The Hawaiian Load

My shipmates had decided to go gold mining in the Sierras, leaving me to tend the lines on the boat and do some minor repairs, like painting. A guy had borrowed some machinery from the company and was seam-mining, which involves finding some gold on the surface, then digging to follow the seam of gold. He claimed to be getting two ounces a day, but I suspected that it was often more. The boat was tied-up to a pier within walking distance of Fisherman's Wharf, but far enough down the waterfront to be quieter, usually. There was a Greek restaurant run by a couple who didn't seem to care if they did any business or not, enjoying moderate trade at the lunch hour and more at the bar after five o'clock.

Sometimes I ate at the Greek restaurant, sometimes I walked down to the Wharf for calamari or a crab. I carried a tide book because it was useful to know the water level as it can vary more than six feet between high and low tide, and more than once I had gone to the Wharf for dinner and drink leaving the boat level with the pier but returned three sheets to the wind in the dark crashing onto the deck which had decided to lower itself 6.8 feet in response to the Moon's urgings. When I returned this night and walked down the pier, it was far from dark. There was a monster of a brilliant white ship with many lights, and some eight decks rising from the main deck; on the inside overhead on the top deck there were many-colored neon lights and strobe lights blinking to some thumping music. On the bow of the ship was, "Pacific Princess," the sister ship to the Royal Viking Princess of Norweenie registry.

After several days of San Francisco, the cruise ship left for other ports and left in its place a more modest 96-foot fishing boat. At the bar in the Greek restaurant, one could look out the windows and see the boats docked at the pier. I saw some guys getting off the fishing boat and walking down the dock toward the restaurant. They came in and sat at the bar ordering coffee. We started talking and they asked me if I'd help them clean-up their fishing boat. It was a fast boat as it had an experimental V-16 Detroit diesel motor with four 8-71 turbo-chargers, which is likely why it was attractive to the pirates. The boat had been trapping rock lobster off Frenchman's Reef and porting in Honolulu when it had been pirated and used to run a load of Kona Gold to Oregon. The load of herb had been hidden in the large main freezer under a lot of packaged frozen chopped mullet bait. When the pirates got to Oregon, they ran the boat up an inlet, off-loaded the goodies, shut everything off and sank the boat. We went to look at what needed to be done, and top-side was OK, but the engine room was a bit silted, and the freezer was a stinky mess of maggoty mullet. We decided that the best thing to do was to turn on the freezer to get the stink stink down and make the mess more manageable. The next day, we got a work gang from the day labor pool to off-load the maggoty mullet and hosed out the freezer with disinfectant. The engine room was OK after hosing, pumping and wiping down.

The rest of the boat was nice, all wood paneled, showers, washer/drier, microwave, VCR, and stereo. There were four bunks in the bow, three bunks aft of the galley, and the Capt.'s bunk on the bridge on deck three. The electronics were OK, you could sail out of the Bay and put it on automatic, set the depth alarm for 10 fathoms and when the bell went off, there's Hawaii. The aft deck had a table for packaging the lobster. They'd lay out lines with traps and floats, then pull up the line, empty and re-bait the traps. The tails were snapped off, water-jetted clean, packaged, put on a tray, dropped into the blast-freezer, then put into the main freezer.

After we got the boat ready to go again, we had a party to celebrate. We went to a bar frequented by fishermen, and drank beers and Kamikazes. One of the guys was paying for all the stuff, he had a .357 pistol in a shoulder holster under his leather jacket, and a pocket full of gold Krugies, one-ounce gold coins. After ordering the first round of drinks, he gave the waitress a Krugie, and her eyes got big and she grinned, and the drinks kept coming. We eventually got drunk enough and decided to go back to the boat. When we got to the pier, the other guys were acting goofy so I went on to the
boat to start the generator and turn the lights on. I was in the galley looking out through the porthole and I could see that the guys had borrowed a forklift and were zooming up and down the pier having a good time. I was hoping that they wouldn't run the forklift off the pier. They eventually got that out of their systems and came in. We all sat at the table in the galley. One guy lined a bunch of toot out for everyone, it was a bit hard to see as the table-top was white and the nose candy was just a little yellow. Everyone had had a few lines and there was still more on the table when I saw some flashlights on the pier and could make out two cops looking around. I thought that I'd go out on the back deck and stall them to give the guys time to get the lines up. I stalled them, but they were pissed about the forklift and wanted to come on the boat to look around. The cops left and everyone went to sleep.

The next morning, we were drinking coffee on the back deck and discussing the previous night's escapades when we spotted what appeared to be a 60lb bale of Colombian floating beside the boat. We hooked it and pulled it up onto the deck table and unwrapped it. Much to our surprise and disappointment, it wasn't Colombian bud, but a torso with a dragon tattoo, just the trunk, no head, arms, or legs. Evidently, the remains of one of the Chinese gang wars between the Wong Tong and the Joe Boys. The guys decided to call the cops, so I decided to make myself scarce. My boss told me that the best thing to do in a situation like that is to let someone else find it.

If there is a next chapter, it will have tuna fishing, whales, a giant shark, a storm, The Emerald City Jazz Band, and Gold Beach.