The dogs bark, yet the caravan moves on....

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yak2you2
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The dogs bark, yet the caravan moves on....

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The dogs bark, yet the caravan moves on. They were simple words, embossed into a plain, raised letter, plastic stencil stuck to the front of the depth finder, but they ate at me. What did it mean? I'd asked the old man who's boat this was a couple of times already but he wouldn't say.
Outside the wheelhouse windows I could see that it looked like the weatherman may have called it right this time, it was shaping up to be a typically stormy March night. Winds 30 knots, seas 12 feet, it looked like all of that to me. Hard to say though, in the small orange orb of light that the sodium lights were providing, everything looked eerily different to me. Odd, nothing but water as far as one could see, and yet my eyes felt like they were on fire. I wanted to shut them, just for a few minutes, but I knew better than that. I was on wheel watch, and responsible for driving the boat, everyone else, was asleep. The rhythmic rumble of the diesel, and the steady rocking of the sea were like the Sirens that Homer wrote about that tried to lure ancient mariners to their doom, methodically trying to lull my eyelids shut to stop the burning, just for a second.
Time to get up and walk around a little. I poured a half of a mug of the strongest, bitterest, coffee I ever tasted, and decided to have a look out at the back deck and make sure everything was still secure. I discovered that this tiny orange oasis bobbing about in a never ending sea of blackness was now sanctuary to more than just myself. Several small black seabirds had somehow made their way on deck and were resting comfortably, in between scupper washes. How hard life must be for them I thought. Bobbing about all night long in a storm like this one, not even able to see whats coming at you next, how do you ever get any rest? Diving into the cold sea in the day light, desperately trying to grab a minnow, or some small scrap of food with which to sustain yourself. Amazing how hardy life can be, I thought, you wouldn't think that anything could survive in such a place without technology on your side. "Tonight you rest easy little friends," and maybe you'll bring us luck.
I eased my way back into the captain's chair, trying not let my coffee slosh, even though it was only half full, and back to my view of the hundred yard orange world that I currently lived in. Intently I scanned the surface of the water, as wave after wave broke along the bow, needling the wheelhouse windows with spray. It was something that I often did to keep my mind busy. I would try to spot anything that wasn't water. A stick, a bird, a buoy, anything to change the never ending view.
I yawned and looked over at the brass clock on the wall, it was 4:30 a.m., but it didn't matter anymore. Basically time ceased to exist when we started this season 7 days prior, or was it 6 days, I couldn't remember. Time was now measured by what you were doing at the time. As in, it was time to clean the fish, or, it was time to bait the skates, or it was time to haul it back, that was the only measure of time there was now, at least until it was time to go to town. Thats when time could begin again.
These were the derby days of Blackcod fishing. No IFQ's, just catch as much as you can, as fast you can, before the quota was caught. The season had only been predicted to be about 8 days long, but the radio chatter had the catches listed as somewhat spotty, and the weather had made things tougher. We had delivered once already, selling somewhere around 30,000 lbs., of blackcod, we currently had a little more than that on board, but were likely to stay out now and mop up whatever we could before the season closed. Last time I'd looked we were somewhere around 50 miles offshore, but that didn't matter anymore either really. All that mattered was where we were, and where the next flag marking the end of gear was. We had out 3 strings of gear, each about 6 miles long, and there was a baited circle hook every 36 inches of it. We would start setting in about 500 fathoms of water and run the gear out to the edge of the continental shelf in about 850 fathoms of water. Then we would do what the old man called, "running back up the hill,"which was jogging the boat back up into 500 fms. where we could start picking up the next string of gear. This slow jog usually took about 2 hours, and gave the crew the only chance they would ever get at a nap in this never ending endurance marathon. After a week of periodic 1 or 2 hour naps, weird things start to happen to you, and everybody reacted differently. You would find yourself laughing hysterically at things that really weren't all that funny, or arguing over the pettiest of things. One look at the sleeping crew told the story. One guy was curled up on the floor like a dog with his full raingear on, so he didn't have to waste time putting it on later. Another guy was crashed on a bench seat, rain pants pulled down to his knees, and a half eaten microwave burrito in his hand on his chest. Not even the diesel could drowned out the snoring, snarling, bear den that our cabin had turned into.
Sleep deprivation plays tricks on your mind, like a little devil on your shoulder, whispering every possible reason why not to go back to work. I looked out the back window at the waves periodically breaking over the roller, and shivered. Somehow all thought of what my share of what this string might bring was forgotten. All I wanted to do was sit here by this nice warm stove, or better still, go slip into my bunk, and forget all this madness. Looked a little rough to be out on deck I thought, why can't we wait for the weather to break?
Somehow, I managed to stay awake for the next hour, and soon enough the blinking light and the flag I'd been dreading lurched over the crest of a wave an disappeared. We were here.
I woke up the skipper, and handed him a mug of coffee. He got up silently and stared out the window for a few minutes, slowly letting his wits come back to him. Finally he asked,"how was the jog?"
"not bad," I replied, "gettin' a little bumpy though. What do you think? wanna hold off until day light, see if it eases up a little?"
he thought about it for a few minutes, the little sleep devils whispering to him too no doubt, "nah, get em up," he finally said. The words I really didn't want to here. I thought to my self," I'm half this old man's age, where does he get the ambition?"It took about 5 to 6 hours to run a string, if everything went well. Working hard the whole time, but never quite hard enough to ward off the chills that a rainy march morning brought. One guy gaffing at the roller, two guys cleaning and scraping, one guy coiling the longline, and one guy baiting up the skates to go back out again. We would rotate positions from time to time, just to make sure that no part of your body missed out on the wear. Coiling was actually the easiest, but made your back hurt the most. There was a tiny little chair mounted to the deck right behind the shiv, your job was to mind the line as it came out of the shiv, and make sure that it would clover leaf into the skate bottom so it could be baited back up easily. Every once in a while, there would be a snarl of some sort at the roller, and the line would quit for a few minutes giving me a chance to stand and stretch my back. I would stand with by nose about an inch from a big halogen deck light, close my eyes, and pretend for just a moment that I was sun tanning on a tropical beach somewhere, I'll never forget how good that would feel.
So it went. One string blearily leading into the next, and the next, until it was time to go home.
After a couple of days of sleeping and putting the boat back together, we finally all wound up at the Pioneer Bar for a little celebration drink, or two. It was after a couple of these lubrication shots that, I finally hit old man with it again, " what's with the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on sticker," I asked.
He said he read somewhere that nomadic tribes of arabs traveling by caravan would always have dogs with them to alert them of intruders while they slept. Towards the end of a long, hot, day trudging acrossed the desert, the dogs would always bark when they were tired and wanted to stop and pitch the tents so they could rest, but the arabs had to make up a certain amount of miles each day so the caravan would move on, barking dogs or not.
He had put the sticker up for inspiration, and now, all these years later, I still think about it whenever I get tired. I learned a lot from that old timer, but that crazy little saying had to be the most inspirational.
ashadu
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Re: The dogs bark, yet the caravan moves on....

Post by ashadu »

Good story, the old guy had few barking dogs in his head probably, and knew what would happen to him if he listened. Remember the fathers motto in Ken keseys' "Sometimes a great notion"?.......Never budge an inch.
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