for the blowing snow. "Bad luck," I said. "Bad luck," he agreed. We were both headed for Seward so I lead the way at half my normal speed in case I had damage I didn't know about. The skipper of the freighter kindly followed so he could pluck us from the water if we sank. The next day I paid to have the North Wind pulled out of the water and carefully checked for damage below the hull. Thankfully there was none. I fixed the deck damage myself so we were fishing again in two days.