The Hillstrands, their book and how they live on the edge

In an article by Michael Armstrong from HomerNews.com, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand explain how they came to be the adventure seekers that they are.  If you’ve already read their book, Time Bandit, then you have probably already surmised that these fishermen were raised to deal with danger as if it were the standard every-day lifestyle…Probably not a bad idea if you were raised in Homer, Alaska, with five brothers, and a father who was known as one of the best fishermen in the area….

TIME BANDIT MORE THAN A FISHING TALE

Between broken bones, boat sinkings and bee stings, that Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand lived to adulthood could be considered a miracle. They went so many times to the emergency room for stitches the doctor told their mother, “Mrs. Hillstrand, you’ve seen this done enough times. Why don’t you do it and save yourself the trip?”  

“We thought of danger merely as a higher form of fun,” Johnathan Hillstrand writes in “Time Bandit: Two Brothers, The Bering Sea and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs,” the new book he wrote with his brother Andy. “A popular book today is ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’; we did not need to read about danger. We lived it without knowing what it was; we know how it felt, and it felt fine.”

Photo by Michael Armstrong
Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, co-captains of the F/V Time Bandit, pose in the wheelhouse at dock in Homer after a successful crabbing season. The Hillstrands’ new book, “Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs,” will be published in April by Ballantine Books.  

Written with former Newsweek writer Malcolm MacPherson, publisher Random House released “Time Bandit” last month, just in time for the F/V Time Bandit crabbers to promote their book at the start of the fourth season of “The Deadliest Catch,” The Discovery Channel’s top-rated series. The Hillstrands have done book signings in New York, Pennsylvania and will do signings this month in Seattle, Portland, Denver, North Carolina and Evansville, Ind. They also have been promoting the cable TV show, as well as a companion book to the series, “Deadliest Catch: Desperate Hours,” edited by Larry Erickson.

Andy Hillstrand said the signings have gone great, with up to 650 people showing up. Reaction from readers has been positive, Andy said in a phone interview this week from his horse ranch in Indiana.

“They say it’s a great read. They say they can’t put it down,” he said. “Our mom was kind of sad because we cussed in it,” he added.

Co-captains on the Time Bandit, one of the six crabbing boats featured on “Deadliest Catch,” the Hillstrands have become as popular as NASCAR drivers. Some of their biggest fans are race car drivers, in fact, along with soldiers, firefighters and cops. Fishermen have hailed them as bringing respect back to the profession and showing the world the hard work of fishing.

While “Time Bandit” tells a lot of the white-knuckle, teeth-gnashing adventures seen on “Deadliest Catch,” the real story is one familiar to many a Homer fishing family: growing up wild, loose and free at the end of the Homer Spit in the 1960s.

“The Spit’s a good baby sitter,” is how Johnathan put it.

The sons of the legendary fisherman John Hillstrand and grandsons of Earl Hillstrand the founder of Land’s End Resort and a former owner of the Salty Dawg the Hillstrand boys fished, played, caught crab and raised heck back in the days when Homer didn’t have many paved streets and everyone knew everyone else, sometimes too well. The guys don’t hold back there is a lot of cussing in the book and write frankly about alcoholism, divorce and the challenges of growing to adulthood in a family that wasn’t exactly “Leave it to Beaver.”

What stands out, though, is the love Andy and Johnathan show each other, as well as for their brothers Neal and Michael. Though they might fight and play pranks on each other one time, Johnathan chopped down a tree Andy stood in while bear hunting the brothers take care of each other.

There’s the time Andy hauled Johnathan to the hospital after Johnathan jumped off a boat onto the beach, breaking both ankle and his wrist and that was days after Andy had injured his back and broken ribs in a motorcycle accident.

The doctors looked at them and said, “You two just used up eight of your lives,” they write in “Time Bandit.”

MacPherson and the Hillstrands have crafted a narrative arc in their book that keeps the memoir suspenseful, but allows them to jump around from childhood to adulthood and in between. The book starts with Johnathan stranded on his salmon fishing boat, the F/V Fishing Fever, adrift in lower Cook Inlet with motor and all electronics down. As Johnathan ponders his uncertain destiny, he thinks back about his adventures. Andy’s story comes in, too. Periodically Johnathan returns to the Fishing Fever and the latest crisis.

Fans of “Deadliest Catch” will find plenty of crabbing stories. The saddest is of the Hillstrands trying to save the captain of the F/V Troika. The Time Bandit and several other vessels ran to a report of the Troika taking on water. They got the captain out of the sea, but he’d already swallowed water and become severely hypothermic. Despite hours of CPR, the captain died in the Time Bandit’s stateroom.

Read the rest of the story after the jump

Greg & Ragnhild Moncrief of F/V Far West Leader keeping busy

For those of you on the west coast, you can catch Greg and Ragnhild as grandmarshalls of the Mukilteo Lighthouse festival on Saturday, Sept. 8th at 11am, Mukilteo, WA.   A “meet & greet” session follows in the afternoon. for more info, visit www.mukilteofestival.org.

Cathy Herholdt of the Journal Newspapers writes that Greg Moncrief began fishing soon after leaving the military, he went to Alaska, met Ragnhild, and fishing has been their chosen way of life since they married in 1989…

“I didn’t really think about it much,” said Ragnhild of marrying a fisherman. But Greg has been gone between six and nine months every year of their marriage. “I had forgotten how hard it was,” she said, reflecting on the early days when their two daughters were little.

These days, Ragnhild only joins Greg in Alaska every now and then, but it was her presence that likely sealed the deal for the Farwest Leader to be chosen by Discovery Channel producers. While touring potential ships they saw a photo of Ragnhild and asked Greg who she was and whether or not she would be on board. “Maybe,” he said. “They called a couple of days later and said, ‘you’re in.’ They loved her,” said Greg.

“I’m used to working downtown,” said Ragnhild, who works as a travel agent in addition to being a busy mom. “Up there you don’t have to worry about time, you just go to bed whenever … I’m kind of a perfectionist. I never have time for myself. Up there on the boat, you only have to think about yourself.”

But time to herself was about the only thing Ragnhild seemed enthusiastic about when it came to talking about her experience as a crewmember last season. “We’d already been fishing for cod for a month. I really didn’t have much desire to go back for snow crab, but I decided to try it. The weather wasn’t good, it was cold, long hours,” she recalled. “I was seasick and overwhelmed.”

Because of bad weather, Ragnhild spent more time in the galley than on deck. “It was hard cooking when you’re seasick,” she said. When she noticed the camera crew following her around, she finally asked if they wanted to film her getting sick. They did, and the clip aired for every preview of that episode. “I didn’t think they’d show that,” she said. “But the first episode, we’re sitting there watching me in the bathroom!”

Despite the inherent danger of fishing and being gone from home so much, Greg loves his job. “Every day is different. You have a lot of responsibility,” said Greg. “I love it. You pull those full pots up and it’s exciting.”

The fishing industry has changed over the years, and despite a huge emphasis on safety, it’s still dangerous. “There’s bad weather and the boat’s rolling … those crab pots weigh 800 pounds and are moving around on deck … you don’t know what’s going to happen. Some days it’s nice out, some days it’s not.”

When it comes to weather, it’s the captain’s decision as to whether or not to fish. “If there’s any doubt, I don’t fish. It’s just not worth it,” said Greg, whose main concern is the safety of his crew. However, “there’s a difference between bad weather and crappy weather. If you only fished when it was nice out, you’d never fish,” he explained. “You just have to see how the wind is blowing. If it’s kind of rough, we just keep the weather on one side of the boat.”

Greg says he’ll never forget his “worst day ever,” at sea. “It was Thanksgiving and it was blowing about 100 miles per hour with 50-foot seas. We ran over a net so we had no power. We were on watch in our survival suits for about six hours. Then the weather got calm and the stuff cleared out of our engine, and we went back fishing. That was the worst storm I’ve ever been in.”

He’s also experienced first hand the physical danger of his profession. “Lots of people have gotten hurt. I’ve had broken ribs and was (airlifted) out of there one time when ice fell from the rigging and hit the back of my neck and knocked me out,” recounted Greg. “I’ve had friends go over …I had a good friend about three years ago that didn’t make it. He had a heart attack in the water. He wrapped the line around his hand and it threw him over. It was only about three hours from the season being over.”

While filming “Deadliest Catch,” Ragnhild lost a bet and had to help with bait on deck. In that episode, the weight of responsibility intensified for Greg, who voiced his concern on camera, “I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her.”

But she was more concerned about getting doused by an icy wave. “You get completely soaked in salt water,” she said. “I don’t like that.”

Only sleeping a few hours at a time and trying to feed a crew of hungry fishermen with differing tastes were daily challenges. “Greg would wake me up at two in the morning and say ‘the guys are coming in now to eat dinner,’” she said. But often it would be two or three hours before they were actually able to get a break to eat. “You know how hard it is to cook and keep it warm for two or three hours? It would get all dried out.”

Tasks such as baking, doing laundry and even showering in rough seas pose challenges as well. “One day I baked a cake. The weather was perfect, but then it changed suddenly and the cake batter went over the edge,” Ragnhild recalled. The batter started burning and set off the smoke detector, sending Greg to the galley in search of a fire.

Having the film crew on board was fun, Greg said. “At first you try to kind of act … then it goes back to the way it really is. They don’t keep any of the footage from the first few days.”

” I heard some people suggest that some of it is not real,” said Ragnhild. “But it’s hard to fake it out there. They edit it, but everything is real. Sometimes they make it look good, sometimes bad. For the most part they made me look good.”

Other than the seasick episode, she said, “I haven’t really watched (the show). I can’t. I lived that,” said Ragnhild. “It’s weird watching yourself.”

Since being on the show, the couple spends much of their time in the off-season making appearances and signing autographs at events like the Evergreen State Fair and Nascar races. They were even invited to tour Jay Leno’s garage and watch a taping of his show-apparently Leno is a diehard fan of “Deadliest Catch.”

They also spend a lot of time responding to fan emails, having recently enlisted the help of a family friend to mail out autographed photos and their daughter, who maintains their MySpace site.

Sean Penn goes Alaskan with his new movie

Sean Penn’s latest film “Into the Wild” will have its world debut in Fairbanks, Alaska.Penn said debuting the movie locally first is a way of thanking all of the Alaskans who worked on the film while it was being filmed last summer near Fairbanks.

The first screening will be shown at The Blue Loon in Fairbanks on September 3rd.

“Into the Wild” is Penn’s version of Jon Krakauer’s 1996 bestselling novel.

Penn wrote the movie and directed the true story of a naive 24-year-old Virginia man, Christopher McCandless, who hitchhiked to Alaska in 1992 and lived off the land.

He was found dead in an abandoned bus after 112 days in the wilderness.

The film will be released nationwide on September 21st.

For Die Hard Fans: Video on History of king crab fishing in the Bering Sea

Prior to Deadliest Catch, America’s Deadliest Season, and Deadliest Jobs, films made about King crab fishing in the Bering sea were few and far between.  One of those few has been posted on Youtube.  It offers plenty of king crab history but without most of the excitement of Deadliest Catch. The following 3 video clips add up to approximately 27 minutes of viewing of a film called “Pots of Gold”.  Have you ever wondered just how those crab pots came about?  Ever wonder when king crab fishing officially started?  Would you be surprised to learn that japanese fishermen navigated the dangerous Bering sea and hauled in huge harvests of king crab long before american fishermen got in on the action?  It’s all here in these video clips.  Just set aside a little time and enjoy….

“If you were lucky, like I was you found your destiny. If you were unlucky you found your fate.” That’s how one veteran fisherman described the remarkable Alaska king crab fishery that made millionaires out of men who had no particular qualifications other than a willingness to work ’round the clock whenever they were on the crab, and to risk their lives in one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. See first-hand the efforts of the original pioneers who explored the Bering Sea…the boom era when fortunes were made and boats and shore plants paid off within a single season… and the crash that killed the golden crab. For all those who fish, or simply love adventure.”

Commercial Fishing still the most dangerous job

The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics has released their National Census Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2006.  “Farming, Fishing and Forestry worker fatalities decreased 11 percent in 2006, but when considering fish and related fishing workers such as captains and mates, fatalities proved slightly higher then last year. ”  Tom Van Riper on Forbes.com explains it well…

The most dangerous place to work in America? Try a commercial fishing boat. After that, it’s the nation’s highways and byways — truckers and traveling salesmen, farmers and ranchers. Dangerous places, dangerous lives.

Fishing excursions off the coasts of Alaska, Massachusetts and other coastal states take a greater percentage of lives than any other profession, according to the latest workplace fatality numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sinking ships, or workers taking a spill on the deck or falling overboard, led to fishers claiming the most perilous spot on the bureau’s list of dangerous occupations, ahead of loggers, aircraft pilots and steel workers.  

Listed below are the top 3 most dangerous lines of work and their statistics.  Make the jump here to read up on all top 10.

Fishers and related workers

Total Fatalities: 48

Rate per 100,000 workers: 118.4

Logging Workers

Total Fatalities: 80

Rate per 100,000 workers: 92.9

Aircraft Pilots

Total Fatalities: 81

Rate per 100,000 workers: 66.9

Another photo exhibit for Corey Arnold

From Deadliest Catch, season 2, Corey Arnold of the F/V Rollo has another photo exhibit taking place this week. His images are often mesmerizing with their contrasts between light and dark. He currently is showing a series of photos titled “Arcticness” on the online gallery of the Humble Arts Foundation.

Currently based in Portland, Oregon, Corey Arnold is both commerical fisherman and artist photographer. His plans this fall are to fish King crab in the Bering sea aboard the F/V Rollo where he will no doubt catch crab, take more pictures, do cartwheels on deck, and create memorable memories for both himself and crew. You can learn and see plenty more of Corey’s work on his own website. (Photos all courtesy of Corey Arnold)

The Humble Arts website has a very interesting interview of Corey. You can learn much about him there.

Crab man’s arty grab bag

By Ariella Cohen

The Brooklyn Paper 

Two stories above the frozen fish and live crustaceans of the Red Hook Fairway, a man who has spent his adult life pursuing the Alaska King Crab has opened a gallery for the art he fell in love while at sea.

Look North Inuit Art Gallery is the brainchild of Jim Clark, a 15-year veteran of the commercial crabbing boats of the Bering Sea. The gallery opened this spring after Clark returned from an icy fishing season and signed a two-year-lease on the Fairway building loft that serves as both his home and gallery. He rents one of 45 mixed-use units created to keep artists and businesses on the fast-gentrifying waterfront.

“I’ve been in waterfront communities all my life that have been stagnant or in decline, so it’s good to be in one that is coming back,” Clark said, staring at New York Harbor through a large, round window.

Look North is the only Inuit Gallery in Brooklyn and so far, all compasses are pointing to its success.

“He’s got some fabulous stuff and a gorgeous location,” said customer Daniel Nimetz, who visited the gallery last week to buy an Inuit sculpture carved out of green-veined Serpentine stone.

Nimetz, who lives upstate and works in Manhattan, had been to Red Hook only once before — in 1955, for a junior high field day.

Clark’s love affair with the waterfront and the Inuit communities of the arctic shores began early.

He grew up in the whaling town that inspired “Moby Dick” — New Bedford, Mass. At 21, he left the East Coast for what he expected to be a short stint on an Alaskan fishing boat. The adventure, however, turned into a crabbing career dotted with art collecting trips in the Inuit villages of Canada and Alaska. During the off-seasons, he visited Red Hook and fell in love again

“I never planned to be a commercial fisherman,” Clark said. “But I fell in love with the land, the harshness, the stoicism of it and just kept moving up the ranks of the boats. The more I learned about the art and got to know artists there, the more I wanted to be there for that. At some point, I realized I wasn’t giving it up.”

And still, he says he is not giving it up.

“I’m still on a working waterfront,” he said, “But I have also realized that the sea is much more romantic from the dock.”

Look North (275 Conover St., in Red Hook) is open by appointment only. Call (917) 482-2878 or visit looknorthny.com.

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper

Lines of blood and water connect Seattle, Scandinavia

 

ERIC SORENSEN / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES

A tour boat takes tourists through a canal by Copenhagen’s Nyhavn, a centuries-old sailors street near the city center.

COPENHAGEN — I came to visit Denmark, but somehow I feel like I’m in Ballard. It’s not so much the pickled herring, which you can find on Market Street, or the wienerbrod, which is a dead ringer for the wares of Larsen’s Bakery up on 24th Avenue Northwest. It’s the boats.

A rich vein of Scandinavian culture runs through Seattle, and a visit to the Emerald City’s Nordic homeland shows how much the two places share an affinity for floating craft. The Danish, Norwegian and Swedish love of the water is running strong here after more than 1,000 well-documented years, and it takes little imagination to see how many of the same maritime traditions have made it to Seattle’s ship canal, Shilshole Bay, Poulsbo and beyond.

Just this month a boat called the Sea Stallion left for Ireland from Roskilde, a town half an hour from here. The boat is a replica of Skuldelev 2, an oceangoing longship that Vikings built near Dublin in 1042. The original Skuldelev 2 is one of five ships discovered near Roskilde in the 1960s. With room for 70 warriors, it is a classic representation of the craft that Vikings used to dominate trade, exploration and general malfeasance around northern Europe for three centuries.

The Battle of Hastings pretty much ended the Viking era in 1066, but Scandinavian sea power continued for centuries more.

“The Dano-Norwegian Empire was the second maritime nation after Britain,” said Erik Sundholm, vice president of Harris Electric, a Ballard-based marine electrical supplier and contractor, and holder of a University of Washington master’s degree in Scandinavian area studies. At its peak, said Sundholm, the empire included Norway, southern Sweden, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, the Orkney Islands and Greenland.

The Dano-Norwegian fleet was substantial enough to give the English a serious run for the money in the first Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. British Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson got the upper hand in part by putting a scope to his blind eye — hence the expression — so he could ignore a flag ordering him to withdraw from battle. The Dano-Norwegian fleet was strong enough six years later that the British feared it would fall into Napoleon’s hands, so the Brits attacked Copenhagen.

While its maritime military power waned, Scandinavia’s marine-merchant power remained. Danish-based Maersk is the largest shipping company in the world, and its turquoise-hulled ships and containers are a common sight on Puget Sound as they steam in and out of their Port of Tacoma terminal. The line’s owner, Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, is Denmark’s richest or second-richest man, depending on whom you ask.

A traveler with boats on the brain can fill several vacations chasing down maritime treasures here. Copenhagen has a naval museum, Roskilde has its Viking ships and the national maritime museum is out by the castle Shakespeare made famous in “Hamlet.” In &Aelig;eroskøbing, a truly quaint village reached only by ferry or other boat, I schlepped my family to the “Flask Peter” Museum, which houses hundreds of the 1,700 ships-in-bottles that Peter Jacobsen built until his death in 1960.

Up north in Jutland, I was visiting yet another of the country’s incredible granite-and-brick churches when I found myself once again taking a picture of a massive ship model hanging from the ceiling. Henning Thalund, keeper of a modest Web site on the subject (www.kirkeskibe.dk/en/index.htm), estimates there are about 1,300 Danish church ships hanging either as decorations, memorials, gestures of gratitude or religious symbols.

Small wonder, then, that so much of Seattle’s own Dano-Norwegian empire should have some connection to the sea.

Gordon Strand, business manager for the Nordic Heritage Museum in Ballard, recalled that his Norwegian grandfather Chris Nelson led the local fishing fleet into Fishermen’s Terminal when it opened in 1913. Behind him were 200 or so other boats, many of which were sailed by fellow Scandinavians.

“That’s what they knew,” said Strand. “My dad came from a shipbuilding family in Norway and came in the ’20s and that’s what he gravitated to.”

His father’s original name was Fiskerstrand, as in fisherman’s beach, but immigration officials changed it to Strand as he came through Ellis Island. Other Scandinavian names have arrived intact, not the least of which is Hansen, as in Sig, Norman and Edgar of the F/V Northwestern and the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.” As they note on their Web site, the brothers Hansen “are continuing in the family tradition of commercial fishing that started in Norway four generations ago.”

Eric Sorensen, who is of Danish descent, and whose family name originally had a slash through the “o,” sails out of Edmonds, home to a lot of Norwegians. You can reach him through his Web site, www.ericsorensen.net.  Link to story