The One That Got Away

At four o'clock in the morning I looked around at the grizzled faces seated beside me eating a breakfast of cold cereal, dry toast and a cup of sloshing coffee. As I had been the first one to awake, I watched intently as the doorway to the front of the boat disgorged the groggy fisherman like a mother bird regurgitating its meal for her little ones. These men, seven days of (mostly) white stubble lining their hardened, sea weathered cheeks, could hardly be distinguished by the average tourist in Gladstone, Queensland, from twelve homeless men who might be loitering, or lurking, in the shadows of the quay.

Starting conversation was nearly impossible at that hour and, for the most part, exhaustion was written on their faces like words in a large print edition book. They could no more wish me good morning as they could throw a large coral trout back into the sea. It was a morning for silent reminiscing. Each man tried to remember, as best as he could, what in the world had just happened for the previous week.

Robert, my father-in-law had dropped the suggestion for this fishing adventure a few months earlier. He had regaled my imagination with his exploits of previous years out on the reef. Fishing amidst the coral reefs of the Great Barrier to Australia, photos of vibrantly colored fish, aquamarine waters, fluffy white clouds, and broad smiling men holding unnaturally large catch - I could smell the adventure of it, but Robert was only holding the worm on a hook in front of my face; there was no room on the Capricorn Star for the likes of this American. For fifteen plus years, this group of a dozen men, like the twelve disciples of two millenia past, had crossed the South Pacific Sea to anchor themselves in the midst of a catch. By the way they talked one only needed to drop a lure over the side of the boat and a Leviathan would gather it in his mouth and seemingly pull the boat into the ocean. I wanted very much to go on this trip but there was no room in the inn - only in my imagination.

The boat carried men who belied their appearance that night: businessmen, engineers, geologists, doctor, computer guru - but until one of their group became ill, it was devoid of a pastor. My guilty fear was that I prayed too hard to go on this trip thus causing the Job-like calamity of one of the twelve, but even with my eventual passage on the steamer, there was still room for one more thus assuaging my guilty conscience.

I guess they just needed a pastor on the boat.

We prepared weeks in advance for the weeklong trip on the Capricorn Star, a seventy-five foot boat - white and powdery blue (not too manly colors, if you asked me) - preparing the rigs, ten ounce lead sinkers tied onto line spoked with hooks and beads and all sorts of fish attracting designs. Robert, Elsa, Greta and I prepared a bucketful of them the night before we left and silently I wondered to myself, "Will we really need this much gear?" As much lead as we were putting on the boat, I was sure that we would need no other ballast and had dreams of pirate ships jettisoning weight as the storms of the fickle ocean pressed mercilessly upon the U.S.S. Minnow-like boat. (For those who don't know that reference, it is the name of the boat on the T.V. show - "Gilligan's Island" - I won't even begin to use this story as a metaphor for who Ginger, the movie star, would be).

The night before we left, Robert showed me all the fish we might (and might not) catch and with each flip of the page of his chart, he giggled with an almost childish, Christmas like exuberance. For Robert, this was his early birthday moment, a chance to be young again; to hang out with the boys; to laugh at ribald jokes and forget, for just one moment, that his hand wasn't working the way it used to. A few weeks ago, (the doctors still don't know exactly what happened) Robert lost the ability to use his right hand for anything other than waving hello. Some thought it was a small stroke, others thought something neurological or even a pinched nerve, but all in all, Robert was frustrated that this very thing might sabotage his fishing adventure.

Until... the electric reel.

Throughout the week on the boat it was fairly obvious when Robert caught a fish. For most fishermen, there is a routine on how landing a fish plays out. For instance, Adrian, when snagging a fish, would look around, smile and make sure everyone was watching what he was doing. Because he was in the middle of the boat, the fish that he would be bringing up from Davey Jones' Locker were obvious to all. But, it was humorous to me to watch his antics (mostly from jealousy, mind you, because when someone in the middle of the boat brings a fish to the surface he brings everyone else's lines and lures with him). Adrian was always the first one to get his line in the water, even before the skipper yelled out from his perch in the front of the boat "All right, let them down!" I so much wanted to beat Adrian to the bottom sometimes I surreptitiously would tinker with his reel when I went by, wrap the hook around his own line a few times - but it would never work. Adrian was the early bird of fishermen. Every time we stopped, he had his slab of fish wound through his hook and was halfway to the bottom before I could even get my pole between the other two men who stood beside me.

Anyway, Adrian, when hooking his fish would laugh and giggle as he 'struggled' to get them from the bottom, his pole bending this way and that, grunting as loudly as Sharapova landing a strong backhand to the corner. All fisherman make different noises when they fish, but Adrian's call was like a 'nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah' in my face and just once, I wanted to outfish him. It never happened, but in my own mind, I once dreamed of a fish pulling the rod out of his hands as he tried to rub it in that he was catching fish to wipe the smirk off his face.

What can I say; I'm a pastor, not a saint.

Robert, on the other hand, didn't need to verbally tell anyone that he had caught a fish. He let his reel do the talking for him. The electric reel that he had bought literally sang as it pulled a fish up from the bottom of the reef. It sounded like a plane taking off from the runway and every time that Robert pushed the up button, I imagined his face taking on a look of sheer pleasure as all heads turned to watch the tip of his rod bounce here and there pulling the brightly colored trout from its home. As his prize would near the surface, his reel would beep once, then a second time, until finally, like the last seconds before a bomb goes off, it would emit one long beep. Gradually, we would not look over to see him until we heard the third beep. Then, when he would catch one, he would look over to me, while I was untangling my line from the four other men not named Adrian in the middle of the boat, and say, "Did you happen to see that nice coral trout that was carried behind you?" His gloating made me sweat and I dreamed of a shark shredding his trophy fish at it was pulled from the water, like Jaws finding pleasure in a scantily clad water skier.

Fishermen are the most jealous of all 'sportsmen.' Even though they might be friends (and a few of us relatives, in my case) they look with envy as green as the sea itself when another fishermen pulls up a fish bigger than the minnow you just caught. Outwardly they say, "Hey, Robert, nice fish!" but inwardly their hearts are spewing curses at Neptune, king of the sea, hoping that Robert snags the coral reef the next time down. Fishermen are rarely content with quantity; they want quality - big, hefty fish as if the size of the fish is a reflection of the size of their... egos. Needless to say, for most of the week I was catching small fish, one after the other, and if on land I would have been keeping these beautiful fish to savor and enjoy with my family, but as I pulled these 'grassies' up from the bottom eventually cutting them up as bait, I grew even more envious of others, especially of my brother-in-law, Warwick, who was bringing up trophy sized fish and shouting across the deck, with thinly disguised boastfulness in his voice, "I've got six. How many have you got, Reid?"

I've always been a competitive person. I'm sure that it comes from my birth circumstances sharing a womb with two others, having to fight for everything, every bit of space, every bit of attention. But competing with in-laws is a completely different thing. Especially when they are as large as my brothers-in-law are (even my father-in-law dwarfs me). I want to compete with the big boys; I want to show them that this (smaller) American is just as able as these Paul Bunyanesque Aussie brothers to catch fish and to laugh and boast about my exploits. I wanted to impress them.

My first impression on the boat, though, was probably not what I had wanted. After a five hour drive to Gladstone, beginning at 7:30 a.m., we connected with Russell and Warwick at the Capricorn Star docked in the harbor. Warwick, all six feet-three inches and multiple-kilograms-heavier-than-I of him, was standing beside the boat unloading his gear that they'd brought on the plane. Warwick was wearing a blue-flowered Hawaiian shirt and shorts, his tanned skin reflected his days in the sun. His brother Russell, even larger than Warwick, stood beside his brother and as I approached, Russell extended his hand and his smile that I've come to really enjoy, and said, "G'day, mate. Welcome to Australia." It's the first that I had seen Russell since emigrating to the country.

I am the first to say that I am really lucky to have a fantastic set of in-laws. Christine's brothers, Russell, Warwick and Malcolm, along with her sister, Sandra, and her parents, have been openly welcoming all the days of our married life. We have similar interests, we connect on many different topics, I feel included when we gather together; but when we compete, all relations are thrown out the window. Warwick threw down the gauntlet first. "What do you say we put a little bet down on the fishing this week." As we drank a beer to the adventures that were to come, we laid down the rules: Most fish kept and biggest fish. I shook their hands and toasted their glasses. I'd been fishing many times before. How hard could it be?

We boarded the boat about four o'clock p.m. and as we sailed from the harbor in calm seas I had, in my head, the haunting melody of the movie "Titanic" running between my hears. Small pipes and violins filled me with a sense of foreboding. The skipper, Scott, told us it may be a 'little' rough on the way out.

All one hundred and sixty kilometers.

Because I'd been fishing on the reef before and because I'd fished in relatively un-calm seas, I thought that this would be no problem. In fact, I was so confident of my abilities that I consumed four pieces of greasy, oily, pineapple and ham pizza. (It would not be the last mistake of the night.) After we left the safety of the harbor, the seas came up. The southerly winds pushed at the boat in the worst possible way. Because we were traveling northeast, not only did the boat lurch up and down but side to side, also. My brain, tossed this way and that, began to lurch also. And Mr. Domino's pizza was starting to tell me he wasn't enjoying the ride. It was at that point, two hours into our sixteen hour adventure, I thought I might have made a mistake by praying to be allowed on the fishing adventure. God has a funny sense of humor, I think, and as I made my quivering-legged way to the back of the boat towards Russell and Warwick, I asked one more thing of the God of the universe:

Please don't let me puke in front of my brothers-in-law.

God must not have been able to hear me through the crashing of the waves against the side of the boat. Russell would later say, "I've never seen anyone spew that hard. It looked like a fire hose." Sixteen more episodes of vomiting later, the most miserable night of my life continued to drag on. Every time I looked up, my eyes rolled back into my head and my stomach would heave. I slept with the slop bucket. I wrapped her in my arms imagining just for a second that she would have pity for me. She evidently did not hear me either.

There are all sorts of slang for throwing up in Australian lingo: chunder, thunder from Down Under, technicolor yawn - all colorful names of what was going on in my life that night and I think I subconsciously named each time. I felt really sorry for Robert who was 'sleeping' in the bunk below mine. The sound of my retching must have left him in a terrible state and he even admitted to me later on in the week, "What have I done? What will these other salty sea dogs think of my world-record-shattering-longest-night-of-puking American son-in-law?"

I love making great first impressions. As the night drew to a close and as the sounds of breakfast reached my ears the next morning (which caused new, violent waves of nausea thinking about food) I fell out of my bed to notice the other eleven members of the fishing crew and four boat crew avoid me like the plague as if seasickness were contagious. What is worse, being sea sick or seeing the looks of pity from those around me?

And we were still only one day into the trip.

I got away on the fishing trip, a holiday, a vacation, if you will. But what unfolded in the next six days has left me with indelible and incredible memories which I will cherish for a lifetime. I will finish the story in two more parts.

Bon Voyage, readers.