Dan Danguillan, one of our favorite MM.com readers, is preparing to shove off for another multi-month artic tour inside a floating, industrial fish processing plant. Heres the note he just sent.
Well, were supposed to start fishing at midnight tonightwhen the fisheries open. I can see the Coast Guard Boats lining up to remove the cordons. Theres at least a hundred other boats like this one cramming the entry points like soccer moms waiting for the Ross Dress for Less yearly half-off sale. Some of the boats are having parties on deck. You can smell the barbeques grillin like MAD. The Excellence is about 30 yards off our port side, and they got streamers even. All the skiffs are just sipping about with people hollerin and trading cigarettes and fishing stories. The Coast Guards got little speed boats (Tor calls them whalers cuz of their shapea bit longer and narrower than the skiffs) that are zig-zagging between the skiffs checking them for contraband and helicopters buzzing the decks for what Im told are bon fires. Beer is a no-no. It doesnt matter from what I hear. Apparently the thing to do is to only take certain pills from the issued sea-sickness pill packet. Two are stimulants and one is a depressant. The stimulants are to counter act the effect of the depressant, which is used to keep the nausea at bay. The Coast Guard doesnt check for that. We affectionately call the packets Coast Guard Cocktails. The Captain is blaring that one Eric Clapton song After Midnight, as are probably all the other boats out here. Its kind of disconcerting to hear the same song interrupt itself if that makes any sense. Crap, even the surly Samoan guys on the fish deck with a crowd of about a dozen munching hot dogs around himhes playing the guitar and singin a song about a waitress he met in Hawaii named Missy. It sounds like she was pretty hot by the way hes goin about strummin n singin. I never would have thought he was like that by the way he silently points with his fork at what he wants to eat when he comes up for dinner. Tors on the bow sitting in a folding chair wearing nuthin but shorts, shades and flip-flops. Its all kind of strange in a sort of maritime version of Apocalypse now. All we need to do is replace the Clapton with Wagnerkill the rabbit, kill the RABBIT! If you dont know which scene from the movie, or which Wagner piece Im talking about, I cant help you.
