Wild Weather RIPS OFF Winch And Sends 800-lb Crab Pot Crashing To The Deck | Deadliest Catch
Saga’s Struggle and Wizard’s Hunt: An Alaskan Fishing Adventure
240 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor, the 107-ton Saga braves the elements.
“Looks like money in the bank, baby!” Captain Elliot yells, feeling the excitement as the first pot brings in a solid catch. “Crabby Dan, 57, the first one! Yeah, boys! We call steady crabbing, start strong, we keep it up.”
Captain Elliot Neese is on a banner fishing trip. “Look at this! Dude, we have more crab than anybody in the fleet. Got my job cut out for me.” But even with 60,000 pounds in his tanks, the skipper knows the season is far from over.
“You know, the way I look at crab fishing is the captain can find a crab, but a great captain can stay with the crab. Oho yeah! Let’s call that a crab land. Suck it up, keep finding which way they’re going, and you can stay in front of them.”
As Elliot stacks and moves his gear to stay ahead of the crab, he feels confident. “Feels good, man. Come out with a clear head, know things are good at home. He’s pretty focused this season. He’s kind of on the right track, but sometimes he kind of wavers from that. I got to remind him of that if nobody else will.”
The day progresses smoothly. “This is how you build a team right here. Before you know it, this thing will be 72—the high part of the year right there, boy. 72!” Elliot exclaims. “There are days that you love crab fishing, today is one of those days. Not a better job in the world.”
Suddenly, disaster strikes. While stacking pots, the crane winch tears loose, sending an 800-pound pot crashing to the deck and disabling the crane. “Watch out guys, watch out!” Elliot shouts. “Damn it, right when you’re just freaking moving along. Got a break. I’m coming down right now. Send weight up here to drive, put that down, get up here now.”
The winch, which controls the line that lifts and lowers the pots, needs to be reattached. “Never a dull moment on the FP crabber. Piece of equipment breaks like that, it could land on your head or something, take you out. You never see it coming.”
Elliot quickly devises a plan. “We need to start taking the dental tape off those fittings, pull that winch all the way off. We need to get a chain fall from inside, hook it around there, and chain fall down to here.” He climbs up the boom to secure the broken winch. “Down on the deck, it’s super rolly, but you get up even higher and it’s even magnified more in 10-foot seas. Yeah, it’s really dangerous. You never see the skipper up there, that’s for damn sure.”
The crew works together, managing to remove the winch safely. “The winch would have fallen all the way on deck and quite possibly could have killed somebody,” Elliot reflects. He then sets up a temporary fix, running a line through the eye holes of the boom and down through the bucket, allowing the crane to lift and move pots without the winch. “My dad taught us together, really ain’t nothing we can’t fix or break.”
As they resume fishing, Elliot remains cautious but optimistic. “We’re going, we’re feeling kind of limited on what we can do, but we can still make it. We got that fixed, now it’s right back to it. Could have been a major disaster right there. We’re just really lucky the hydraulic lines caught it. Here we go. I’m not even mad that it broke, I’m just really happy that nobody got hurt.”
With their strategy set, Elliot focuses on hauling pots. “It’s all going in. The question is, can I stay on them?”
Meanwhile, 210 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor, Captain Keith Colburn nudges the Wizard up to his first Bairdi pots of the season. “Good morning, Freddy. Alright guys, first one’s coming up. This year, the Bairdi is where we’re making our money. Losing the extra king crab just makes it that much more important that we catch this Tanner crab in a timely manner. What’s going to happen? We’ll see how it goes through the night here and we should find something.”
With their king crab paychecks cut in half, a fast and furious Bairdi season is their only hope. “Looks like a bunch of starfish,” Keith observes as the pots come up. Starfish gather on hard bottom, unlike Bairdi that tend to feed in muddy terrain. “If you see a starfish, you probably won’t see crab.”
The season is tough, but both crews remain determined. The Saga continues to push through mechanical failures, while the Wizard keeps searching for the elusive Bairdi crab. Will their perseverance pay off? Only time and the unforgiving Alaskan waters will tell.
