Storms a comin'....??

The weather report before heading out of Dutch was terrible. North east winds of 50 knots or more (60 miles per hour) were to persist in the central Bering Sea including the Pribilof Island area. Our partner boat the "Pinnacle" had endured such winds for two days while we were in town and had a rough go of it. The North winds make for cold miserable conditions and the we were beginning to wonder if our last trip would be spent breaking ice half the time. With only eight days to fill the boat there was no time to wait for better weather. We left late with light Northeast winds and didn't expect anything gnarly until sometime after midnight.

As we got nearer our gear about 60 miles west of St Paul the wind began to increase to about 35-40 knots, but surprisingly it was blowing due East. Once we began to haul the gear it became obvious that we would have a hard time banging out the last load in the Southern gear because the numbers were low, the other half of our gear, Northwest another 40 miles, could and probably would be under ice. None the less we put 100 or so pots on board and with the diminishing Eastern wind pointed the old girl Northwest. As for the ice it really isn't a matter of if, more like when.....

Capt. Monte "Wizard Mouse"