Hey!
My name is Rebecca.
I don't really know where to start. Everything that happened to me is pretty crazy. My dad is a deep sea fisherman. He has his own ship and his own crew. Which basically means, that he's gone for about two weeks at a time, then I see him for one day and one night and then he's gone again for another two weeks.
This continues for an entire fishing season: ten months. After that he stays home for two whole months. These two months are obviously pretty great, but the rest of the year is... well... I hate it.
And I know, it sounds like a pretty weird life, but it's been like that since I was a little girl.
But all that changed two weeks before my twentieth birthday. That's when my mom died. She got pretty sick, pretty fast. That damn cancer.
It happened during the time my dad was home with us, so at least I wasn't alone when it happened. But still, needless to say... it was pretty awful for both, me and dad.
We had about one month for just our grief.. but then, dad had to decide what to do now. He's been a fisherman all his life. He basically doesn't know anything else. Somehow our life had to continue. Somehow dad had to take care of me. He had to earn money. He had to decide wether to look for a new job, but... he was 46 years old at the time... the chance of finding a new job was pretty slim.
Plus, his crew also depended on him. He loved his guys. He pretty much spent the entire year with them. 24/7. What would they do, if dad just quit everything?
Well.. like I said, both dad and I were devastated after mom's death. When reality finally set back in, we only had a few days to make a final decision...
So we decided that dad would continue running his business... and that I would go with him. I didn't want him to just leave everything in the past and stop doing what he loves to do. And he didn't want me to be alone.
So I dropped out of school and a week later I was part of dad's crew.
Of course, I didn't really know what I got myself into... I mean, yeah, I had been on dad's boat before, and I love being on a ship out on the ocean... But I have never been that long.
And honestly, I felt pretty weird, looking forward to being the only girl on a ship full of men. Of course I knew that I was in good hands. Dad talked a lot about his crew. And he pretty much considered them as his family. So I knew that nobody would try to rape me, or do anything I was uncomfortable with, or even look at me the wrong way... everybody was too afraid of my dad. And everybody had too much respect for him as well. He was their friend. But he was also their boss.
Still, I had mixed feelings. Mom had just passed away, so there wasn't too much time to think about everything. But once I stepped on the boat, the nervous jitters were back.
Dad and I were the first one's on the boat. He always liked to be there before all the other guys showed up, but especially that day, he wanted to have more time alone on the boat. He wanted to show me around; explain everything; try to get me as comfortable as possible.
I remembered the boat well. Dad's tour wasn't all that necessary. I still liked the fact that dad tried everything to make this work for me. And, what I found out that day, was that dad somehow even managed to get a friend of his to make a few adjustments to the boat.
"Here sweetie, that's your cabin. Do you like it?"
He was standing in front of a storage cabin. Or what I remembered to be one...
Dad saw that I had a confused look on my face. He smiled.
He pulled a curtain to the side and then I saw it. Behind it was a pretty narrow cabin. Inside was a mattress, a pillow and a blanket. The entrance to the cabin was about 25 to 25 inches wide. Maybe 30 to 30 inches, but not much more. You had to climb forward to get all the way in. Of course, everything was pretty narrow on the boat. The boat wasn't all that huge. But my cabin was pretty small. I was afraid I might get claustrophobic.
Next to my cabin, there was another curtain. Dad pushed it open as well. There was a small space behind the curtain. Dad stepped in and opened a closet door.
"You can put all your stuff in there. Okay, honey?"
I nodded.
I was still a bit shocked about my cabin.
"You wanna try it? See if you can really do it? Life on a boat is not all that luxurious."
I smiled.
"Yeah, let's try it..."
So I jumped up and climbed into my cabin. It was weird. It felt pretty cramped in there. I tried to turn around. That worked pretty nicely. I mean, yes, it was pretty narrow, but there was enough room to sleep in and get comfortable.
"I like it", I said.
"Oh, that's great. Let me show you the other cabins."
So I climbed back out and followed dad. And what I found out a right away, was that I was actually pretty lucky for getting such a nice cabin. Obviously I didn't remember the boat all that well after all, or maybe, because I was a lot smaller when I last stepped on the boat, everything appeared bigger back then. Because after dad showed me my cabin, he showed me his. His cabin was about the same size as mine. The only difference was, that his cabin always had been a cabin. Which means, I had to climb into my cabin with my head first. Once I was in, the opening to get in and out was at my feet.
Dad's cabin was completely different. He could roll right in. Which means, it was about 80 inches wide, 30 inches high and 30 inches deep. The curtain to close it went all the way from the left side to the right side. Which meant, you could open it up completely and see the entire 80-inch-cabin.
So dad had his own cabin as well. Well... he was the captain after all. But then he showed me the other cabins. And again, I was pretty thankful, that dad got his friend to build me my own cabin, because the other cabins, weren't really cabins after all. There were two small "rooms" with mattresses in there. I saw two mattresses in the one room and three mattresses in the other room. And there was no curtain. Which meant, you could not close it down. Which meant, no privacy for these guys.
"That's were Tony and Matt sleep."
Dad pointed to the small room on the left. And then nodded to the other side.
"And that's were Chris, Steve and Mike sleep."
"Oh, okay."
I didn't know what else to say. I was so nervous to meet these guys. Of course, I had met them before and I heard a lot of stories about them, but this was very, very different. I was about to spend a lot of time with these guys.
"What did I get myself into?", I thought.
But.. All my worries were completely unwarranted. I relaxed as soon as the crew arrived. Everybody was so nice to me. And the overall mood was really good.
Tony and Matt arrived first.
Tony was 36. He had a wife and a small boy at home. He is 6'1''. And what I later found out, he was always wearing a black woolly hat.
Matt was the youngest. He was 29. Matt was a bit taller than Tony. He is a very skinny guy with very short brown hair. He wasn't bald, there was still some hair, but it wasn't much. He had a pregnant girlfriend waiting for him at home. He still needed the job to pay the bills.
The two guys were pretty inseparable.
Steve arrived next. He was 43 at the time. He was dad's oldest friend and pretty much started the business with him. He was a huge, chubby guy. Like a teddy bear. And instantaneously likeable. He was divorced and like I said.. he was dad's best friend and I immediately knew why.
Mike arrived 5 minutes later. He was a 32-year-old bald black guy with a very muscular upper body. He was single. A very quiet guy. A bit shy. But also very likable.
Finally Chris arrived as well. He was 39 years old; 5'9''; and had long brown hair down to his neck. The way he talked, it sounded like he had two girlfriends at the time. But I didn't really know if that was true. He liked to tell stories. Talk trash. He was a funny guy.
So that was our crew. And to be honest.. the first two years were pretty great, actually. Everybody knew that dad and I were sad, because we lost mom. So they did everything they could to make us feel better.
And I liked the life on the boat with those guys. I didn't really help them work. I cooked for them, most of the days; did small stuff; but tried to stay out of their way, when they were working.
Year 3 started like every other year. I was becoming a bit of a tom-boy. I had blond hair, but I mostly had it tied up to a pony tail. I was actually looking forward to getting back on the boat. I missed the guys. And I was really anxious to hear what they did during the 2 months on the Mainland.
But... everything changed pretty fast.
The first problem was... from year to year it got harder to catch enough fish. There was too much competition. And not enough fish to catch.
That was a real problem. Dad was getting depressed. He was yelling a lot.
At first everything was fine. Especially in the evenings. We played cards and I tried to lighten the mood. Which often helped. Everybody liked me. And I think everybody enjoyed having me around. I think, most of the times, the boys held back, yelling at each other, just because I was there as well. They tried to behave.
But then another problem arose. We came into very bad weather. There was a huge thunderstorm during the night. And the storm continued the next day, which caused some sort of accident. I didn't see it, because I was down below, but I heard about it at dinner. Apparently Matt was a bit careless which resulted in Tony injuring his right arm.
It got a bit heated during dinner. But then everybody calmed down.
After dinner we played poker and all of a sudden the thing between Tony and Matt erupted. Tony jumped up and tried to push Matt. He almost tried to punch him in the face, but then he realized that his arm was injured.
Well.. it was a real scuffle all of a sudden.
