When Joel’s injury made it appar­ent that nei­ther he nor the Ner­ka would be fish­ing this sea­son, some of my writer friends saw an unex­pect­ed sil­ver lin­ing for me. “Now you can spend the sum­mer work­ing on your book!”

My shak­ing head dashed their enthu­si­asm. Beyond the fact that we’d need what­ev­er income I could make crew­ing on oth­er boats, the deep­er truth was that I’m a fish­er­man in my own right, inde­pen­dent of Joel and our life togeth­er. This annu­al infu­sion of South­east Alas­ka, of the ocean, is non-nego­tiable, nec­es­sary for my well-being.

The Kath­leen Jo’s most recent trip revealed anoth­er rea­son why I need­ed to be here. Gut­ting fish is my bar­bar­ic med­i­ta­tion. My hands sliced and sev­ered, twist­ed and yanked, scraped and rinsed. They were machines always in motion, and the faster they ran, the more my mind slowed. Loos­ened from moor­ings kept so snug on land, my mind drift­ed to places it’s nev­er gone while parked in front of a com­put­er screen. Thumb­ing through mem­o­ries past, lin­ger­ing on fan­tasies future, it drew pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined con­nec­tions that seemed sud­den­ly obvious.

How have I nev­er seen this before? There’s the take­away mes­sage for Chap­ter Six! 

Of course: the sto­ry ends back in the same place where it began!

Peer­ing into the bel­ly cav­i­ty of one hal­ibut after anoth­er, it wasn’t bloody flesh I saw, but pieces of my book. After months of sac­ri­fic­ing writ­ing to the bot­tom of my to-do list, feel­ing that insis­tent nudge again was elec­tri­fy­ing. I mum­bled sen­tences under my breath, strug­gling to com­mit good phras­es to memory.

“Take a break,” Jeff urged as he stepped inside to dri­ve us to the sec­ond set, a 20 minute run away. He meant sit down, enjoy the steam­ing break­fast plate Lindy had passed out the door to me. Instead, I scram­bled for some­thing to scrib­ble on.

A sog­gy piece of card­board, torn from one of the 50 pound box­es of pol­lock we used for bait, would have to do. Using raingear-clad thighs as a desk, I clutched a black Sharpie. Like a long-absent lover slid­ing back between the sheets, hop­ing the inden­ta­tion in the mat­tress still wel­comed her body, that pen fit a dif­fer­ent groove of my gloved fin­gers than the knives I’d been wield­ing — but it did still fit.

The mes­sage was clear. With the bulk of my friends’ quo­ta suc­cess­ful­ly har­vest­ed and sev­er­al checks mailed home, it was time to focus on my oth­er job. Grate­ful as I was for my time with Team Thomas, writ­ing need­ed my full attention.

The Kath­leen Jo returned to Sit­ka, where our friend Mikey greet­ed us. He’d sailed his 27-foot boat up from Wash­ing­ton, appear­ing in anoth­er blog along the way, scroung­ing enough nick­els and quar­ters from the set­tee cush­ions to cov­er his final fuel bill. In Sit­ka, he imme­di­ate­ly print­ed up fly­ers adver­tis­ing his div­ing ser­vices, but still faced weeks of cab­bage din­ners, lunch­es, and break­fasts before Mar­lin, our salmon trolling cap­tain, pulled into town.

Time. Income. We both held what the oth­er most need­ed. The biggest sac­ri­fice came from Jeff and Lindy, who gra­cious­ly agreed to exchange their expe­ri­enced crew for one they’d need to train. Not much of a sac­ri­fice at all, com­pared to what they’d get in Mike, who Hooked’s friends know as the win­ner of the Gold­en Scrub Brush Award. They’d be in good hands.

With his old deck­hand deposit­ed on the dock and his new one onboard, Jeff didn’t waste any time head­ing back out. Their final long­line trip would begin with a Father’s Day camp­ing adven­ture, and he couldn’t wait to wig­gle his toes in the sandy beach that was their des­ti­na­tion. (My friend works hard to uphold his “Cap­tain Pic­nic” reputation.)

So I waved good­bye to Team Thomas – 3 trips, 24 days, and 40,000 pounds after join­ing them. Even in such an ide­al sit­u­a­tion as this, when changes meet everyone’s needs, mov­ing off a boat is always a lit­tle bit­ter­sweet. There’s an unavoid­able inti­ma­cy in going to sea that you can’t repli­cate through time on land, a forced close­ness that can either be very good or very bad.  These days, I’m lucky to crew only for peo­ple I love, and the time aboard the Kath­leen Jo was very good indeed.

Good luck, sweet­ies, and be safe.

Writ­ing this week, fol­lowed by a too-quick trip South to snug­gle my sweet­heart. (He’s walk­ing! He’s dri­ving!) It’s a pret­ty good moti­va­tor to get new words on paper, know­ing that a reunion with my best friend is the reward. I can’t wait to see you, buddy.