Member-only story
In 71 years, I have had the good fortune to see and experience many things. Some of them were beautiful, wonderous, and beyond my ability to properly describe them. Like this adventure to Mount Kilimanjaro. Others were horrifying, very sad, and equally difficult to convey. Even so, I will try to tell the story of one such sad event in my life.
In 1973 I moved to the Pacific Northwest after dropping out of my first college effort in southern California. I had little job experience, but had the good fortune to land a job as an apprentice mechanic with a company that sold, installed, and repaired commercial fishing equipment.
After about a year with this company, I had acquired enough skill to be sent by myself to Alaska to repair some large drag winches on a big trawler working in the Bering Sea. I flew out to Saint Paul Island on a rickety old DC-6, and was soon ferried out to the trawler. We immediately took off to moor for the night in a cove that was largely protected from the nine foot swells. After recovering from seasickness that overwhelmed me for the first couple of hours, I set about opening this winch motor to see what the problem was.
The winch was located as close to the outboard edge of the ship as possible, and the problematic hydraulic motor actually hung out over the edge… over the icy bearing sea water. The crew set up a wood plank suspended by ropes hanging outside the railings so I could work on this motor. It was a very dark night, so they also turned on some very…
