Sad day in the Bering sea, a young deckhand was washed overboard on a cod trawler and a Deck boson on a Pollok factory trawler was fatally injured.
Keep their families in your thoughts.
hate when this stuff happens. Deck, engine, blue water, brown water, we are all brothers out here. Hope the families find peace
I first learned of this in a fishing forum. The deck guy didn’t have a PFD on, was alongside the vessel a couple times… The other vessel included an explosion from where O2 tanks were stored. They were cutting up a derelict crab pot stuck in their net. The hatch hit the guy that died. That’s what I heard/read. Very sad day indeed. I was up there last year.
There but for the Grace of God go any of us. It just shows that one really cannot take too many precautions in this dangerous business. I have certainly learned from seeing what has happened to too man others before me such as Capt. Dave Shoemaker of the f/v GALAXY. One must always remain consciously aware of all that can go wrong and prepare accordingly whether it be wear a PFD on deck in bad weather and hours of darkness to know where the sources of fire and explosions exist when doing hotwork. Any one of a thousand possible accident causes that surround each and every one of us out there!
Everything that he faced that fateful afternoon could just have easily happened to me and I was never prepared to handle such an emergency. If it had been me in command during my years of the late 80’s and early 90’s when I ran her, the death toll might well have been all hands of up to 70 souls!
As it is, I have had no serious accidents or injuries happen to me or my vessels and certainly no fatalities. Plenty of near misses though. Regardless, I cannot take credit for an excellent record. I know how the worse could have happened and I know I have been very lucky. I gratefully thank God for granting me such fortuitous providence in my years at sea. I pray that I will have such providence smile upon me in years to come but now I am not blissfully unaware of my part in maintaining that good fortune.