Slamin' Salmon in Parasite Panic!
Return to Kodiak Island, Alaska

The last time I was heading to Kodiak Island Alaska, I was fresh out of high school and going with the intention of King Crab Fishing. Let's say things didn't go to plan and I wound up homeless on a mountain doing solitary martial arts training for a couple months, before working some illegal jobs to scrape up enough money to escape. A little over a decade of adventure had passed since then, and now I was heading back. Once again the allure of a large amount of money in a short amount of time was too great to pass up. I had made efforts to get on some fishing boats over a year prior, but hadn't heard anything from the captains. I wrote the venture off as a dead end, but then suddenly I got an email: “Still looking for a fishing job?”. I was. The captain who had sent me the email explained they'd been at sea for while and had only just then had the chance to respond. Unfortunately for me, I was on my way to Morocco in the next couple of days to start the new year, so I couldn't just jump ship and go, so no fishing job for me. The captain and I kept in contact though and I was told something might open up in the summer. It seemed perfect to spend a month or two in the summer fishing for some venture capital. The perfect job: Short time commitment, maximum resource yield; profits aside, I was also interested in returning to Kodiak Island. Summer came around, and sure enough there was a job, which I got. The job was for Salmon fishing, and I was informed it was to last for 3 full months … the entire summer!? A bit longer than I wanted, but the potential money was worth it... I hoped. I thought “Worse case scenario, I wind up completely broke, pale from 3 months in the cloudy North, and weak from lack of training … also the entire summer would be gone. Best case scenario, slightly less of those things, plus I get money.”

I was broke; I decided it was worth the gamble. First I set out to convince people to invest in my venture with the potential of a huge return should I get a huge pile of money. I went at it Christopher Columbus / Marco Polo style. It wasn't ideal as I'd have to pay them off if I made it big, but it was better than not trying. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”, “Fortune favors the bold.”, and so on and so forth. So, I said goodbye to the people I was with, including the great fighting gym I'd joined since leaving Morocco. I packed the ridiculously massive amount of gear I would need for the job, plus my fight gear, just in case, and camping gear for when I was done with the job but still in Alaska, and I set out. A few hours before my flight, a friend took me to “Hooters” restaurant for a farewell dinner. While eating, a man burst in and demanded to see one of the waitresses. He accused her of stealing his keys and tried to fight her, at which point all the cooks jumped to the front of the store and forced the guy outside. Unfortunately for them, the guy had a posse waiting out there. All of a sudden there was ready to be a “west side story” style rumble right outside the window I was eating at! I got ready in case I was needed to defend the cooks or waitresses, but after a few tense minutes and some shoving, the offending party left. Probably for the best. I wouldn't have wanted to miss my flight because I got arrested at a brawl at Hooters … but what a story that would have been! After that, getting to the airport was pretty mundane.
My flight was to take over 24 hours, counting layovers and my 4 plane changes. The airlines were predictably crappy, and the first one charged me for my only checked bag. I hoped it would make it to my destination. Of course, if I made it to the Island I wouldn't know how I was going to leave the place since I'd used all my resources just GETTING there … eerily similar to last time, but at least this time I had a place to stay … supposedly. I was to be living on the boat.

The first flight was from the center of the States to Houston, Texas on a rickety hunk of junk, and I was sat next to a nun … that flight I found a copy of the book “The Alchemist” that someone had left in the seats, so I liberated it. The rest of the journey was exceptionally mediocre, with a long nap in the Anchorage airport. Arriving at the Kodiak Airport, somehow without days of delays, I was to be picked up by the captain. The only problem was that neither one of us knew what the other looked like. I knew sort of what I was looking for: A woman! All I knew was the captain was a women, who had fished for over 40 years. What does that person look like!? Would she be super old? Did she start as a fetus? Seemed like closer to the latter. She looked like a regular lady in her late 40's. I spotted her. She on the other hand, had no idea what I looked like. On the truck ride to the harbor she all of a sudden asked me “ … Are you Asian?” … Why? Do I look Asian? “Not really... but we all thought you'd be Asian.” What? Why? “From your resume, you talked about being fluent in Japanese and studying Chinese, and doing martial arts and all this traveling, you just sounded very Asian.” HAHA! “The crew has already nicknamed you “Jackie Chan”, I can't wait to show them what Jackie Chan looks like!” And so, I came to be called Jackie Chan, even before I'd met anyone.

On the way to the dock the captain took me to get my commercial fishing license and boat gear. I wondered how necessary the license really was. How could they know if someone's crew was fully licensed? I stopped wondering the day we were boarded by the State Troopers to check on that very thing. They also informed me my driver's licenses was over 3 months expired. Woops. Buying the license and the gear set me back another huge chunk of money, but thankfully I knew I needed those things so I factored them in when borrowing money and taking backers. That being said, I was now 100% broke. At least the boat was to provide my meals and accommodation. This job needed to pan out or I was screwed … as per the usual. The image in my head was great though: Do a year's worth of work in 3 months, get a year's worth of pay in 3 months, spend the next 12 months lounging under palm trees and kicking people in the face. Simple.

After errands it was off to the dock and onto the boat to meet the rest of the crew. Aside from the captain and myself, there were two other crewman. One was a guy in his early 20's from California who came fishing to get money to bolster his Marijuana farm; he went by the name Riot, which I later learned was fitting as he was quit loud and had vicious ADHD, Leaving a trail of half-done tasks in his wake. Things like lids off of containers and leaving things around were his trademark. He felt bad about doing it, but couldn't seem to help it, which did nothing to lesson the frustration it caused. A good enough guy, and we got along fine, but months cooped up at sea with anyone will start to drive you nuts, no matter how well you get along. At least we got along well though … The other guy … The other guy was in his early 30's and from Utah. He had his nice moments, but he was generally belligerent and incoherent. He was definitely some kind of insane, though we couldn't figure out if it was a result of external trauma, drugs, or hi just came into the world that way. He would argue nonsense constantly, and aggressively, and complain about as much as he could as often as he could. I was as nice as I could be, but for some reason he had a special hatred of Riot, even though he was generally nicer than I was. All the moaning earned him the nickname “Mopey Dick”. It works on multiple levels: Nautically, in reference to the mariner's tale of revenge, and because he was a dick moping all the time. Also he had a 4 year old daughter that he went out of his way to NOT pay child support for, all the while constantly spending money. He definitely made boat life harder than it needed to be.

As for the boat itself, it was a typical mid-size boat for Seining. The fish hold held 40,000lbs of fish, it had a nice cabin/wheelhouse/captain's quarters, a galley, and below deck was the engine room/ crew bunks. We slept in an extension of the engine room, breathing exhaust and constantly listening to it's roar. We had “Bunks” that were just wooden slabs, and I had the added pleasure of having the highest and smallest bunk, right below the anchor, which I had to hear bang around all the time … also the ceiling dripped water on me all the time and I'm pretty sure there was asbestos. Typical. As a pillow I used the tent I'd brought wrapped in a sarong. The bathroom on the boat was just a small pantry with a 5 gallon bucket in it. After you were done using it, you had to carry it passed everyone and dump it over board. I know some people who are so shy, they would rather kill themselves than carry a bucket of their own poop passed a group of people and then publicly dump it. Thankfully, I am not one of those people. Using that bucket in a squall or some swells was like trying to take a poop and ride a mechanical bull at the same time, and it's not recommended for beginners.

After I'd moved into the boat I was free to wander for the day, as we wouldn't be setting sail for the next couple of days at least. I took the opportunity to hunt for a park to work out in and just meander about the island. Being back in that place was surreal; it hadn't changed much at all in the past decade and was just as I'd remembered it. It was like a return to a specific fever dream. Save for the weather: In my memory the island was a permanent hazy rainy cold mess, and the weather on that day was actually sunny and not all that bad... It had been so long since I was there I wondered if the places I remembered were even real. They were, and being back was a hyper vivid experience. It was somehow reinvigorating and reassuring. It was a chance at revenge. To conquer that which had stalled me all those years ago. Nash Vs. Alaska : Rematch!
I hiked around the town, up to Fort Abercrombie, worked out at the park I'd found, searched for martial arts schools, and returned to the boat just in time to sail out to the edge of the harbor with a fleet of other boats as part of a protest against the Naval war games, which were apparently scarring off the fish. There were bull horns, banners, chanting, and flairs. A proper protest! Not bad for my first day. Hit the ground running, Nash-style!

The next day wasn't quite as eventful though, as I spent the day searching for a billed cap. I borrowed money for one and got it. The reason? Apparently my job would involve lots of Jelly fish getting dumped on me, and the bill was to help keep them out of my face! I wasn't looking forward to that. Also, the island, and the boat, were covered in bees! My old nemesis. Mopey was afraid of bees, so at least we didn’t have to worry about one while the other was around. Though his dislike for them did nothing to help our sleeping quarters, which for a time was also full of bees. That day I also met my boat's sister boat. We were to be going out as a team. The boat was captained by my captain's daughter. Her first mate was her sister, also my captain's daughter, who had come to Kodiak just for the season to help with the boats. One of the other crew members hadn't shown up yet, and the other one had yet to be found and hired. The day was spent with everyone just kind of hanging out doing casual chores and our sister boat looking for the rest of it's crew.

A couple days went by and we heard the season was to start in a couple more. The thing with fishing is you don't know for sure when you'll be fishing or for how long the government will let you... so we waited for information. In the meantime our sister boat kept crew hunting, and my boat was kept busy with repairs. I wondered if we were really going to be ready in time. Our sister boat's 3rd crewman showed up, some girl, and promptly quit a couple days later. During this time we also tried to sort who among us would be doing what, as different jobs supposedly came with bonuses on top of our base pay, though the captain and our contracts never made mention of any such thing. Eventually we sorted ourselves. I became the galley master, or cooker rand cleaner of meals. Riot and Mopey vied for position of Skiff-man. The skiff-man drives the skiff, which is a small motor boat responsible for pulling one end of the Seine (net) and towing the boat against wind and tide while the big boat hauls the net in. It also was the official scapegoat position, as “It's always the skiff-man’s fault” seemed to be all the captain's mantra, and the captain would let you know it was your fault. They would scream and yell at you, telling you you were a fucking retard who should have been aborted. All day with this! Some captain's would get on the radio and talk shit about their skiff-man over long distances, so everyone knew what a piece of shit you were. No thanks. I've got a pretty low bullshit and condescension threshold and it had been reached with my normal deckhand responsibilities; they could have the job, and the pittance of extra money coming with it. Mopey was originally scheduled to have the job, but he fucked it up so bad it defaulted to Riot. This did nothing but fan the flames of their already combustible interactions. I felt for the guy, but he damn near killed himself twice and did actual serious damage to the skiff. One time he even drove away with nothing at all attached to the skiff. All Riot had to do was breath and not crash, and the job was his.

It was the first week of June now, and the weather had changed from the uncharacteristically sunny and warm-ish weather back to a perpetual gray and rainy. Now it was exactly as I remembered it. Our sister boat had placed an internet add for one of the vacant positions and had hired somebody who'd responded to it. She arrive and we greeted, a half ( technically quarter) Japanese girl from California. Her nickname was BMO. She was extremely artistic, and sometimes her artism would flair up so badly she could barely function in society; I could relate a bit, and we became fast friends. I commissioned her to cover my work hat in Nash-style designs and she turned it into a work of art. In fact, everything she doodled or created was impressive; she may well be the most talented artist I'd ever met, and thought it a shame her skills weren't being put to better use … so I had her constantly drawing me things. Our interactions together, plus copious booze, may very well have been the only thing that kept me from going fully insane during that fishing season. We had our symbiotic catharsis, or “bitching sessions”, that were quite nice. Everyone found a way to cope with the stress of being there; Riot took to banging the captains daughter, the captain of the sister boat.

The sister boat found and hired a girl walking the docks who said she had much experience. This was the second “fourth man” to be hired, and we hadn't even started fishing yet! It was bothering me that the boats were seemingly so poorly organized: get your life together, boats! We got delayed a day or two more, and I spent most of y time working out and looking at giant starfish the size of basketballs. One morning I ran into the harbormaster while he was on his 06:30 patrol. He glanced at me and said “Hey! I know you! You're the guy that every morning does the Taichi or whatever on the dock.” Yep. We talked, I ingratiated myself, and from then on I felt I could get away with pretty much anything. During the delay we went out on some practice runs to get a feel for what it was we would be doing when we were actually fishing. Riot gave me one of his old torn up fleeces to keep warm during crappy work, and I was thankful for it. We spent the day doing set after set in the rain, and at the end still had no idea what our actual jobs wee. Turns out everyone from Kodiak seemed to be a horrible communicator. Teach me! At the very least stop yelling at people for doing things wrong when they have no way of knowing what to do! This was a small taste of the nautical torture the next few months would bring. The job felt like it had the potential to be the worst I'd ever done, but all the fishing magazines kept saying it was going to be an amazing season. I liked the sound of that, and so pushed on.

The captain decided we should wait out the rest of the delay her her house on the other side of the island, 8 plus hours away. At least there we could bathe, get the occasional home cooked meal, and soak up a bit of Bush Alaska Culture. There's nothing to do during those long travel times but nap, read, or watch movies on the boat's DVD player. We traveled a lot, and so did a lot of those things. I brought several books with me in the vent of downtime, and after the first trip to Uganik , the captain's home, I'd already started and finished one of the books! I was going to need more intellectual material … We stopped on the way to her house to grab some trees that had been washed up to a beach; we tethered them to the boat, and towed them with us, to be used as fuel for the banya when we arrived. Once we got to Uganik we anchored up in the bay, from which the captain's home could be seen on a nearby hill. It was a fairly rural area, with only the occasional house to be glimpsed. Our first order of business was to skiff up to the shore and go up to the captain's house, to have a banya.
A banya is the Bush Alaska version of a Turkish bath, but for single occupancy. Imagine an outhouse combined with a sauna, and you have a good idea of what to expect. A freestanding wooden shed-like construction with a wood burning stove inside that seals in steam and heats pans of water for bathing. Also inside are large barrels of water which you can take from and add to the top of the stove to heat for bathing. Then you dump the water on yourself, scrub down, and dump again to rinse. The heat can become quit intense and I always volunteered to go first to dispense some of the pent up swelter. The steam could be so bad it almost made people pass out, and made you so sweaty you felt like you needed to bath from your bathing. More than once I accidentally backed up into one of the water barrels, and it was so hot it branded my Ass! Pay attention when you're in there! You do feel quit good when it's all over though. After our banyas the captain invited us into her home for a home cooked meal and a movie. The generosity was surprising. Afterwords we were taken back to the boat to stay the night, while the captain stayed in her house. Those nights on the boat without the captain could get pretty rowdy.

The first night in particular was pretty noteworthy as we were still getting to know each other, had an ample supply of alcohol, and were for all intents and purposed unsupervised. Oh the revelry! The party got started in a Nash-style fashion with me dared to do one finger handstand pushups, while I was drunk, on a boat. Victory! From there it was a typical party: We blasted music, we drank, we danced, the current 4th man on our sister boat went skinny dipping in the disgusting bay , the same place we dump our poop. The conversations covered the spectrum of existence, and Riot got really really drunk. The first sign he may have had too much was the entire bottle of fireball whiskey he drank. Then he was uncharacteristically quite for awhile, standing but wholly supported by the rigging. Then came the vomit. He threw up 2/3 of a hot dog, fully intact. Did he not chew at all!? It was like a magic trick! Once he hit this stage he was down for the count. He was able to say just 3 words, but they were all that was needed: “Bathroom. Bed. Bucket.”. Efficient! I watched over him, made sure he went to the bathroom, pushed him up into his top bunk, then rigged a bucket from the ceiling so that it was perfect level for him to roll over and puke into. Before he fully lost consciousness he looked at me and said “Don't let the captain find out...” I told him I had his back. Good thing I don't get hangovers, because I got up at 5 in the morning to dispose of the bucket and clean up so that he captain would be none the wiser on her return. Who ever says I'm not a team player hasn't seen me stranded on a team where my success is fully contingent o the team's success! Team Nash!

The next day we spent doing deck work, as the following day was our official fishing start! BMO continued drawing on my hat, people's bodies, and her notebooks, I worked out, and between chores the crew reminisced about the previous night. I continued to be mortified and disgusted by how much food the Alaskans waste, and how much garbage they willy-nilly toss into the sea. They come from a land of such abundance it doesn't matter to them, but it's that same attitude that’s trashed the planet thus far. If they’re making a change, it isn't a positive one. They are products of their environments. Bipolar would be too harsh a word for the captain, her family, and the fisherman of Kodiak, but they came off as having an uneven temperament, or at least an unpredictable one, but were overall nice people. It's a nice chance to experience a place that has a common language but a vastly different culture. It's much like I imagine travel would be like if there was 1 global language. It's fascinating when it isn't overly frustrating.

The day had finally arrived, our first day of real fishing! We stayed close to Uganik but fished for most of the day. That first day we caught a grand total of 44 Salmon. We were all so happy, I didn't know then that we really shouldn’t' have been, for so many reasons. That night we anchored at the captains bay again and had a victory home cooked dinner! … at 11 at night … though I suppose when the sun doesn't fully set until 1 in the morning it's easy to just do whatever, whenever.

The next day we awoke before 7 (we slept in) and got straight to work. That day wasn't as kind to us as the previous one, and punched us right from the get-go with surprising reality. Our first set netted us a grand total of 0 fish, the second one the same. We sailed for 3 hours to a new spot, which also yielded no fish. The travel netted the crew precious nap time, but it brought us nothing but troubled dreams. Also, since my bunk was below the anchor hold, I would get dripped on by water. Once it was time to work again, the only things I got were frustrated and the biggest piles of jellyfish dumped directly on me: over 30lbs worth! My face felt their stingey wrath. This would become my new normal. The captain decided to anchor up in port lions for the night, tying up with her daughter's boat. Along the way we stopped to make a few sets, catching nothing but King Salmon , which were illegal to have at the time, meaning we made no money.

The next morning when I got up to do my morning exercises the captain was angry. No surprise there, but what was odd was her decree: No one was to be up before her in the morning. She was to be the only one up in the morning until the engine was started. This marked the start of a point of contention between my captain and me: I wake up early for my morning exercises everyday, and the captain decreed that no one was to be up before her. We “compromised”. I said as long as I would get 20 minutes every morning before work, I would get up when she wanted. She agreed. Her decree caused us all to need to huddle in our bunks every morning like scared bilge rats, bladders bursting and bodies restless, waiting for the “ok” to get out of bed. It was condescending and inefficient. I would later find out that that phrase seems to best describe the fishing industry as a whole.

The days rolled on, but the fishing did not improve. Eventually we caught enough fish to offload them to a tender, a larger boat whose job it is to take the fish from other boats and haul them back tot he cannery. I finished all my books and BMO finished my hat. Stimulation was running scant but thankfully a closure was called and we sailed back to Kodiak. The crew split up between the library and the liquor store, and we filled our time accordingly. Kodiak Island is a huge place, the second largest Island in the U.S. Territories behind Hawaii's big island. Kodiak Island is the size of Connecticut, and Alaska's total size is over 2 times the size of Texas! So since it's so massive most people might think the cities would follow suit, but not so. Kodiak “City” is more like a town in it's size, population 6,000-ish, and the rest of the island is fairly uninhabited. This is great if you're out and about, but if you're working and just have the odd day off, there's not a lot to do. This coupled with the fact that it's a rainforest, and therefore rains very often, means most people just while their days away drinking, gambling, or at the library. We were no exception, though I added working out and going to the 1-screen movie theater to my list.

During our mandated “No fishing” time we were graced with a hew days of lovely weather. I strung up a Hammock and chill-axed reading what I could scrounge from the library. Riot and BMO ordered a projected and some movies, respectively, in preparation for our next extended outing. Mopey just bought a bunch of silly things, which we came to expect from him, including many kites which all met ridiculous ends. He damn near flew one to space!

The day the season opened again I was told authoritatively that we would ship out at 3 … we didn't leave until 6. Typical. Honestly, the fact we even left on the scheduled day is surprising. The season was back on now and the next day we got back on a schedule working from around 7am until around 11:30pm. I started the day fixing the crew banana pancakes and ended it preparing stir fry, thereby cementing my place as galley master. We would wait in line for hours for our turn to fish as all the boats had come to the same spot to fish, then we would catch less than 30 fish and repeat the process. It was more difficult than it sounds, but at this stage of the game the hardest part was bed time; Mopey had a serious case of foot rot and I'm convinced the smell was literally killing us. Riot even found an entire big toe toenail that had fallen off! Mopey was convinced his feet and hand had herpes. This did not help the crew-Mopey relations. We soldiered on. He would often throw his change in the ocean. His legal tender, he would throw it on purpose into the sea. This pissed off Riot and Myself. Then there was the constant complaining, his smoking, his passive-aggressive attacks, and his taking every comment as an insult. Also, he dropped a ton of our equipment into the sea, on accident mine you, but still, it got so bad Riot hung a running tally sheet of all the things he'd dropped. These things may not have mattered much in normal circumstances, but when you get into the tension of working over 20 hours per day, getting yelled at regularly, getting tangled and beaten by various lines, and getting stung everywhere by jellyfish, even the small things wear on you. “Constant dripping wears away stone.”.

After almost a month out we had settled into the routine of the daily grind. Not needing to think about the job freed me to notice the wild life and let my mind wander. There were puffins, sea lions, otters, seagulls, bald eagles, dolphins colored like killer wales, and actual whales. Tons of them. What there wasn't any of yet though, were salmon. We were still catching what amounted to scraps. Since we were basically wasting our time, the captain would occasionally anchor up and give us time off or send us on errands, like taking the skiff to a nearby island and searching for a waterfall to get more drinking water from, or bath under. I love bathing under an icy waterfall, it's invigorating. A couple times we just went out hiking, cliff jumping, and nap taking. On one “frustrated captain's” time off we decided to drink a bunch while anchored up and watch movies on our sister boat, but I got so drunk that when I went to go return to my own boat I slipped as I was stepping onto the boat from the other boat as the sea rocked and I fell, hard, between the boats, doing the splits of a sort. I was told it looked nasty, and that everyone thought I would be broken for sure... Not a scratch! Who was on Nash duty!? Oh well, nothing broken but my sense that this would be a lucrative venture; the lack of fish thus far had been unsettling, but all in the know assured me “they're on their way”. I didn't know if it was true, but the hope kept me going. In the meantime we sailed back to Uganik for a banya and to wash some cloths. I didn't feel that gross, even though my cloths sure looked it since they were all crusted with jelly fish, but the bathing felt great. It had been awhile, with the closest thing to bathing being my “facial scrub Friday”, where every Friday I would wash my face. Other than that it was au natural.

It was nice that we all got to clean off that day, because that night was the solstice. The solstice is a big deal in Alaska, and so a suitably big-deal party was being held in it's honor. It was a good party, and all the people who lived in and near the Uganik bay were in attendance. There was fresh baked good, copious booze, fresh crab, and a guy juggling fire. All the fisherman talked about how they hadn't caught any fish yet, but not to worry because they were comin' … they hoped. During the party Riot was chatting up a girl he met who was wearing a scarf. Seeing a stray thread from the scarf Riot instinctively reached out and pulled on it … only it turned out to be growing out of the girl's face! Realizing this chick had a huge beard hair Riot just walked away, mid conversation. The look on his face was the highlight of my night!
The next day we got back to work, even though the fishing wasn't netting us many fish. We kept at it. When we weren't doing sets, we were doing semi-menial tasks. The captain informed us that most captains keep their crews busy and go out of their way to avoid going into town to keep people from jumping ship. Understandable. I couldn't leave anyway though, I was broke; indentured to the boat until I was paid and could afford to escape. Our tender preferred the opposite approach “People are like light bulbs: use them until they burn out, then get new ones”. I'm glad I didn't work for him … probably. We kept fishing until one of our hydraulics lines burst, at which point we had to stop and get it repaired. The tender dropped off what we needed and we jury-rigged it ourselves. Mopey cooked the crew some eggs and our inside-our-body tubes almost burst. That was about the last time he was allowed to cook.
With the ending of the month of June I reflected on my time thus far. One month of fishing down, two to go. Working our butts off, sometimes for 23 hours at a time, we had managed to catch only 10,000 lbs of fish for the month. Not looking promising considering we needed a total of at least 400,000 lbs by the end of August for this stunt to even financially break even for me. As it was, it seemed through June I'd been working for 70cents an hour. I shifted my worry to more immediate concerns: My water bottle was rife with mold. I devoted an insane amount of time to fighting it, more days than most people devote to far more important things. It kept me focused on something though, which I needed. July brought it's own set of interesting and unique scenarios.

The first handful of days into July set the tone for the month. It was cold, I was wearing layers and could see my breath. I had decided my job was easy, though I would say it was disproportionately stressful It was physically and emotionally taxing, very uncomfortable from the weather and wetness, but I would still call the job easy. The captain's default expressions seemed to range from mildly displeased to incredibly angry. She laughed often, but I wondered if it was more from good old country manners an actual amusement, and that was when things were going our way. Things rarely went our way. Two days into July and we had caught not one, but two whales in our seine. The first one left without much to-do, but the next one destroyed our seine. It ripped a 140ft long whole in our seine and several smaller ones. We couldn't fish with it, so we retreated to Uganik to spend days mending it. On the way we hit rough water and our skiff sank about 80% of the way underwater. We managed to bale it out but lost our bilge pump and most other things from our skiff. Also the mosquitos were terrible! I could tell July was going to be great. We got to take the 4th of July off from mending the nets and go to the captain's mother's house for dinner. It was good. Then we had a garbage fire on the beach. It was not good. It was gross and toxic, rainy, and bug fill.
Someone in the bay decided to have a little get together for the 4th as well. It wasn't supposed to be a party, but people just invited themselves to it, against the hosts will. The current 4th man of our sister boat got super drunk, took a fat piss in front of me using me as a balance post, then announced she was quitting her job. Her genius plan was to charter a plane to our remote location, on no notice, at midnight on the 4th of July, and for less than 500$. We couldn't convince her that this was not a great plan, or even doable. She proceeded to go on a drunken fun-destroying rampage for the rest of the night, and was generally a huge hassle. The next day we finished mending the nets, and ol' drink-and-quit said she didn't remember anything from the previous day. Even if that were true, the damage was done, and the search began for a replacement. She was the second to fill the position of 4th man, so her replacement would be the 3rd.

As for me, I didn't care. I was too busy screaming in my own mind. I was constantly getting stung by Jelly fish, everywhere, even inside my mouth! I was also frustrated by the terrible diet and relative inactivity which had caused me to be the fattest I'd ever been and I felt like my job didn't matter. The sea seemed to be getting rougher to reflect my frustration. Nothing on a boat is ever straight, level, still, or dry; this could be frustrating, but as long you're in it with a crew that has a team mentality, mutual suffering can breed camaraderie. I was not on such a crew. The suffering bread bitterness. The perceived professional inefficiency was killing me. Each time someone told me “Fishing is a gamble”, I came closer to snapping. Everyone seemed to say it, all the time. I get it, fishing isn't a guarantee, but you know what else is a gamble? Gambling! And it doesn't take 3 and a half months to spin a roulette wheel!

We sailed to town mid month to drop off the chick who'd quit, fix the seine again, scrub the boat, and get supplies. After a couple days we were back at it. It seemed the captain was always in a mad scramble to do something that could have been done casually with preparation. A lack of preparation on your part isn't an emergency on mine! Except that it was, because she was my boss and it was affecting me, negatively. I became increasingly distrusting of the captain non a certain level as I watcher her break her word to people on numerous occasions, and many times cheat me out of my 20 minutes in the morning that she had promised me. All this made more frustrating by the fact that I was stuck there. I mean, sometimes I myself will engage in those sorts of things, but I'm not someone's boss!

Mid July we went back to Uganik during a closure to await the new 4th man of the sister boat, which actually turned out to be a guy. He was a super nice guy, 20 years old, who wound up braiding me a new watch band out of para-cord when my old one had broken. While we waited for him to arrive, Riot and I explored the bay and raided an old abandoned house. The only treasure we could find was a 30 year old board game of “risk”, which we salvaged and played. It took forever and I didn't particularly like it. I also had the captain daughter work on my hair, as she had graduated cosmetology school. She redid the red braid in my hair from Japan, and added a stripe of purple. BMO had gotten to know me so well that she had a dream there was such a thing as an “All-You-Can-Eat-Karaoke-Buffet-Fight Club” and I burst into saying “I'm here to challenge your master!”.Not only did I fight an Elvis look alike, but apparently it was also a spoken poetry rap battle on top of a fight. I won. Hearing that dream made me so happy, and surprised a place like that doesn't already exist. We filled our time off that time with banyas, movies, and booze. I of course added training to the mix.

The new guy arrived and we went back to work... until fierce gails forced us to take a couple days off. We tried to fish through it, but it wasn't pretty. While I was bending over I had a 20 plus pound Dog Salmon fall on the back of my neck from the top of the boom, knocking me down hard. Then I got Jellyfish stings in my eyeballs right before getting smacked in the tooth with a swinging metal ring. It knocked me down hard again, and I thought my teeth were broken. Somehow they weren't, but all that happened in less than an hour! Not a good time. The days seemed to be getting worse. Some sets we would catch over 6,000lbs of jellyfish! A couple times there were so many we had to just abandon the whole set. Work aside, they are fascinating creatures, and I saw one so strong that it moved on deck! Another was able to breach the water. Their stings were equally as strong. Besides jellies our net was getting stuck on rocks and coral with increasing frequency, and this did nothing to improve the team's mood. I dreaded every set, and did my best to zone out and still be the best. Every hour I would go through the five stages of grief, a fresh batch of denial, depression, anger, bargaining, and acceptance awaited me with the drop of our net. The captain was angry, one of my team had a one track mind and a bad memory, the other one had a no track mind and no memory at all! It wouldn't have been that bad, but everything was beginning to compound, and a new element was introduced as July came to a close: a rumbly tummy.
On one of the final nights of July, I contracted super diarrhea. Nausea and unpredictable bowls were the order of the day. A fitting end to the month, considering how it had gone. On the plus side, maybe, we caught 90,000lbs of Salmon in July, for a grand total of 100,000lbs of Salmon! We only caught 10,000lbs in June … what was the point!? Come to find out, the salmon run in a mostly predictable fashion, starting slow and building up to a 4 week run around August, meaning that's when the money is. If you're following along it means that we were really only making money for those 4 weeks in August. Riot and I were surprised to learn that of the 14 weeks on the boat, we were only lucrative for 4. In fact, once the salmon really started up it made the rest of the time spent fishing seem ridiculous. There were times in August were in one hour we would catch between 20,000lbs and 30,000lbs of salmon! This was a regular thing! That means in one hour in August we were averaging 2.5 times the amount we'd caught in all of June! Riot and I wondered “why were we even out before!?”. Turns out that a lot of other boats feel the same way, and in other regions the majority of boats only fish for those 4 weeks … you know, the 4 weeks there's ACTUALLY FISH! We were angry we'd essentially wasted 2 months, but we were happy that at least the fish had finally come, as prophesied. I didn't have much energy to celebrate about our now productive enterprise though, because my intestinal situation had gone from bad to worse.

Slowly but with a tide like consistency of ebbs and floods, my digestive system had been ravaged. I was experiencing cramps, and the cramping was becoming more intense as time went on. I also had extremely angry bowels, and some of the worst farts ever. They smelled like I had been eating nothing but human corpses in a green house. I smelled like hot death. I now couldn't deny it, I was very confident I had giardia. Giardia is an intestinal parasite usually contracted from eating infected meat, or drinking river water, which was were all my water was coming from. I had every single sign and symptom. No one else on the boat seemed to be experiencing anything similar, and I'd been drinking out of rivers my whole life, most much more disgusting than a fresh Alaskan island stream, but catching it is a statistics game, and it seemed like I'd won the parasite lottery. Lucky me.

A few years prior while I was still in college, I'd had an internship partner/ classmate almost die from ignored giardia (that I'd helped him catch in Wisconsin). He had let it go so long, he finally collapsed and went to the Emergency Room were they informed him in another 2 day he would likely be dead from kidney failure. He said the cramps were debilitating, and the only time he knew he had to poop was when he was pooping. He had shit the bed every night for the past month! He told me this and I laughed in his face. Why hadn't he gone to the hospital sooner!? “It comes and goes; you feel like you're dying, but then it goes away for a day or so, and you feel like you're getting over it, so you don't do anything … then it comes back.” Yeah, well I told him that I'd never been to the hospital and never pooped my pants or bed, but if I ever shit the bed I'd probably go. Two nights of shitting the bed? It's hospital time.

Flash forward and there I was getting hit with waves of cramps and diarrhea, followed by brief untrustworthy relief. Giardia is real good at making you think you might not have it. Denial is a hell of a drug, and like most strong drugs it causes a hell of a crash. I awoke one night with a sudden sharpness; I very nearly shit the bed, saved only by my sharply acute nervous system at the last moment. It had only bought me a few more seconds however, and I intended to use them. I sprinted out of the fox hole an to the bucket, out of the designated bed time, daring the captain to say something about it. She seemed to be asleep, which was for the best as I had to spend the entirety of the night sitting on the bucket, shivering and sweating, fading in and out of consciousness, liquids flying out of me the whole time beyond my control. It was a rough night. The next day I was on deck getting ready to start a set when suddenly I was hit with a cramp that seized the entire right side of my body. The cramp had caused all my muscles to contract. I couldn’t move, it felt like my bones were going to break. I couldn't breath and the pain was debilitating. Had I not already deduced I had giardia I would have been convinced I was experiencing some kind of heart attack-seizure-stroke combo. That event coupled with sleeping on the bucket caused me to decide that the next time we were in town, I would get checked out. True to it's modus operendi the following days I felt fine, and thought maybe I wouldn't go after all. I thought if I had it still, maybe I could use it to drop weight classes for fighting. I was probably getting over it anyway. Then I almost shit the bed again. Damn you giardia!

A short time later, we wound up in town for a day, and even though I was feeling fine at the time, I had decided I was going to get checked. I had never been to the hospital though and wasn't ecstatic at the thought of going. Medical negligence had become a top 3 cause of death in the states and on top of the leeriness I had for their incompetence, I had no insurance or money, and like schooling in the states, medical care is criminally expensive. Still, I didn't want to break my record of never having pooped myself. I decided I would try a clinic instead of an actual hospital; better chance of a personal touch, I thought. I thought wrong. All my questions were basic: “How much will the test cost? When will I get the results? How much will the medicine be? How much will the doctor’s visit be?” Every question was met with “ I don't know, let me get [some person person who also isn't a doctor and works for HR]”. I did eventually figure out that because I didn't have insurance or much money, I would need to fill out paper work with tax forms I didn't have, and the processing would take 2 weeks. Great. I reminded them I was only there for the day, and really wasn't in the mood to die/shit myself. They told me to go to the actual hospital. Fine.

The “actual hospital”'s front desk said I should go to the emergency room. I popped over to the ER and the guy behind their desk was initially less than helpful. I asked him my same gamut of questions, and he said I would need to walk through the doors and talk to a medical professional, but the second I walked through I would be charged for a visit. F- that noise! I wasn't walking in unless I needed to. We went back and forth for awhile and he said he would send a nurse out for me to question. Good. I sat in an empty waiting room, and out came a cute young nurse. “What seems to be the problem?” “I'm about 99% sure I've got giardia.” There was a brief pause, and then she burst into heavy laughter. After several moments she collected herself. “I'm sorry. It's really not funny”. No, it is. I told her about my classmate, who I laughed at hysterically for pooping the bed every night for a month. “Well now it's HIS turn to laugh.” I was glad to talk to someone who had a sense of humor and would actually answer my questions. I explained my life and symptoms. “yeah, you most likely have giardia, but we can't issue a prescription without a test, and we can't issue a test without a doctor's visit, and all that costs money. The test itself has to be sent to a lab on the mainland, so results would take a few days at least. The prescription isn't super cheap either. All in all it would probably run at least 1,000$.” … Crap. I had some connections in the lower 48, so if I could hold out till then I could actually afford treatment … maybe. I asked her if I maintained my electrolytes, stayed hydrated, and kept my stomach neutral, could I hold out another month? “ That's up to you. You look strong, so maybe.” I mean will I suffer permanent organ damage? “As long as you keep everything up, you won't get organ damage. You seem to be in crappy equilibrium; you're healing at the same speed it's ripping you up. You'll be completely miserable, but you should be alright.”. Deal! I left without officially going in, so my never going to the hospital record still stands! I loaded up on electrolyte drinks and green bananas, and antacids, for the remainder of my time. Victory?
At the same time I was off questing for the items that would stave off organ damage, the sister boats newest 4th man had to leave to go start his university career, meaning that they now needed a FOURTH 4th man! The joke was that the position was cursed; True if you count work as a curse. They got a new guy, who got along with everyone pretty well, and who knew Mopey, BMO, and BMO's sister, and had worked with them in a cannery somewhere else in Alaska. The guy was hard working, easy going, and full of stories. For a short term crewman they couldn't have done better. At least that part got squared away.

While in town I decided to check my emails at the library, which brought with them unpleasant news. The duplex property that I was managing and using as a base as long as things were squared there, had become un-square. According to the report, the renters had done significant damage to the property, they were trying to bail on their final month's rent, the place needed new tenants, there had been heavy rainfall that had caused roofing and other damage, the grass was not taken care of, the pool was fubard, there weren't to be dogs but a guy got a great dane and it was ruining things, there was carpet damage, and with 2 guys living there the power bill was higher than when 4 people were living there. The place was in disaree. All of this I needed to fix. I needed to go ASAP, because if I didn't fix this, I would have no base to hoard my treasures. I couldn't leave straight away though, because for once there were actually fish to catch. Everyday I spent there was a day closer to losing the house, but everyday I would be gone would be a day not making money, which was the whole point of being out in Alaska. I had long come to terms with the idea of not making any money, but I needed to make at least 10,000$ to break even. I wondered if it was even possible. I would hold out as long as possible.

At the same time the fish picked up, so did our problems. Straight off the bat the battery on our skiff died, and the outboard appeared broken. Since we couldn't function without it, we made an emergency 180* back to town to get it fixed. The place was closed that day. Plus 1 day to time spent stuck in town, not fishing, minus one day to actually being productive and making some money. The captain wasn't happy; we all felt her pain. The next day the mechanic told us the part they needed wasn't in Alaska, and would have to be shipped in. Another day of not fishing. The previous day, boats were catching what would have given me 1,500$, in on day... and we were missing it, and the following day, and the day after. We missed 5 days fishing in the most lucrative part of the season for that skill. At last it was fixed and we took off. For a few days it seemed the fishing had dropped off again and that we'd missed the action. For several days in a row our seine got snagged and ripped apart, so we would have to stop for a few hours and fix it. More fish lost.

As August went on it became obvious the season's had definitely changed. Gone were the occasional sunny day, replaced indefinitely with rain and clouds. It was dull, the sky always a muddled darkness. It matched the atmosphere of the boats. There's a certain Charles Dickensian quality about them, a Victorian factory air, the way they apologetically spill oil and refuse constantly wherever they go, major mechanical workings exposed. One could imagine that up until very recently they needed someone to shovel coal into a blazing furnace to propel them. Things literally looked bleak. A large piece of bull-kelp we hauled on deck was pierced with a knife to allow it to sink when we threw it overboard, and as it was stabbed the escaping air made a shrill squeal. The plants mandrake like scream sent shivers though me. Even the flora cried for release!
After a few pseudo-successful days fishing, the starter on the boat seemed to be going out, so we headed to town to get it fixed. More vital repairs, more time spent not catching fish. Since we were going to be in town I decided while BMO and I were drinking I would subject her to one of my favorite things: making people eat durian! Durian is a fruit from the south pacific that many have described as smelling like poopy baby diapers full of caramelized onions sitting on a dead body. It's pungent enough that in places like Singapore opening one in an enclosed public space such as a hotel lobby or bus is banned. Due to the huge Philippine population in Alaska it was easy for me to get some. I like the taste, and they don't taste like they smell, but I really like watching people experience them for the first time. I took them to the movie theater, because I'm a gentleman. After 3 days in town with my antics we found out it wasn't the starter that was broken, but a combination of cables and batteries. I stopped by the library to use the internet, found a really cheap plane ticket for the projected end of the season, and bought it.

After addressing the cables and batteries problem we got things running and left town at 6:30 in the morning on the 4th day. By 10am the same day we were on our way back to town due to problems with our rudder hydraulics! The crew took this time to go swimming at the high school and rock people 1/3 of our age at water sports. We were in town working on the hydraulics for 2 days. On the night of the 3rd day we set back out, they hydraulics worse than ever. We powered on My stomach distended and painful, mental stress from the house I wasn't taking care of and potential waste of 4 months of my life, plus my complete physical deconditioning, was piling up. I was most assuredly not in the mood for the environment. It was so windy! If my stomach didn't hurt, and I was surrounded by my most trusted group, this would be a miserable shit storm. But I was not surrounded by those people. Apparently the captain wasn't in the mood either. Mopey and I got yelled at for doing our jobs, for the first time I had been the direct subject of her anger. “if you’re not gonna fucking help me, then don't just stand there and gawk at me goddammit!” Usually she would tell us to stay put, so we had. After the outburst we ran down to help, and she immediately decided we weren't needed. There was no consistency, and no transparency to the business structure. The year prior she had a crewman kill himself. I was now in a place were I wasn't surprised. Her outburst was bad enough that had I not already had a ticket to leave, I felt I would have gone right then.

Thankfully though, the fishing was now officially good. In a few sets we were catching over 40,000lbs of salmon. Everyday we fished was like this. Finally things were kind of working out. Sort of. We were catching more fish than the canaries could handle, so we were getting mandatory every other day off; we were killing it! The captain loosed up, and everyone's mood's lightened. I found out that a lot of captains are intentional ass0holes to their crew in order to make them quit before the season is over; This means they only are entitled to half their pay. Genius No love lost between captains and their crews I supposed. My ability to tune out all the garbage was what kept me going through the dark times. “Ignore-ance is bliss”. Now we would party, every other day, after a successful day of fishing. Things were looking good, and the season was coming to a close. We spent our work days casually as the abundance of fish and lack of processing power meant we didn't need to hustle. Each boat wrote letter to each other to fill the time with humor between sets while we were apart. One such letter I wrote to our sister boat read thusly:

“Dearest Sister Vessel,
Greetings from our boat. I hope this letter finds you all well and in high spirits. As I write this, Riot and Mopey are embroiled in a “debate” involving one side calmly speaking facts and the other spouting belligerent nonsense. As the days wear on I find Mopey takes umbridge with all of most things; the offense he takes seeming to be unrelated to the event that brought it on. Tension fills the air here, nearest I can tell coming from Mopey who grows more aggressive and combative with each passing moment. Riot eases his time by filling his time with distractions, though he has been much uplifted since his visit to your boat and his receiving of your correspondences.
Your companionship is a welcomed light in these dark times, for which I extend my grattitudes and honest request that should you need any assistance you bring the matter to me.

Despite my previous descriptions, things aren’t' all droll humdrummery over here. Just the other day Riot and I watched Mopey's bootlegged copy of “Terminator: Genysis”. Though I should say “watched”; as it looked like it had been filmed with a graphing calculator using fruit by the foot as film. Real Blurry. What I could make out though leads me to believe it is both a much better film, and much worse film that I had previously thought. However, for want of an infinite supply of paper, and ink to match, I shall spare you my detailed analysis; save only to say that it is worth a watch. On the subject of whether something is poop or not, my giardia has gone into dormancy; my diarrhea and nausea have all but disappeared, and the cramps only become debilitating when I try to sleep. Should my condition stabilize thusly, I should have no difficulty lasting here as long as I need before I'm able to make poop in a clinic's cereal bowl for testing. The smell remains however, and conjures to mind a pile of durian on a fire composed of tires and Styrofoam cups. Unpleasant. As for sleep, the other evening I had a dream I snuck into an orgy and assassinated Kim-Jong-Un. I then had to go on the run from his elite assassins as I tried to escape to the Japanese embassy were I would be safe. I made it to the train station of his compound, which then became a regular shopping mall, and I turned in a balloon and floated away … victory? Riot had a dream his dad had a “very Asian girlfriend”, which Riot kept banging everywhere behind his dad's back. I suppose our psyches manifest in different ways. Mopey probably dreams of a bushel of bananas. He looks at the “broken” sign on the microwave his his typical incredulity. I'm sure he'll use it one day. The arcs that it's generating will eventually probably trigger a) an EMP that could destroy all electronics on board, or b) start a fire large enough to be a concern. Both will dampen our fishing, neither will likely get him fired. The captain of our vessel seems as steady as she was in May, which implies she's as good to go now as ever, seemingly undaunted by crew-sass and miniscule fish bags.
Thus concludes my current report. For further depth discussion highlight topics of interest in your return and I will address them with hast forthwith.
All the Best,
Freedom & Adventure,
-Nash
Esquire of the Road; Liberator of Spirits “


Full time fishing and letter passing brought us to the end of August, and all the canneries but ours had closed. We were free to roam and fish with no competition! No human competition anyway. We were besieged by hump-back wales, sometimes in pods up to 5, breaching, jumping, and destroying our nets. Their antics caused us to catch a whale, a duck, and thousands of pounds of jellyfish, to say nothing of the trash we usually caught, none of which we could make money from. Still, everyday we set out we could fill the 40,000lbs hold, and then a couple more thousand pounds on the deck. At some point during our easy going time we acquired a stowaway: a baby weasel I named corky, since it lived mostly in our cork line pile. It was adorable but occasionally it would sleep down in the foxhole with us crewman, which no one cared about except Mopey who was absurdly afraid of the thing. Lucky for it the captain liked it, so she wouldn't let the mad man hurt it, and it became our mascot and present distraction. With our “every other day off” schedule we needed plenty of distractions since we had plenty of time to sit on deck and grill out, work out, hang out, and relax. One of our days we got the go ahead to take off one of the hatch covers, tie it to the skiff, and do water sports for the day. It was all good fun, but the water was old enough that it sent a couple of us into very real shock, stopping our ability to effectively breath. Still Fun. And just like that, right as things became fun, it was over.

It was now the start of the second week of September. The fishing was done; we had finished the season with a total catch of 445,000lbs. Not bad when you factor in we only caught 10,000lbs in June, and 90,000lbs in July. Even better when you realize that of the 4 weeks that truly mattered we were sidelined for about 2 weeks due to repairs! Dammit! We started back to town and watched our final movies together along the way. Counting traveling and breakdowns I read at least 6 books and watched at least 62 movies! It was a hard life. We made it back to Kodiak just in time for labor day, and all went to the bars to celebrate the holiday and the end of a semi successful season. BMO played billiards for the first time and got challenged to an arm wrestling match by an old man at the bar. I drank a lot, paying no money, and someone got beat up outside the pub. Everyone got obliterated and partied hard. All in all, not a bad night.
The next day was the crew's final day with the boat. We finished our final round of chores, got our checks, and the crews dispersed. BMO and I took off together, or rather I took off with her. BMO's sister had flown into Kodiak to visit her, and the two were to go off together to catch-up and adventure and whatnot. For an interim base, BMO had gotten a hotel room for her and her sister and she'd invited me to stay there and hang out. Which I did. My original plan was to camp in the forest until my flight out, but I wanted to meet BMO's sister, I really needed a shower, and the outside was a continuous sheet of cold sleety Alaskan autumn rains. BMO's hotel it was! I hit it off with BMO's sister, as expected, and the 3 of us drank hard and partied all night. Some time in the middle of the night a stray cat came to our hotel room, which BMO's sister let in. The cat joined our party, and stayed until after we all passed out. The cat and I slept together until sometime in the wee hours when it woke me up to let it back outside.

I got up, did my morning exercises and got ready to head out to the airport. After breakfast with the ladies and promises to meant again, I took off, hopping into a taxi with some crazy Bostonian driver who had moved to Kodiak on a dare with no preparation, and had jumped off the near island bridge on a dare as well. He seemed insane, but he got payed for winning his bets, so in that way he was far more productive and sane than I. I arrived at the airport to find my flight delayed a couple hours. The real surprise being that it even left the scheduled day at all. All the way back to the Midwest of the lower 48 to take care of my property mess, I was besieged by delay after delay which gave me time to reflect on the past 4 months and how the cycle of Nash-Style adventure had happened again: 1) Brilliant idea 2) Daring outset 3) Get lost 4) Things go wrong 5) Unbelievable occurrence 6) Narrow escape 7) Barely break even. I thought about how much time and effort I'd put in, versus the money I'd got from it. I was to have received a year's worth of money (well, a Nash year's worth) for a couple month's work. I had long since abandoned that dream after the first 2 months of catching nothing but scraps. I would have settled for breaking even, which would cover the venture capital I had amassed and needed to pay back, and included the money I could have made for the same time period working a regular job. This figured to 10,000$ Ironically I would have been in the clear for massive money (again, Nash massive) had we not effectively been broken down for half of the best fishing time. As it was, we made about 60% of what we could have, which left me with slightly more than 10,000$. … 7) Barely break even.

I didn't have a bank I could transfer the money to, and since I needed funds, I needed to cash the check. I was now walking around carrying 10,000$ in cash on my person. It felt exciting, but fairly dangerous, and I had a subtle nagging feeling that it was probably a terrible idea, but couldn't see any way around it. A microcosm for everything I'd ever done? Of course, the 10,000$ was my gross. After paying back everyone and accounting for all expenditures my net take was only 7,000$. Ugh. “Barely break even”. I had avenged myself in the rematch between myself and Kodiak Island, but the money wouldn't be enough to spend 12 months gallivanting around the earth kicking people in the head and finding treasure, but it would let me not work while I focused on training and fixing up the base property for as long as it would take. UGH! Barely breaking even! Jumping from one storm into another. A couple months after leaving the island I received a tax from for working on the boat that labeled me as an independent contractor, and caused me to owe over 1,500 in self employment taxes … Dammit!

Now I had to deal with that, and so had another brilliant idea. The cycle begins again …
-Nash