Summary: During the red crab season, Sig begins to suffer from horrific nightmares. As the Captain struggles to cope with the additional stress, he wonders if his ominous dreams are a sign that he's losing his sanity or if the nightmares are forewarning him of danger in the future.
Disclaimer: The Deadliest Catch is the property of Original Productions and the Discovery Channel. I intend no disrespect towards the crew of the F/V Northwestern or anyone else who appears on the show by writing this story.
Author's Note: You can now take a 360 tour of the F/V Northwestern on Discovery's website. It's awesome! If you haven't already, go check it out!
"We finally get a chance to rest 'cause the pots have to soak, but Mother Nature decides to hit us with a hurricane," Matt complained, scowling out at the raging storm.
"Quit your bitchin', Bradley," Jake said as he leaned against the console where the manual wheel[i] was mounted.
"What else am I supposed to do!?" the deckhand demanded, throwing his hands up in frustration. "I'd go back to bed, but it's impossible to sleep through this shit."
"I don't give a damn what you do as long as you do it silently," Edgar retorted as he manipulated the throttle and the jog stick, trying to keep the Northwestern's nose aimed straight at the center of the menacing 35' waves.[ii] "Trying to navigate through this is a damn nightmare and the last thing I need is you distractin' me with your endless bitch fest."
"Hmph," Matt huffed, moodily crossing his arms over his chest and falling into stony silence.
"We knew there was a storm comin' our way, but I don't think anyone expected it to get this bad," Nick mused, leaning back in the Co-Captain's chair.
The sustained fifty knot winds kicked up to over sixty and the five sailors collectively winced as raindrops slammed against the windows with the same sharp, staccato sound that typically heralded baseball-sized hailstones in Seattle. "You want me to call Sig, Edgar?" Norman asked, hoping the relief skipper wouldn't think that he doubted his abilities at the wheel.
Edgar gritted his teeth, nearly biting through the filter of his cigarette as another monstrous wave reared up like a cobra in front of the boat. 'Yeah,' the youngest Hansen thought, 'I can see why Sig gets ulcers up here.'[iii] The constant mental strain of jogging through such a severe storm was stressing Edgar out to the point of having heart palpitations and he wasn't too proud to admit that he'd feel better with Sig at the helm. "Yeah," he replied, "Call down and see if he can come take over."
Norman picked up the white telephone and dialed the extension for Sig's stateroom. When the first call went unanswered, he hung up and tried again. 'Sig would never ignore a call from the wheelhouse,' Norman thought, frowning as he returned the phone to its cradle. "He's not answering. Matt, Jake, can you go wake him?"
"I think Nick should go," Matt protested, not wanting to be charged with the unenviable duty of disturbing the sleeping skipper.
"Why can't you do it?" Norman asked, bewildered by the refusal.
Matt shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I figure that because Nick is Sig's favorite,[iv] he'd be the best man for the job."
"For fuck's sake!" Edgar snapped, shoving the throttle full-forward as another wave bore down on the 125' fishing vessel. "Go wake Sig and tell him I need him up here," he ordered in his do-it-right-the-fuck-now deck boss voice.
Jake headed for the wheelhouse stairs and Matt, realizing that he'd be risking his job if he disobeyed Edgar's command, reluctantly followed. "Here we go…like sheep to the slaughter," he muttered as they reached the landing outside of Sig's stateroom.
"Matt, what the hell, man!?" Jake exclaimed as the older man made to open the door.
"What?" Matt asked exasperatedly.
"We can't just barge in," Jake exclaimed, outraged over how disrespectful such an action would be. Growing up as the only boy in a household full of sisters, Jake had quickly learned that entering a person's private space without their express permission was rude; the notion of strolling unannounced and uninvited into Sig's room, into the Captain's quarters, was downright terrifying.
"Why not?" Matt asked, confused. "They sent us to wake him up, didn't they?"
"Yeah, but let's a least try knocking first," Jake insisted.
'We're on a crab boat in the middle of the Bering Sea and he wants to obey social niceties?' Matt thought, regarding Jake with a disbelieving frown. "If Sig didn't hear the ringing phone by his bed," he scoffed, "D'you really think he's going to notice if you knock?"
Jake opened his mouth to argue, but Nick joined them on the landing before he could speak. The older fisherman shook his head, regarding the younger deckhands with a disappointed frown. "I'll handle this," Nick said, waving Jake and Matt towards the galley. "Why don't you guys go clean the kitchen or something?" Mavar watched as Matt and Jake reluctantly complied, Matt clenching his jaw as he bit back a mutinous response and Jake wearing a kicked-puppy expression.
With a perfunctory knock, Nick opened the door and stepped into Sig's stateroom. "Sig, I'm gonna turn on the light," he warned as he flipped the switch. The fluorescent fixture hummed to life and Nick crossed the carpeted floor to stand beside the bed. "Sig, wake up," Nick said, frowning when the Captain never so much as twitched in response to his voice. Nick tugged at the blankets, disturbing the warm cocoon that surrounded Sig, and the earth-toned comforter slid to the floor with a quiet swish. Sig lay on his left side with his back to the door, bare-chested save for the glittering gold chain around his neck, and Nick's eyes widened with alarm when he saw that several dark bruises dotted the pale skin of Sig's back and right shoulder. The deckhand reached out, gently touching Sig's shoulder while trying to avoid the unexplained injury, and rolled him onto his back.
"Holy hell!" Nick exclaimed as he got his first, unobstructed look at the sleeping sailor's face: From under half-open eyelids, Sig stared unseeingly up at Nick with eerily unfocused sea-blue eyes. Unnerved by Sig's unresponsiveness and afraid for Norwegian's health, Mavar roughly shook the oblivious fisherman. "Sig!"
Sig inhaled one last puff from his cigarette and sighed tiredly as he extinguished the butt in the black ashtray. They'd been hauling gear for over twenty-six hours without pause, trying to empty and re-set their pots before the rapidly approaching storm struck. Sig passed his hand through his feathered hair and scratched an itch near the base of his skull as he gazed out the wheelhouse windows. The wind had changed direction, forcing them into the ditch,[v]which made working conditions out on deck even more dangerous.
Sig reached for the loudhailer as he spotted a large wave. "Heads up out there," the eldest Hansen warned, gritting his teeth when water splashed forcefully against the Northwestern. He twisted in his chair, causing the leather to squeak quietly in protest, and glanced out the wheelhouse door. "Everybody okay?" Sig asked over the hailer.
"We're good!" "Fine!" "Shit that's cold!" Matt, Edgar, and Jake simultaneously responded.
Satisfied that his crew was merely waterlogged, Sig chuckled and returned the loudhailer to its place in the neat row of electronics that hung on the overhead bulkhead. He turned his full attention back to the sea and swore when he saw a massive rogue[vi]wave rushing straight towards them. Sig simultaneously shoved the throttle full-forward and took hold of the jog stick, aiming the Northwestern's nose directly at the looming wave; [vii]he took his hand off the throttle control and grabbed the loudhailer to warn the deckhands of the renewed danger. "Get down! Get the fuckdown!" Sig yelled over the hailer as he propelled himself out of his chair and ducked down behind the console a split-second before the wave slammed into the boat.[viii]He muttered a quiet prayer of thanks when the wheelhouse windows withstood the onslaught and quickly reseated himself in his chair as the Northwestern slid rapidly down the spine of the 35' wave.
By some miracle, Sig had managed to turn the boat so the bow and the wheelhouse had taken the brunt of the impact, sheltering the vulnerable men on deck from the worst of the wave's fury. Although they'd managed to avoid capsizing the boat, there was still danger out on deck; the steep decent caused the line to slip out of the block and the rope draped itself dangerously over Edgar's right shoulder, putting him in the bight of the line. Edgar reacted quickly, spinning clockwise and trying to throw the rope off. Another wave splashed up and doused the deckhands with seawater; already off-balance, Edgar lost his precarious footing and fell, hitting his head on the unforgiving steel of the launcher and rendering him unable to untangle the line that encircled his neck.
Matt frantically grabbed what little slack remained in the line and wound it into the block, scarcely preventing Edgar from being pulled overboard as the eight hundred pound pot sank back down to the bottom of the Bering Sea.
Jake dropped the buoy bags and pulled his knife out of his knife belt[ix]as he rushed to Edgar's side. The ice-eyed deckhand squatted down next to the unmoving man and skillfully sliced through the rope wrapped around the engineer's neck. "Edgar!" Jake exclaimed loudly, trying to call the deck boss back to consciousness, but Edgar's eyes stayed stubbornly shut.
"Careful," Nick cautioned, "Don't move him 'til we know how bad he's hurt."
Up in the wheelhouse, Sig manipulated the boat through a series of smaller waves and glanced repeatedly at the live camera feed as the deckhands clustered around his brother. Long minutes passed until he finally deemed it safe enough to engage the autopilot and leave the helm. "How is he?" Sig called as he flung the wheelhouse door open. He raced across the upper deck towards the blue-painted ladder that led down to the lower deck. Sig pushed his way into the huddle[x]and knelt down at Edgar's side, the knees of his light-wash jeans darkening as the fabric soaked up the seawater.
"Still out cold," Nick reported as he pulled off his gloves and held his hand in front of Edgar's nose, checking to see if the deck boss was still breathing.
A 17' swell splashed against the side of the boat and Sig instinctively bent over his brother's prone form to shelter him from the resulting sea spray. "Help me lay him down," the fair-haired Captain requested. "We've gotta support his spine when we move him. Matt, Jake, lift his legs. Norm, come over to his other side and see if you can get your arms behind his back, okay?" Sig turned to Nick as the middle Hansen gingerly stepped over Edgar's long legs and knelt down in the cramped space between the starboard rail and the launcher. "Nick, take his shoulders. I'll steady his head and neck." Sig carefully curled his left hand around the back of Edgar's neck and cradled the engineer's head in his right palm, grimacing when he realized that Edgar's dark hair was saturated with blood. "Okay, on three," he said. "One…two…three!" Sig paled and swallowed against the urge to be sick when he felt Edgar's skull give way under his gentle touch. "Jesus," he murmured as they laid the ragdoll body flat.
"He's awfully still…" Jake commented somberly, staring at the fallen Hansen's slack, expressionless face.
Sig pressed his fingertips against the artery in Edgar's neck; finding nothing, he shifted his fingers slightly and held his breath. Sig shook his head, trying to deny the heartbreaking truth as he attempted to find a pulse. Nick gently nudged Sig's shaking fingers aside and pressed his own fingertips against Edgar's neck. 'That's why I didn't feel a pulse,' Sig thought desperately. 'My hands were just shaking too bad….' Nick sadly shook his head and Sig's own heartbeat faltered. 'Don't say it,' the eldest Hansen silently begged. 'Don't say it…'
"He's gone," Nick said, voice cracking.
"No…" Sig whispered as a suffocating cloud of grief and despair settled over him, stealing his breath and…he gasped, pale eyelashes fluttering as he blinked dazedly up at a familiar, bearded face. "Nick?" Sig rasped.
Relieved that Sig seemed to be okay, Nick released his grip on Sig's shoulders and blew out an unsteady breath. "Damn it, Sig," he said, holding a hand over his frantically beating heart. "I swear you're gonna give me a heart attack."
Sig sat up and released a shaky breath. 'Just another nightmare,' he thought. 'But it was just so vivid, like real….'[xi] He shook his head, pushing the disconcerting dream to the back of his mind. "What'd I do?" Sig asked around a yawn.
"You were doing the creepy, thousand-yard stare again, man, like when you were sleepwalking," Nick explained as he stooped down to retrieve Sig's clothes from where the skipper had discarded them in an untidy pile beside his bunk. "I thought you might've had a stroke or an aneurism or something."
"At least I didn't wander out on deck this time," Sig muttered, rubbing the left side of his stubble-covered face in an attempt to diminish the marks made by his pillowcase.
"Y'know," Nick began as Sig swung his legs over the side of his bunk, "Jake and Matt were originally supposed to wake you. Can you imagine how freaked out they'd've been if they'd've seen you sleeping with your eyes open?"
"Good thing you came instead," Sig responded, his voice slightly muffled as he pulled his white t-shirt over his head and tugged it down, hiding the slow-to-heal bruises on his shoulder and back. "What's with the personal wake up call anyway," the Norwegian asked, pulling on his zip-neck pullover.
"Norm tried callin' down," Nick explained as Sig sheathed his legs in his jeans, "But you must've slept through it." The deckhand shrugged. "We're sailing through a pretty gnarly storm," he continued, "And Edgar thinks it'd be best if you take over for him."
"I'd better get up there then," Sig said as he headed for the door. A wicked wave rocked the Northwestern roughly to her port side, causing the fourth generation fisherman to stumble sideways. "Damn it!" Sig swore as his left wrist slammed against the doorframe. "You all right there, Mavar?" he called, looking at Nick over his shoulder.
"I'm good," Nick answered as he regained his footing.
Sig glanced down at his injured wrist, a pained grimace gracing his face. 'Fantastic,' he thought, seeing that bruises were already beginning to form.
"You okay?" Nick asked as Sig experimentally wiggled each of his fingers.
Sig bit his lip as he gingerly rotated his injured left wrist first clockwise then counter-clockwise. "Yeah, I'm fine," he answered, silently diagnosing the injury as a painful-but-ignorable sprain. Sig briefly scrutinized his Gold Nugget watch, half-expecting the crystal face to have shattered with the impact, but was pleased to discover it intact. In a gesture that exemplified the 'out of sight, out of mind' philosophy, he lowered his arm and let his hand dangle near his hip, disregarding the throbbing sensation in his wrist as nothing more than a minor annoyance.
"I'd better go downstairs and see how Matt and Jake are fairing," Nick said as he followed Sig out of the skipper's stateroom.
Nodding farewell, Sig ascended the stairs to the wheelhouse. "Nice," he observed sarcastically as a mammoth wave broke over the Northwestern's bow, splattering the windows with a mixture of sea spray and rainwater.
"It's times like these when an Eastern-rigged[xii] boat would have its advantages," Edgar remarked as Sig strode over to claim the Captain's chair. Edgar relinquished the helm to his brother and moved across the wheelhouse to sit at the port side driving station. The relief skipper released a soft sigh of relief, grateful to be out of the hot seat.
"House-aft vessels aren't as likely to take a direct hit to the wheelhouse," Norman agreed from his perch on the archive cabinet. "But they're hardly impervious to waves. It only takes one wave to wreck a boat,"[xiii] he added as Sig reached up and turned on the radio.
"Hey," Sig interjected, leveling a quelling, blue-eyed stare at his younger siblings, "I'd like to hear the frickin' weather report!"
Edgar mimed locking his lips and throwing away the key while Norman offered Sig a sheepish smile. "Sorry, Sig," he apologized contritely before obediently falling silent.
The broadcast was almost inaudible over the harsh hiss of static interference. Sig adjusted the volume and listened intently, catching one of every four words as the signal faded in and out. "Shit," he swore as the radio signal cut out completely. Sig scanned through the channels, hoping to find a stronger frequency, and huffed out a frustrated sigh. The static-laden signal fizzled like an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of water and Sig pinched the bridge of his nose as a headache bloomed behind his eyes. Aggravated by the hissing white noise, he turned the radio off. "Fuck," the fair-haired Captain cursed.
"Their forecasts are crap anyway," Edgar remarked quietly. "They predicted a storm, but nothin' on this scale."
"Well, we'll just have to jog through it," Sig said resignedly. The storm was already on top of them and there was nowhere to run, no nearby island they could take shelter behind,[xiv] and no port they could retreat to…they had no choice but to face the storm at sea. Sig pushed the jog stick hard over, suppressing a wince when the action jarred his injured wrist, and adjusted his speed as another wave rocked the Northwestern.
The challenge of battling the rising seas and the nautical[xv] winds demanded Sig's undivided attention; his awareness narrowed to the throttle his right hand, the jog stick in his left hand, and the radiating pain from his sprained left wrist until that too faded into the background, unimportant. Sig took his hand off the throttle and quickly retrieved a cigarette from the pack; the unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth as he adjusted the Northwestern's speed for an approaching wave. "This is ridiculous,"[xvi] Sig muttered. With grace that bespoke of many years of practice, he lit his cigarette and sighed softly, cigarette smoke coalescing around him like a gray-white aura.
The wind was blowing against the tide and the underwater currents were making it nearly impossible for Sig to control the boat the way he wanted[xvii] through the confused seas.[xviii] "Damn it," he swore softly, forehead creasing with a combination of concentration and anger as he glared out at the raging storm. Time passed…. Sig was peripherally aware of his crew periodically popping in and out of the pilothouse to deliver fresh cups of coffee or to help keep a lookout for waves waiting to ambush the Northwestern from her port side, but the Captain's focus never wavered from the task of navigating through the nightmarish, Alaskan hurricane.
Hours later, the Northwestern reached the eye of the fierce storm. Sig released his white-knuckled grip on the controls and flexed his stiff fingers as he leaned wearily back in his chair.[xix] He pressed his fingertips against his forehead, grimacing as a fierce headache beat against the inside of his skull. Sig glanced around the wheelhouse, half-expecting to see one of the deckhands in the Co-Captain's chair, but he was alone.
The short-lived respite ended and the weather began to build back up to the same furious intensity. Sig sat forward in his chair and returned his hands to the controls. He shivered as the growling[xx] roar of an oncoming wave reached his ears; even after two decades of fishing on the Bering Sea, Sig still thought it was eerie to sit alone in the wheelhouse with only that ominous sound to break the silence. 'Maybe I can tune into the weather report now,' he thought, briefly reaching up to turn the radio on.
The signal was full of static, but Sig managed to decipher what the meteorologist was saying: "Tonight, winds west, sixty-five to seventy with gusts up to seventy-five miles per hour; seas forty-five feet."
"Fantastic," Sig muttered as he turned the radio off. The fair-haired Hansen sighed, resigned to spending another eighteen, nerve-wracking hours at the helm.
After what seemed like an eternity[xxi] of battling the massive, arctic storm, Sig engaged the autopilot and staggered to his feet, his numb legs reluctant to support his weight as he left the Captain's chair for the first time in over thirty-two hours.[xxii] The constant stress and mental acuity required to get safely through the storm had taken their toll, leaving Sig feeling drained and dazed.[xxiii]
Sig slowly descended the stairs and walked into his stateroom. He crossed the room and pulled a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved, crimson-red polo shirt out of his sea bag before detouring to his private bathroom. After performing his ablutions and dressing in clean clothes, Sig left the bathroom and looked longingly at his bunk. 'No rest for the wicked,'[xxiv] he thought, turning his back on the temptation to climb into his unmade bed and pull the covers up over his head. Sig closed his eyes and stood still, trying to shake off the fatigue. 'Time to get back to work,' Sig thought as he reluctantly left his stateroom and headed down to the galley where his crew had gathered. Matt and Jake were playing with the Xbox while Nick, Norman, and Edgar were playing cards.[xxv]
"It finally calmed down enough so you could leave the chair, huh?" Edgar observed, eyes narrowing when he saw the Aleutian-gray[xxvi] hue of his brother's skin.
"Uh huh," Sig yawned as he retrieved a spare mug from the cupboard. He shuffled over to the happily burbling coffee maker. Sig reached for the carafe with his left hand, exposing the vivid bruises that marred his wrist as his shirtsleeve rode up.
"Holy shit," Jake exclaimed, his ice-blue eyes widening when he caught sight of the injury. "You get in a fight with the jog stick?!"
Sig blinked, bewildered. "What?"
"Dude," Jake began, abandoning the game controller, "That's some wicked bruising there." He pointed at the swollen joint, half-concealed by the ornate band of Sig's Gold Nugget watch.
Sig glanced down, belatedly remembering the injury; he'd become was so accustomed to the pain that he was numb to it. [xxvii] "Oh that," the eldest Hansen said unconcernedly as his crew clustered around to investigate the mysterious injury.
"What'd you do?" Matt asked, whistling as he got his first glimpse of the impressive black and blue bruising.
"That's not from when we were in your stateroom and the boat took that wave?" Nick inquired, eyeing the sprained joint.
"Yeah," Sig answered with a dispassionate shrug. "I bashed it against the doorframe."
"Sig!" Mavar exclaimed reprovingly. "Why didn't you say something when I asked if you were okay?"
"It's nothing," Sig stated as Norman reached out and caught hold of his shirtsleeve.
Grasping his brother's forearm, Norman straightened Sig's arm at the elbow so his arm was extended straight out in front of him. He pushed Sig's sleeve up so he could see the injury more clearly. "We should get some ice on this," Norman declared, tightening his grip when the stubborn blonde tried to pull his arm away.
"I don't know why you guys are makin' such a big deal about it," Sig grumbled. He shook his head when Jake and Matt left to gather the necessary medical supplies. "I'm fine," he insisted, purposefully neglecting to mention that having to constantly use his wrist to pilot the boat through the storm had only exacerbated the injury. "It doesn't even hurt."[xxviii]
"If one of us got hurt, you'd just tell us to suck it up and expect us to go back to work like nothing was wrong?"[xxix] Nick asked sarcastically.
"You'd have us sit down," Norman said, ushering Sig over to the galley table.
"You'd get the first aid kit," Matt added, returning with the large medical supply box. The deckhand unlatched the clasp and opened the lid; reaching inside the carefully organized kit, he quickly found an Ace wrap and handed it to Edgar.
"You'd wrap it up for us," the deck boss continued as he repositioned his brother's arm and gingerly removed the Gold Nugget timepiece from Sig's swollen wrist. "Nice and tight to give it some stability," he murmured as he expertly wrapped the injured joint.
"You'd tell us to ice it," Jake chimed in, returning with an ice pack as Edgar finished binding Sig's injury. The youngest deckhand gently placed the ice atop the Captain's wrist. Sig hissed in discomfort, but left the cold pack in place.
Nick reached over and extracted some over-the-counter painkillers from the still-open first aid kit; he effortlessly conquered the childproof cap and shook four tablets out into his palm. "And you'd dose us with Ibuprofen,"[xxx] he concluded, offering the pills to Sig. Sig dry-swallowed the tablets and chased them with a sip of coffee.
"And then you'd tell us to suck it up and get back to work," Edgar added, earning an outburst of laughter from the deckhands and causing Sig to swallow wrong.
Sig coughed to clear his throat, blue eyes watering after having his mouthful of coffee go down the wrong tube. "Right," he rasped, chuckling. He looked at the concerned fishermen assembled around the table and offered each member of his seafaring family a silent 'thank you.' Sig repositioned the ice pack and cleared his throat again. "I'm about to start bawlin' here," [xxxi] he stated gruffly, "So knock it off with this Hallmark stuff and let's get back to work."
"All right, you heard the Captain," Edgar declared, grinning widely as he closed the first aid kit and got to his feet. "Let's go see if we took any damage during the storm."
"Then we can haul our last few strings," Matt said.
"Plug the boat," Norman continued.
"Head to port," Nick said.
"Offload our catch," Jake added, ginning.
"And go home," Sig concluded. "Safe and sound," he added somberly, his vow drowned out by his crew's boisterous cheering.
Sig steered the Northwestern towards pot seventy-seven, distrustfully eyeing the buoy bags that bobbed innocently on the water. "I'm being ridiculous," he muttered, reaching for the pack of Camels on the console. Sig tucked a cigarette between his lips and flicked his lighter to life. He exhaled the smoke and tried to ignore his worsening apprehension. "I've been on edge every time we've hauled this pot," Sig grumbled, "And, other than that bad bridle, nothin' bad has happened." Sig pulled off his reading glasses and set them aside. He shivered, feeling chilled in spite of the warmth emanating from the heater.
Sig set the smoldering cigarette in the ashtray and reached over to adjust the heater, aborting the move in favor of grabbing his head when the dull, pounding headache that he'd been ignoring unexpectedly intensified. Sig curled in on himself and squeezed his watering eyes shut, struggling to master the searing pain that threatened to split his skull apart. "Fuck!" the fair-haired Hansen swore, clenching his hands into white-knuckled fists against his scalp. Sig lurched back in his chair, blue eyes snapping open and gasping for breath as some kind of supernatural force surged through him. A rapid-fire slideshow of the nightmares that had haunted him for the past six weeks replayed before his eyes and he couldn't escape the seemingly endless parade of flashbacks.
The episode ended as suddenly as it had begun and Sig slumped sideways in his chair like a discarded doll. His vision grayed in and out of focus and his hearing cut in and out like a weak radio signal; Sig caught bits and pieces of his crew's conversation over the loudhailer as they worked, unaware of his predicament in the wheelhouse. Breathing raggedly, Sig weakly righted himself in the Captain's chair; dazed from his ordeal, he sat, shaken, pale, and sweating, until Edgar's voice jarred him out of his trance.
"Double the luck," the deck boss laughingly declared.
Before he realized what he was doing, Sig half-leapt, half-staggered to his feet and stumbled out onto the upper deck just in time to see pot number seventy-seven clear the starboard rail. He was halfway down the blue-painted ladder when the crab cage clanged down onto the launcher. Sig heard the metallic 'clink' of the dogs as they clamped down on the frame, holding the pot in place, but, in his mind's eye, he saw the launcher shift upright, holding the pot perpendicular to the table so the crab could be dumped out and sorted; a split second later, the eight hundred pound pot slipped out of the dogs. The steel cage crashed down onto the sorting table, crushing and killing many of the crab, before it bounced across and hit Edgar, who, in a brief moment of inattention, had been standing in the pot's flight path.[xxxii]The Captain blinked the vision away just as the hydraulic rams started to raise the launcher upright. "Edgar, run!"[xxxiii] Sig roared.
Caught off guard by his brother's unexpected yell, Edgar whirled around to see what was wrong. "Wha-AH!?" the deck boss cried out in surprise as Sig barreled into him, roughly tackling him.
The falling crab pot missed Sig's skull by mere centimeters, passing close enough to ruffle his hair as the two Hansens fell to the deck in a tangle of limbs. The sharp 'snap' of Sig's wrist and the Captain's pained scream went unheard over the deafening clatter of falling steel as the rogue pot slammed into the port side shelter deck.
"Sig!" "Edgar!" "Boss!" Nick, Matt, and Jake exclaimed simultaneously while Norman uttered a wordless shout of alarm. The four deckhands rushed to help the two fallen fishermen, who laid half-under the makeshift shelter of the sorting table.
Pinned against the deck by his brother's body, Edgar resisted the urge to squirm free, fearing that any movement he made could worsen any injuries Sig may have sustained. "Sig!?" he called worriedly, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps as the others raced to their aid. "Sig!? You okay!?"
"Ow, fuck!" Sig cursed, rolling sideways off of Edgar's taller body and jarring his badly broken wrist in the process. "Are you okay?" he demanded breathlessly, cradling his injured wrist close to his chest as Edgar slowly pushed his battered body upright.
"I'm good," Edgar replied, leaning back against the sorting table.
"You're bleeding!" Norman exclaimed, noticing the sizeable gash on Edgar's forehead just above his right eyebrow.
"Must've hit my head when we landed," the youngest Hansen responded, raising a trembling hand to wipe away the blood that tickled his face as it trickled freely from the wound.
"Don't, dude," Matt advised, intercepting the engineer's hand. He held up three fingers and began checking his friend for signs of a concussion. "How many fingers d'you see?"
As Matt and Norman tended to Edgar, Nick and Jake came to Sig's aid. "I swear, Sig," Nick declared, face pale beneath his beard, "A heart attack. That's what you're gonna give me."
"Sorry," Sig chuckled wearily, wincing as Mavar gently took hold of his left forearm.
"That doesn't look good," Jake murmured, staring at Sig's Ace-wrapped wrist and turning distinctly green.
"Snapped it like a toothpick," the Captain confirmed, calmly appraising the unnatural angle of the joint.
"At least it's not a compound fracture," Nick said, relieved that the bone hadn't punctured the skin. He said a silent prayer of 'thanks' as he concluded, "It could've been worse."
"A lot worse," Sig echoed somberly, recalling all the nightmarish scenarios he'd experienced as he met Nick's gaze.
'Whoa!' Nick thought, suppressing a shiver as Sig's sea-blue eyes flared with a flash of some kind of otherworldly awareness. Unnerved, he looked away and watched as Norman and Matt helped Edgar to his feet.
"Twisted my left ankle and banged my right knee when we went down," Edgar reported before Sig could draw breath to ask. "Oh," he added, gesturing at the bleeding cut on his forehead, "And I whacked my head…again."
"How're you doing?" Norman asked.
Sig shrugged, then grimaced; his already-bruised right shoulder had taken the brunt of the impact when he'd tackled Edgar and now new bruises were forming over the old ones. "Busted my wrist," Sig said, making no mention of his injured shoulder. "And I think Edgar got me with his elbow when we went down," he added, prodding at a tender spot on the left side of his jaw where a bruise was already beginning to blossom.
"Dude!" Jake exclaimed, "He's a hero and you hit him!?"
"I didn't mean to," Edgar protested.
"I wasn't being a hero,"[xxxiv] Sig interjected. "I was being a big brother."
"Awe," Matt teased, causing Nick, Jake, and Norman to laugh as Sig scowled and Edgar blushed. "In any case, man," Bradley continued, "That was one spectacular tackle." He grinned conspiratorially at Sig as Nick and Jake helped him stand.
"Yeah," Jake agreed, nodding enthusiastically, "The Seahawks[xxxv] should draft you."
"You sure you didn't hit your head?" Nick questioned, steadying Sig when the skipper swayed.
"Kinda dizzy," Sig admitted quietly, "But I think the adrenaline's just wearin' off."
"Come on," Nick declared, "Let's go inside."
"Might have to butterfly that shut," Norman observed, eyeing Edgar's head wound.
"Just as long as there's no dental floss[xxxvi] involved," the relief skipper replied with an overdramatic shudder, hobbling towards the entryway with Matt and Norm's assistance.
"Fisherman's honor,"[xxxvii] the hydraulics expert promised.
"What?" Edgar asked, catching sight of Sig's small smile as the six men moved into the galley. "You get stitched up with floss and see how you like it," he said as Jake went to retrieve the first aid kit.
"It's not that," Sig answered. "I'm just glad we're all alive." The fear, anxiety, and unease that had tied his stomach into knots were gone. The Captain expelled a relieved sigh, breathing easy for the first time since the King crab season had begun six weeks earlier. 'Finally,' Sig thought, 'The nightmare's over.'
References & Glossary of Terms:
[i] While fishing for Opilio crab, the crew of the Northwestern has to use the manual wheel due to a broken part, a part that connects the jog stick into the rudder controls; Jake Anderson is put in charge of steering the vessel with the manual wheel while Sig operates the throttle control. (Deadliest Catch S.10-8)
[ii] "You've gotta be literally forcing that boat into that weather to keep that boat up against it otherwise you have no control." (Sig Hansen, After the Catch 1; Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[iii] "Yeah, I can see why he [Sig] gets ulcers up here [in the wheelhouse]." (Edgar Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.2-8) "I can see where all the stress comes from." (Edgar Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.10-7)
[iv] Edgar tries to "scare the hell" out of Sig by throwing a dummy dressed like Nick off the top of the wheelhouse. "We'll put Nick's jacket on it 'cause he [Sig] seems to love Nick more than his own brothers." (Edgar Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.4-16)
[v] Working in the "ditch" or "trough" means the waves come over the starboard rail where the men are working, which increases the danger of getting swept overboard. (Deadliest Catch S.5-2)
[vi] Rogue Wave: A wave that is at least twice the size of other waves in the same ocean area. A rogue can topple a boat in the blink of an eye is still considered to be a natural phenomenon; research is ongoing to try and pinpoint the cause of these monster waves..An interviewer asked, "How common are rogue waves and what's the largest one you have seen?" and Sig answered, "Rogue waves are common, especially during the peak of a storm and after. They're not necessarily big. A rogue wave to me is more of a freight train coming at you. Waves are usually synchronized, and a rogue wave comes with all its power out of the blue. It has a different force behind it. They suck!"
[vii] "When you see 'em [the big waves] comin', then you gotta point into it and power in, otherwise it's gonna take you. So you wanna really manipulate the boat through the waves the best you can." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-11)
[viii] Upon seeing a massive 35' rogue wave headed straight for the boat, Sig ordered the cameraman to, "Get down! Get the fuck down!" as he ducked for cover between the console and the Captain's chair. (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-11)
[ix] Edgar has a strict rule that dictates every deckhand has to carry a knife; he went so far to put a "smelly cod" in Jake's knife belt to help him remember the lesson. (Deadliest Catch S.4-3)
[x] This word choice is deliberate; Sig once gave the deckhands the option: "You can pull [gear] tomorrow in 65 or pull all night and stay alive. […] Now they're huddling." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.5-15)
[xi] After learning about Captain Phil Harris' passing, Sig reveals he had a dream about being at Phil's house, but being unable to find him: "For some reason, I couldn't sleep; I got up a couple, three times. Phil was on my head. It was like this dream and I was over at his place and he's always blarin' loud music and stuff and he had his bike parked out front with some parts scattered around, but there was nobody there. It was just vivid, like real, but it was empty." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.6-16)
[xii] Eastern-rigged refers to a house-aft style vessel; Western-rigged refers to a house-forward style vessel.
[xiii] "It only takes one [wave]." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.5-16)
[xiv] If the weather is going to get too severe, sometimes boats will anchor behind an island to take shelter from the storm. (Deadliest Catch S.2-1) (Deadliest Catch S.4-13) (Deadliest Catch S.5-16)
[xv] "Nautical" usually refers to the high winds on the Bering Sea, but it can also be used to describe bad weather in general.
[xvi] "This [weather] is ridiculous." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.6-15) (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-9)
[xvii] "I don't have control. The tide is goin' against the wind so I cannot control the way I want to." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-10)
[xviii] Confused seas: A highly disturbed water surface without a single, well-defined direction of wave travel.
[xix] "Jog stick and throttle, all night. Autopilot won't hold. […] Full reverse comin' down the wave, full reverse; and then, soon as you get to the bottom, you full-forward, try to keep her straight 'til that wave hits you, and you're actually goin' backwards. You're goin' backwards, but you're stayin' straight." (Johnathan Hillstrand, Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[xx] We call 'em growlers 'cause you can actually hear 'em; it sounds like…everybody said it's like a tornado." (Andy Hillstrand, Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[xxi] "Every single wave is your enemy. Every one that's comin' at you, you don't know what's gonna happen, so every single one, for days on end…" (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[xxii] "And I've jumped outta the chair after eight, twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-six hours before where, literally, my lower half of my body was completely numb." (Keith Colburn, Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[xxiii] "You know, there's a level of concentration at the wheel that you have that is, like, I mean, you're on high alert, and I have literally been in that chair, and I'm sure everybody else has, to the point where you can't get outta the chair, you can't do anything." (Keith Colburn, Deadliest Catch S.4-17)
[xxiv] During a 'family' dinner aboard the boat, the three Hansen brothers discuss their childhoods and Sig describes himself as "evil" while remembering a particular Christmas present from his parents: "Let's get the older, evil son some boxing gloves." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.2-7)
[xxv] "[…]You'd wake up and you'd hear this click click click click click and, uh, then it was the old man playin' cards on the table. So he'd play solitaire, givin' everybody a couple a minutes to take a nap, y'know, and sleep and then you'd hear that flick flick flick flick flick, y'know, or shufflin' the cards and you knew he wanted someone to come play cards with him, you know he wanted company 'cause he was doin' it kinda loud; so then 'all right' you'd get up and you'd play a little cards or have a cup of coffee and, uh, then he'd look at the clock and 'the tide should be slackin' off pretty quick' and then you'd head out and go fish. " (Sig Hansen, 360 boat tour commentary on Discovery's website)
[xxvi] Aleutian-gray: A deckhand on the F/V Time Bandit coined this phrase, referring to the color of the sky when a storm front is approaching the fishing vessels on the Bering Sea. (Deadliest Catch S.4-7)
[xxvii] Nick Mavar had his nose snapped in two by a steel picking hook and kept insisting that his nose didn't hurt and that it was just cut, but Sig told him, "Well, it doesn't hurt 'cause it's sore and, you know, it's numb. You don't feel it…yet. But you will." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-11)
[xxviii] "You beat a dog enough, it doesn't hurt after awhile; I suppose it gets used to it." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.5-3)
[xxix] "I don't want my brothers to be in pain. I don't want my crew to be in pain." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.6-13)
[xxx] After Nick got hit in the nose with a crane hook, Sig told Matt to "get him some Ibuprofen" while he went to the wheelhouse to "make a call down south" to a hospital to ascertain whether they needed to get Nick professional medical attention. (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.7-11)
[xxxi] Sig spoke about the end of "derby-style" fishing: "…I'm about to start bawlin', so knock it off." (Deadliest Catch S.1-10)
[xxxii] "A big part of makin' the deck safe is those dogs. An eight hundred seventy-five pound pot landing on your head is not gonna hurt, it's just gonna kill you." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.6-9)
[xxxiii] Sig says, "Basically, the rule on the boat for us nowadays is, look, if somethin' goes crazy like that [referring to the dangerous task of retrieving an anchor they lost in a storm], just run. It's not worth it." Edgar scoffs and remarks, "Screw that. I'm not gonna run." (Deadliest Catch S.4-19)
[xxxiv] "The main thing is you gotta just get outta the way. Heroes on a crab boat don't last long." (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.5-2)
[xxxv] During an interview with Danny Scott in 2005, Sig revealed he is a Seahawks fan. ( wiki/Sig_Hansen) When the Seattle Seahawks were playing in the Super Bowl, Sig and the crew listened to the game while continuing to fish; they also had a competition to see who could swear the least in a day and whoever lost (Sig) had to do the dishes for the duration of the trip. (Deadliest Catch S.10-13)
[xxxvi] In an episode of "After the Catch," Sig reveals how he used dental floss to stitch up a cut on Edgar's head after Edgar got hit by a piece of falling ice..
[xxxvii] While promising not to lie to win the yearly Captain's wager, Sig swore to tell the truth by saying, "Fisherman's honor," much to the amusement of the other Captains. (Sig Hansen, Deadliest Catch S.3-1) Having Norman echo this sentiment adds another level of realism to the dialogue, even though his older brother is the one that originally said it.
Author's Note: Navigating the Nightmare is, sadly, coming to a close. Don't worry just yet, because there's still an epilogue to look forward to. Please leave comment with positive feedback/constructive criticism; I'm planning to have this printed and bound so I can add it to my personal library, and I'd rather fix any errors beforehand so I don't have the expense/headache that would come with having to re-print a 70 page (not counting the reference notes) story.