A spe­cial men­tor recent­ly shared the con­cern she’d felt upon imag­in­ing my life at sea.  Cradling a glass in her hands, she recalled, “I won­dered, ‘Is she ever scared?’”

I imme­di­ate­ly assumed she was refer­ring to the fear that comes of real­iz­ing how insignif­i­cant and pow­er­less you are, utter­ly depen­dent on the sea’s benev­o­lence and a con­sis­tent­ly win­ning hand of good judg­ment, good pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance, and good luck.

Then she con­tin­ued. “‘At night, when everyone’s had a few too many shots of vod­ka, does she feel afraid then? If so, what does she do with that fear?’”  (Yes, this friend is a trained therapist.)

It’s telling that this, one of the first con­cerns oth­er females bring up when speak­ing with a fish­er­woman, wasn’t on my radar. For the past few years, this gen­der-based issue has been a non-issue for me. I’m for­tu­nate enough to only work on the boats of close friends these days – trolling with my sweet­heart, Joel, and longlin­ing with trust­ed friends, like my “broth­er,” Mar­tin. Every sea­son, I feel grat­i­tude for the com­fort, ease and safe­ty I expe­ri­ence on these boats.  It wasn’t always this way.

Grow­ing up crew­ing for my mom, I – like all boat kids – fan­ta­sized about work­ing on oth­er boats.  That if I could just get loose of the fam­i­ly oblig­a­tion, there was a whole fleet of high­lin­ers I’d lob­by for a spot on. One troller in par­tic­u­lar was at the top of my list. I loved lis­ten­ing to that skip­per on the radio, that whiskey-voiced, casu­al­ly blas­phe­mous, warm­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing tone so essen­tial to fishermen’s storytelling.

It’s with some cha­grin that I recall leav­ing a note at the fish plant, fisherman’s fan mail in ado­les­cent scrawl, prat­tling on about how I hoped to crew for him one day.  Many years lat­er, I’ll hear dock gos­sip about this man, whis­pers of his assault of a female deck­hand.  I’ll look more know­ing­ly upon the scar­let spi­der webs erupt­ing from his nose and eyes, and will under­stand the most crit­i­cal les­son that all deck­hands must learn – there can be oceans of dif­fer­ence between who some­one appears to be on the dock and who they end up being at sea, and that dif­fer­ence is vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to predict.

My mom’s last sea­son was 1996, forced out by a few bad sea­sons that failed to quench her boat’s bot­tom­less finan­cial thirst. And with that, I was a free agent.  Have X‑tra Tufs and Grun­dens, will crew. Boat-hop­ping through the Sit­ka troll fleet was an edu­ca­tion in the pecu­liar dynam­ic of going to sea with some­one.  Our cul­ture is burst­ing with cau­tion­ary tales against hitch­hik­ing, stri­dent warn­ings (par­tic­u­lar­ly to young women) to nev­er get into a car with a stranger, yet the mar­itime equiv­a­lent is stan­dard prac­tice for fishermen.

Far more inti­mate than shar­ing space in an auto­mo­bile, imag­ine vol­un­tar­i­ly lock­ing your­self into a stranger’s home – their cramped, knees-touch­ing-under-the-table, brush­ing-up-against-each-oth­er-to-pass-wher­ev­er-you-are tiny home.  You might be at sea for five days, you might be out for two weeks. What­ev­er the dura­tion, you’ll have no con­tact with any­one oth­er than your ship­mates for that time. You share every aspect of liv­ing space, sleep­ing in a bunk mere feet away from your cap­tain and any oth­er crewmem­bers. (If you’re lucky, there’s an enclosed bath­room. Many of the boats I’ve worked on, the head is a five gal­lon buck­et, for use on the open deck. I tried to make sure I didn’t have “to go” until I knew the cap­tain would be occu­pied at the helm.)

Your boat is an island — so close in the anchor­age, yet worlds away from any oth­er human being.

Any pro­fes­sion­al deck­hand who’s tossed his or her sea bag aboard mul­ti­ple ves­sels will have their own blog-worth of these sto­ries. The safe­ty con­cerns – abu­sive behav­ior, ugly drunks, men­tal insta­bil­i­ty that doesn’t appear until you’ve left the dock – are extreme exam­ples, rare in our small fleet. Far more like­ly is that you end up with a “scream­er” – an impa­tient cap­tain who’s a poor teacher – or find your­self in polar oppo­si­tion to the  polit­i­cal or social views of the per­son respon­si­ble for your crew­share.  Maybe not a safe­ty con­cern… But mis­er­ably awk­ward while shar­ing 48’ of liv­ing space, with­out reprieve, for weeks on end.

I speak from a deckhand’s per­spec­tive, but the view is no bet­ter from the pilot seat.  My roman­tic fan­tasies of run­ning my own boat went out the win­dow when I real­ized the most daunt­ing part of being in charge: find­ing good crew. As Mar­tin explains, it’s not about find­ing some­one who can do the work, but “find­ing some­one I want to live with for three months.”

Let’s step back in time once more, back to that thir­teen-year old girl so des­per­ate to forge her own iden­ti­ty. When my mom and I returned to town with our lat­est fish deliv­ery, I ran up to the office.  Nev­er mind laun­dry or a two-week past due show­er; my first des­ti­na­tion in port was always the mail room. Tear­ing into the pink mes­sage slip await­ing me, I was thrilled by the response. Thank­ing me for my note, the chick­en-scratch let­ter­ing assured, “We’ll fig­ure out an appro­pri­ate boat for you when you’re a lit­tle older.”

Twen­ty years lat­er, I still see that skip­per occa­sion­al­ly. I’m always pleased to see him, give a hug, and get a bristly-beard­ed kiss on the cheek in return.   He’s root­ed in my mem­o­ry as one of those rare adults who treat­ed a kid seri­ous­ly, respond­ing to a ridicu­lous request with grace and equa­nim­i­ty. And there­in lies the life les­son: I’d nev­er leave the dock with the cap­tain, but I’m grate­ful to know the man on shore.