well... here goes. It was just a couple of really crappy days that started out terrible and gradually moved from bad to worse. On Saturday July 14th we left the port of Valdez AK to travel to Esther Island to fill our fishhold with 55,000 pounds of Chum Salmon and take the entire load down to Seward AK to off-load them. Traveling to Esther Island we stopped in the middle of a bunch of Ice-bergs to fill up our fish hold with cold water so we wouldn't have to chill it so much on the trip (salmon need to be kept at 32 degrees for preservation) though our plan didn't work and the tempertature of the water there was the same as everywhere else. I did manage to grab a piece and had a Orange Sunkist chilled with 10,000 year old ice, neat huh? we then traveled to Esther Island and arrived at our destination at about 1 a.m. (because I took a short-cut while I was on wheel watch, saved us maybe half an hour to an hour) where we immediately began the frantic challenge of trying to fill our fish hold. After making a number of sets that were probably over 100,000 each and mananging to lose all but a few thousand pounds the day was starting off to a very bad start, we fished for 12 hours straight and couldn't manage to fill our 55,000 tank, at about 1 pm we took a few hour break to get some sleep and eat a little and then made one more set. My captain was pissed because we weren't trying very hard (i thought i was trying really hard but apparently it didn't show) and so we gave up and headed to Seward with the approximate 45-50,000 that we had managed to catch. Since my captain was upset with me he didn't bother to wake me up to take wheel watch on the drive down there (so he'd been up and working and driving for 24-30 hours about). When I woke up at 1 am on monday morning i grabbed a snack and went up into the wheel-house to ask if he wanted me to take over. He was already asleep and the boat was traveling on auto-pilot, fortunately (i guess) we hadn't hit anything since he'd fallen asleep (which probably hadn't been very long (5-10 minutes at most)) so i just sat in the chair and took over driving responsibilities. He awoke a short time later and told me that if I was gonna be up anyway that he'd go to bed so I told him "ok". After about an hour or a little more of driving and petting his dog Milo (who was enjoying my lap very much) I looked out the port window (left side) and noticed a black cloud just visible above the window, throwing Milo off my lap i opened the wheel-house door and looked at the smokestack where black smoke was billowing out of it. I ran back to the control and slowed the boat down into neutral. That action (and my voice) woke my captain and I told him what I saw, without waiting for instruction I climbed down to the main cabin and threw open the engine room hatch and black smoke poured out of it consuming my entire visual field. I climbed back up to the wheel house and reported to my captain (Randy) that the entire engine room was filled with black smoke. He told me to get Milo as he climbed down to the main cabin to try to investigate. He also asked me where the other crewmembers were and I replied that I assumed they're still in bed. He woke them up and climbed back into the wheel house. I asked if I should turn the engine off but he said "No! Get the survival suits and get in the skiff." (the skiff is this smaller boat we use for fishing) The suits were right there in the wheel house in a cupboard so I immediately threw open the cupboard door and started throwing the survival suits out the wheel house door. My crewmate Nathan assumed I was still in bed and hadn't woken up yet so he ran back inside to find me, my other crewmate (also named Daniel) yelled to him that I was up stairs and ok. I jumped from the wheel house level to the deck after getting all the survival suits out to start taking them to the skiff. Very much fortunately I had tied a safety line to the skiff while we were traveling (the main tow line had come undone and we for sure would've lost it without that safety line attached) Randy attempted to make a "Mayday" call on the VHF radio to the coast guard but had a very difficult time of it because he couldn't breath from all the black smoke, even though he was hanging out the window of the wheel house. We all then ran to the skiff which i had to pull in because it was drifting a few feet behind us. Randy then asked me where my hand-held VHF radio was that I'd been using earlier that day to communicate with Randy while we were fishing, I replied that it was still inside the boat hanging on the coat hanger, he told me it'd be a very good thing to have. There's a Panel right next to the door where the exhaust pipe runs up and out of the engine room, that had already begun to have flames coming out of the bottom of it. I ran in anyway and slipped on the engine room hatch that I had left open and because I had wet socks now. I fell into the engine room and panic kinda took over. I immediately grabbed a hold of whatever I could and climbed out of the engine room as fast as I could for fear of getting burnt (the smoke was so thick I have no idea where the fire was) I grabbed the handheld VHF radio and ran back outside and tripped on the seine (our net) on the way to the skiff but I assume the scratches on my knee are from when I fell into the engine room. My crewmate Daniel had noticed we didn't have any signal flares so he ran back into the wheel house (which was completely filled with black smoke) and grabbed them and came back to the skiff. we then untied from the Miss Carroll and drove about 50-100 feet away. Randy (using the hand-held VHF) began talking to the Coast Guard again (who had heard his attempted Mayday before) and began trying to give them coordinates for where we were. Since I was on wheel watch I tried to help but I hadn't really taken note of where we were from any specific land marks. Randy told us we should all be aware of pnemonia and to put on our survival suits, I was already getting cold from my wet socks anyway so we all did. we drifted around the burning vessel, watching it burn, along with everything all of us owned. Our dreams for a good fishing season vanishing along with everything else tangible. Though we were all very lucky to be alive. The Barwell is a larger vessel that we use as a tender for our regular salmon fishing, I'm guessing it was probably about 10 miles behind us and headed our way, with the help of the coast guard and the fact that he could see the large flame from the boat he headed straight for us and picked us up after only maybe an hour or so. We were all in and out of sleep (we were dead tired from the previous day despite the excitement) though none of us slept well. it took maybe 3-4 hours for the ride into Seward. The Barwell fed us breakfast (though Randy said there was no way he could eat). Randy's sister Shila had been contacted and met us in Seward, where she drove us to a shop and bought us shoes and jackets so we wouldn't have to wear our survival suits anymore. Now I'm in Homer AK waiting. waiting for a check, waiting for things to move on, we had to take drug tests for the coast guard, and have a phone meeting with the insurance people. We also had to make a list of everything we lost and estimate its monetary value. Which none of us enjoyed at all... thinking about everything we'd lost in detail. I imagine I'll head up to Valdez again and try to get on another fishing boat and finish out the season, there's still money to be made and I'm missing out on it, and I need it now more than ever. This is my story. The End.
