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CLICK: DeadliestWaters.com
Clickable Contents Courage in the face of Death Final word from Travis 2 6 CLICK: DeadliestWaters.com Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 1 After working 96 hours straight, you begin to hope for the worst, just to stop the madness if only for a minute. Your eyes cross, your legs tremble and the sky blends seamlessly from night to day. While fishing aboard a crab boat, featured on Television, in 2004 we were living this scenario. We had been up for four days straight, preparing for the summer time fishery of Golden King Crab. The season was hours away from beginning. All the boats had left the safety of Dutch Harbor several days prior to make it to the fishing grounds. The boats now sit, poised, ready for the figurative gunshot radio transmission to begin what would become a 20 day melee of crab fishing. We had been awake, preparing everything. We were in the final stages, only two hours from the start. I was on top of a 45 foot stack of 7 foot by 7 foot steel crab pots, swaying back and forth, the wind blowing 35 miles an hour. We were all in a haze, we hadn’t slept in days. I could hardly keep my balance as I climbed up and down the giant stack, picking up 25 pound bait setups with my teeth and climbing back to the top of the crab pot stack to pre bait the pots. Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 2 I just got done hanging over the side of the boat, my leg crabber in all of us took over. It’s said that in crab fishing you wrapped around a metal bar to keep myself from plummeting will see the worst of the worst, the baddest of the bad and the into the Bering Sea while I wiggled my darkest of the dark. It will shape your arms into the middle of a pot to hook up instinct of reaction in the worst scenarios His boot cut in two and the bait sacks. That’s when I heard it, a or it will break you. We pulled it together blood squirting into the air horrific scream coming from the back of and began medical work. the wheel house. A scream as if In the next ten minutes we had stopped someone was being torn in half! the bleeding with towels, super glue and electrical tape. It I quickly climbed around the side of the pots and looked down was quick and dirty, but effective. We fed him morphine and at the other crew members. What I saw was one deckhand laid him down in his bunk. The scene had calmed down and it with an axe planted firmly in his foot. His boot cut in two and was time to collect what just happened. blood squirting into the air. The deckhand has been chopping bait with an axe that he made from welding a sharpened axe head to a long piece of steel bar. While thrusting down the axe slipped loose from the fish guts and oils on his hands and landed right in between his big toe and the rest of his foot. Mere hours to go before the season began and we have one man with a foot split in half. We only had 10 days to make two million dollars. Emotions run wild as greed overcome logic and personal injury is set aside for money. I got to him right as everyone was rushing to his aid. We carried him into the galley where we took off his boot. At that point blood had already covered the entire floor and was dripping down our floor drains. Panic was present but the Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 3 The crew members and I all sat around the galley table; quiet, still in shock, still delusional from no sleep and now with a new problem to deal with before the season started. We were at least two days away from any land. A helicopter could only be called in a life threatening situation. What were we going to do, that was the topic of discussion. Do we head back and lose the season and the money? Do we call a helicopter? Do we stay and fish? All this talk was taking place while we wiped the blood off the walls. Do we head back and lose the season and the money? After a long discussion we all agreed to fish. We would go a man short, drop the pots in the water and if things got worse we could head back to town while our gear soaked in the water. We all went back to our stations, finishing the job we had started. Right as we finished the word spread over the VHF radio. The season was officially open. As quickly as the words were spoken, the pots were flying off the stack. The pots came flying overhead one by one every 30 seconds. We managed to get all 280 pots off the boat. This was the start to the Golden King Crab season of 04. Welcome to crab fishing. After a few hours of rest, we all got up and back into work mode. The deckhand who split his foot in two was insisting Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 4 that he work on deck. He demanded that he be on deck where he belonged. He had a total disregard for his health as greed and work ethic took over. In the crabbing world, if a man doesn’t pull his weight, he’s useless and is seen as so. In his case, double foot, had a good reason not to be working. We told him no, he just can’t come out on deck. Infection could set in and he could die, just like that. Later that day I was walking into the galley from the deck and I saw him trying to put on his rain gear. I told him that it was a bad idea, but his continued. As he tried to put his boot on, but put pressure back on his foot, which was still held together with electrical tape and glue. His foot split under pressure and blood began to pour out once again. I ran to his aid and called the other guys in from the deck. The operation had to be shut down for several minutes. When you’re making a thousand dollars Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com every 45 seconds, people can tend to get angry when they have to stop. We got his foot to stop bleeding again and told him to stay put in his bunk. Antibiotics and pain killers were his food for the next two days. On the third day, he did it again. I caught him getting his rain gear on. His persistence was noble, but stupid. He demanded that he come make bait and not be dead weight. His foot looked like it was healing nicely, so he came back on deck. A man with a foot split in half by a dirty axe only 4 days prior was back to doing one of the world’s most challenging jobs. He sat on a bucket for 24 hours straight, filling bait sacks and being useful. The season ended and he flew home. On the Bering Sea there is no calling in sick, there is no room for slack and the moment you make a mistake you either die or you get hurt. He came to work and that’s what he was going to do, with or without a foot. Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 5 Final word from Travis Congratulations! If you've made it this far then I hope you enjoyed this bonus chapter of Deadliest Waters! When Deadliest Waters was published, tons of good content didn't make it into the book. I'm very happy to be able to share this story and a lot more content with you, online! Need excitement in your life? Your heart should race and your blood should pump every day you're alive. Living your life with the philosophy of learning will inspire new creativity and new passion, every day. Sometimes we get stuck doing things we don't always want to do. and creativity alive inside you is the most important part of your inner self. Inspiration is all around us, and sometimes we have to look to other people to provide it. It is always a hard fight, but nothing and I really mean NOTHING, beat's that first time you truly feel free in the world. Your life will change forever. Thank you so much! I have received so much love and feedback from everyone that I could not possibly give back enough! I can't thank you enough for your continued support and encouragement . The Travis Arket lifestyle and travel blog, the crab fishing, the photography, the writing, the adventures - it's all because of you! I've been in the somber slump and I know it can take some serious ass kicking to get back to truly finding inspiration and getting something done. I find it every day in everyone who sends me a message or leaves me a comment. Everyone who I've helped find inspiration through my meanderings makes me push harder dream bigger. Please come join the conversation at http://www.travisarket.com! I truly can't thank you enough and I hope to see you on the other side! Lastly, if you haven't already, you can follow me on Twitter (@TravisArket), and join in on the conversations going on right now on my Facebook Page. Whether it's working at a job you don't enjoy or being a single parent just trying to provide for your family. Finding a way to keep your curiosity Like this? View more at www.travisarket.com Work - Adventure - Travel - with @Travis Arket Page 6