First Days On the Mys Kuznetsova

His name was Anatoly Ivanovich Kudrashov and he was the meanest son of a bitch in the fleet. I worked eleven expeditions with Marine Resources, and met countless captains, most of whom disappeared into the mists of distant memory soon after I stopped working with them. But Kudrashov stuck with me over the year – our two short months together on the Mys Kuznetsova in the Bering Sea became one of my touchstones for the pitfalls and rewards of working with Russians.

Anatoly Ivanovich was the short pot-bellied captain of the Mys Kuznetsova, a firm believer in the stern Soviet discipline of the ship’s hierarchy over which he exercised ill-tempered command. He had yellow vulpine eyes. His nickname among the sailors of the fleet was Golos – the Voice, for the main weapon in his arsenal, a cannon firing great booming salvos of Russian invective at the hapless souls who dared disrupt the ship’s routines. I saw him once on the ship’s bridge, convulsing in a paroxysm of rage over an infraction on the trawl deck, rip the loud hailer out of the wall, smash it to bits, and fling open the back window to bellow instructions to the scurrying trawl crew.

Anatoly Ivanovich brooked no foolishness. He hated me, a clueless greenhorn rep, right away. I got everything wrong. The essence of the rep job was carefully coordinating and choreographing the movements of the American catcher boat and the Soviet factory ship. The catcher boat caught fish in huge nets holding 20 tons or more of yellowfin sole; once the catcher boat hauled the bag of sole to the surface, the factory ship would come alongside at dead slow speed, and let out a steel cable. The Americans would catch the cable with a grappling hook, pull it onboard the catcher, shackle the bag of fish to the cable, release it, and turn to port. The factory ship would then winch the full bag of fish aboard up the stern ramp. Once the bag was on board, the factory ship would return an empty bag to the catcher boat, the catcher would rig his gear back up and the process would begin all over.

The key ‘success factors’ were keeping the factory ship close to its catcher boats (more than one catcher boat usually worked for one ship), mastering the process and language of the bag transfer, and not letting the ship factory run out of fish. In my puked-out seasick and disoriented state, I badly botched every attempt to make the process run smoothly. I found out, to my utter dismay, that there was a huge distance between being able to say, I think Pushkin is one of the greatest poets in the history of world literature. His body of work is immortal! – and, the Golden Venture is hauling his trawl at latitude 59 08’ and longitude 163 39’, wants us on a heading of 283, and by the way, make sure to check the goose shackles on the left top bridle of the bag and have the mates sew in some extra trawl mat while they’re at it.

The Mys Kuznetsova mates appeared to be speaking some version of Slavic Chinese; they swore every second word, and instead of the clean briskly articulated Russian from the University of Vermont language lab, they spoke in ellipses or barked out short phrases; they stuttered, mumbled, spoke at breathtaking speeds, and rolled their eyes in irritation when I asked them to repeat something. Sleep deprivation crushed my intellect; the fishery worked around the clock, requiring my constant presence at the radio to interpret between the boats, and spent all the time in my cabin filling out delivery receipts for the American fishermen. But if there were almost no chances to sleep, opportunities to botch things up abounded. Anatoly Ivanovich stood on the bridge next to me during every delivery, glaring at my misinterpreted words and halting, fumbling massacred Russian, steaming at mistakes in navigation that sent our floating factory veering off in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

The low point came when the rep who was training me, a cool calm Seattle blonde named Maryanne, leveled her gray eyes at me and said, I really don’t think you’re cut out for this, Peter. If you don’t get better soon, I’m sending you home. I re-doubled my efforts, studied the rep manual like it was the Bible, pushed myself to get on top of the language, and somehow won her faith over in the next week. Kudrashov was vocally opposed to leaving me alone on his ship and let all of the other captains know it during radio hours. I persevered – and after another week or two, it looked like I was out of the woods. Almost, but not quite.

To keep things running smoothly in the fleet, each catcher boat was assigned to a factory ship for the duration of the fishery. This got the catcher boat and factory ship crews used to working with each other and made for good relations between the captains, who were in general egotistical bastards demanding their own way in all matters great and small. When the fishing was hot and the factory ship full of fish, everybody was happy, but as soon as the fish went away and the nets came up empty, captains got antsy and temperamental.

That spring, the catcher boat assigned to the Mys Kuznetsova was the Raven, a jet-black dragger out of Astoria with fierce red eyes painted on either side of its sharp ebony bow. The Raven fished hard and hot, pulling up twenty and thirty ton bags of fish like clockwork. Her captain, cheerful and affable Robert, kept his schedule in perfect synchronization with the needs of the Mys Kuznetsova’s factory. He kept Kudrashov happy with his obliging manner – need a bag in two hours? Two hours later, we took delivery. He thought a day or two ahead, and if the fishing got bad in one spot, he would always put some extra tonnage onto the deck before running to hunt for a better place.

Then one day he asked the Mys Kuznetsova to re-fuel the Raven at sea. This was standard practice – the Soviet marine diesel was lower quality than American was but cheaper and had the advantage of being right there in the Bering Sea, instead of a day’s run away in Dutch Harbor. Kudrashov wanted to fill up the Mys Kuznetsova in anticipation of an off-load onto a transport ship, and asked Robert to keep fishing. Robert obliged, with a firm promise to fill his tanks to the brim when took the fuel; empty tanks were beginning to affect his catcher boat’s stability, and he risked swamping or even capsizing in a good blow.

Kudrashov put him off and put him off, until finally, Robert laid down the law – you fill me up to capacity tonight, or I’ll have to go into Dutch Harbor. The Raven put almost 50 tons of yellowfin sole onto the Mys Kuznetsova that evening, enough to hold the factory for about 12 hours. After the last delivery, Robert brought the Raven alongside the Mys Kuznetsova, tied up and started to take on fuel. The crew of the Raven invited me down for dinner and I spent a great evening getting to know Robert and his men over a beer or two.

The trouble started sometime after midnight – the second mate came out from his watch and, yelling down between the boats, told me that Kudrashov wanted to give the Raven 12 tons of fuel instead of the 18 tons agreed upon earlier. The factory was running out of fish and they wanted to keep working for the offload. I told Robert the news but he would have none of it; he wanted what had been agreed on. I passed this news along to the second mate, who duly passed it along to Kudrashov, who then appeared in person to appeal to Robert. We spent the better part of an hour in heated discussion but Robert held his ground against all appeals. He needed his fuel, they had an agreement, and that was that.

Finally, sometime around dawn I came up the Jacob’s ladder back onto the Mys Kuznetsova and walked onto the bridge to get the Raven untied and catch up on work. I noticed the mates avoiding when suddenly Kudrashov walked out of the map room. All reps are the same, he hissed. All Americans are the same. You’re all a bunch of deceitful liars! I blew up in return, You made a promise! Keep your word! And as the Russians say, vot i pogovorili – boy, we really talked. I stalked off the bridge and banged the door behind me.

The next morning on the fleet it was a ‘scandal’; I dared yell at the Voice. The lead rep for the fleet, Beth, asked to speak with me on the side after our morning radio reporting and I figured, this is the last straw. Instead of getting the axe, though, she offered to move me to another ship if things were too hot for me on the Mys Kuznetsova. But I guess I’ve got a bit of a stubborn streak in me and I refused to give Anatoly Ivanovich the satisfaction. He and I settled into a hostile glaring truce but my work was now up to his standards, so he couldn’t criticize me on that count.

About this time, the factory manager, Gennady, asked me down to his cabin for an evening of drinking and conversation. We were almost full and there was time to relax for a change; I came by after my evening shift and watched in amazement as Gennady pulled out a cornucopia of vodka bottles, kolbasa, black bread, onions and marinated mushrooms and pickles from his secret store. I’d never drunk with a Russian before, Gennady had never drunk with an American, and we made a determined effort to strengthen relations between our countries before our bout ended about dawn. I ended the evening by getting lost on the way back to my cabin, finally finding my door by some function of my reptilian hindbrain, and collapsing in a giggling heap on my bed.

The third watch woke me up about an hour later, just as I was beginning to sleep, with the words; The Coast Guard is calling us. Having the Coast Guard near the fleet put the fear of God and the US government into everybody – rumor had it they hated the Russians, and subjected them to all sorts of heinous punishments for the most minor of infractions.

None of this mattered to me right then, of course. When I got to the bridge, I was half-drunk, half-hung-over, and feeling mean for missing out on a deserved rest. This is the Coast Guard cutter Vigilant calling the Mys Kuznetsova, said the radio. Kuznetsova, Vigilant, go ahead, I said. Ah ya, Mys Kuznetsova, we are thinking of boarding your vessel for inspection during the day. Please advise the captain to be prepared. Oh for crying out loud, that’s all I need, I spat into the radio without thinking, adding an ill-chosen profanity. The US Coast Guard reminds you that the use of profanity on federal airwaves is an offence punishable by up to $20 thousand dollars fine and 20 years in prison, came back the Vigilant.

Doom. Of course, there was no question of sleep. The mates circled around the bridge, peppering me with questions about the inspection, chain-smoking and following the movements of the Vigilant with binoculars. Anatoly Ivanovich came to the bridge and began barking orders. I sat there, my head growing bigger by the moment, drinking tea and trying to gather my wits about me. The hours dragged by. Finally, sometime after lunch, the Vigilant announced that it would be boarding us shortly. An hour or so later, an orange Zodiac boat buzzed up to the Mys Kuznetsova and sent a six or seven sailors and officers clambering up the ship’s rope ladder. Half of them peeled off to look around the ship under escort of the first mate, and half of them went to the captain’s quarters to inspect the ship’s logs.

For me it was a descent into the maelstrom. The Coast Guard demanded detailed explanations of every figure in the catch registers, cross-referencing them against each other and asking pointed questions. My head throbbed and I broke into a profuse sweat under the intense scrutiny. My Russian had improved and after a few hours, it appeared that Anatoly Ivanovich had dodged a bullet, when the officers inspecting the ship arrived in his room. The catch numbers did not add up with the Coast Guard estimates; according to their calculations, there should be far more fish than recorded. The conversation boiled down to a heated discussion of the hold volume, which, according to Anatoly Ivanovich, held less than an open space because it had a series of columns in it. I somehow managed to convey this information to the extremely skeptical Coast Guard officer in charge, who took a few minutes to confer with his colleagues. He came back and said they’d reviewed their calculations and it seemed that Anatoly Ivanovich was right. A fine was avoided, smiles all around, and the officers graciously accepted a cup of tea and some Russian cookies before departing for the Zodiac.

I stood there on the deck, saying good-bye to the Coast Guard and thinking of nothing but sleep and forgetfulness, when an officer came up and clapped me on the back. That was a pretty good one this morning, he said. We don’t usually hear something like that. Sure gave us a good laugh! Ha ha ha. It was all over for me, I thought, as I watched the Zodiac go away into the Bering fog. At last, bed. Then I felt another hand – it was Anatoly Ivanovich, thanking me with a squeeze to the shoulder. After so much stress, we need to go to the banya, he said. Come on and join us.

The banya is one of the Holy of Holies in Russian bonding. I didn’t know it then but an invitation to the banya is a sign of ultimate trust and goodwill. I’d been to the banya on the Mys Kuznetsova every few days and it was one of the more impressive ones in the fleet. The sweat room itself, or parilka, had room for about ten or twelve guys and was lined with smooth sanded larch. The steam came directly from the main engine and was pumped through a grid of rocks to simulate the effect of pouring water onto hot rocks, like on a shore banya. After sweating in live steam for a few minutes, banya guests were invited to step out into the shower room and hose themselves down with water pumped in directly from the Bering Sea. The first time I tried this experience my heart almost stopped. The contrast between the intense heat of the steam and icy seawater flushed my entire being with a flood of endorphins. It was among the most amazing banya experiences I’ve ever had.

Needless to say, after a nice long session with Anatoly Ivanovich and Gennady, we all retired to the captain’s cabin for a round or three of vodka and a midnight feast of treats that magically appeared from the ship’s galley. I can’t say I never called down the wrath of the Voice on myself again during the remaining month but from then on, I was part of the crew, always the best result for any aspiring sailor.