Boating; O'Malleys Alley 1

The crystal clear, afternoon summer sky welcomed the Shrimp boat named "The Pukin' Pelican" as it returned to Estuary Beach after three and a half weeks Shrimping on the Gulf of Mexico. Far inland there were black thunderclouds topped by white anvil shaped clouds. The strong sea breeze kept the thunderstorms inland and kept the beaches bathed in the receding Sun.

The Pukin' Pelican rode high on the water, without the tons of fuel and provisions that were packed into it when it left port. The Shrimping harvest had been good. The hard working boat dragged its nets every night until the Shrimp dispersed ahead of the false dawn. Then during the day the boat anchored to grade shrimp and do net repairs and sleep.

The crew was excited because some of them would sleep ashore that night. The Captain would be in the arms of his wife, another would be face down on some motel room floor. The two remaining would crawl up next to a Crack whore if they wished or blind drunk but they couldn't leave the boat.

The productivity of the drags diminished during last few nights of the trip. The moon was moving toward it's full cycle and the increased light, spooked the Shrimp. Still, the Captain followed his routine despite the belly-aching from his crew. Giving up and going in a few days early was not an option. The crew grew jittery while pulling nearly empty nets.

The most senior crewman, Wyoming Bill, was the vocal one. The tall, thin, muscular man forty year old acted like a child despite the scarred face with twenty day old beard. He banged on the rigging and stomped around the cabin of the boat to demonstrate his opinion. Bill was out of weed, had been for several days and he was desperate. Even after they were finally around the tip of the beach Bill kept up the racket to hurry the Captain along. "God damned drunken, dope smoking bastard. The goddamned fish house closes at eight o'clock and they'll have boats waiting!"

One of the back deck crewman, Stuttering Paul, a slightly built man about five feet nine wasn't part of the racket. He tried to snooze on a pile of rope on the aft quarter of the open deck and he made sure he was there whenever the Captain came out of the pilothouse. Paul was just a late addition to the crew and he hoped to be invited back for the next trip. He never spoke to the Captain because his stuttering was always worse with authority figures. He once took ten minutes to say his first name to a police officer. So he just smiled and gave a halfhearted wave.


"Everything and I mean everything better be stowed proper like before we hit the dock. Clean this pig sty up and wash everything down with bleach and fresh water," shouted the Captain. He didn't say a word to Wyoming Bill because Wyoming Bill was in a mood to swim to shore and the Captain knew it. Winch men were a lot harder to replace than lowly back deck hands. So Paul and Wyoming Bill went to work cleaning and stowing and making the boat ready for their arrival at the fish house among the other twenty-five shrimp boats already at the dock.

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