After another disastrous season fishing for salmon I decided to quit the business. It wasn't the long days of hard back-breaking work so much as the consistent low return on my efforts. The real turning point though, was the close encounter of the large steel kind.
    Our last trip ended in a thick blanket of fog just outside Point Bonita and the light house on the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The visibility was pretty good all day while we were fishing.  I hadn't bothered to rig the life raft and life vests for quick deployment because the sea was calm all day. Now suddenly, a fog bank formed in front of us. We were caught off guard in pea soup fog with zero visibility, about to round the corner onto one of the most busy and dangerous pieces of water in the world. We set a course from the north channel black buoy to the west outbound channel red buoy just off the point before you make a turn east and head into San Francisco. We were right on course. Everyone started to tense up as we circled the buoy once and felt a very strong inbound current trying to pull us in. I laid off a course to avoid the rocks that just broke the surface off the point.

"OK, this is it" I said "We're going in. Beth, you and Rick go forward and listen for any ship horns or surf breaking on the rocks."

"Where are the life jackets and the life raft?" Yelled Rick.

    It was really getting dark now and the night brought on a new danger with decreased visibility. I went below for a moment to check our position with the Loran navigational aid.  Moments later I was called on deck by Rick's tense call.

 "Dudley, Get up here quick! I just heard a ship's horn dead ahead of us!"

 I jumped on deck and peered into the gloom ahead. but could see nothing.

"Where are the life jackets and the life raft?" Yelled Rick.

 "They are ......" I didn't get to finish my sentence. I was cut off by four short blasts from the oncoming ship signaling a collision course.

"It's coming this way! called Rick. "Now I can see their range light over the bow! Hard to starboard ! Hard to starboard!"

    Turning the wheel over fast and speeding the diesel engine I got my religion quick with an ...Our father who art in heaven.. But with Rick and Beth frantically pacing back and forth yelling and trying to see the second range light over the bridge that would give us the true course of the ship. it was hopeless to try and say my prayers.

"Oh my God, there is the other range light!"said Rick. "Hard to port! Hard to port!"

    I threw the wheel over so quickly it seemed to spin like a top. Through the fog the ship's bow came like the business end of a giant ax, huge, black and deadly, with the name Texico Chief in white six foot high letters emblazoned across its bow. The next moment seemed like a slow motion movie as the black leviathan roared by, its bow wave rising up and crashing on our deck with a roar, drenching every one to the skin. Lighted portholes whizzed by like windows on a passing train.
    We had just completed a zig zag directly in front of a 40,000 gross ton Texaco oil tanker. We cleared their path on the starboard tack only to foul their way on the port tack....so much for the seamanship test. After this close encounter I called the marine traffic control on my VHF radio to find out if we had any more surprises in store. I had a very strong desire to stay alive that night and was going to make every effort to see the sun rise again. Marine traffic control gave us an all clear so we hugged the north shore until we came up to a Coast Guard 44-foot patrol boat which escorted us in with their radar.
    I hung up my gaff and swore not fish salmon ever again. I was going to get back to repairing boats and work in a nice safe shop where I could put in a day's work and get paid for it.

    I had just started doing some boat repair work when an underwater photographer named Dan Philips came into our boatbuilder's cooperative looking for a fishing boat. He wanted someone to take him out to the Farallon Islands to photograph and catch a Great White Shark.

    And I thought that I had some bizarre Ideas.....I know I had sworn off fishing, but this seemed like it might be fun and might even earn me some badly needed money. I agreed to take him, a camera crew of two, a shark cage and three 35-gallon barrels filled with blood (to attract the sharks) out to the Farallon Islands for two days and try to photograph some Great White Sharks.
    After a week of preparation we were ready to leave. On Saturday the 18th of September we left Sausalito at 6:30 a.m. and headed for the Farallon Islands. It was a beautiful flat calm day with a good forecast of sunny weather over the weekend. We ran for three hours and arrived at 10:00.
Dropping the anchor we started pouring blood in the water to attract sharks and proceeded to lower the cage to protect the underwater photographer from shark attacks when they went into a feeding frenzy.  One of our camera crew went up the mast to take some aerial shots and Dan picked up the video camera to hand to him.

That was when Carol the other camera operator, turned around and said;

"Hey, where is the Zodiac raft?"

A Kamikaze pilot high on opium would be hard pressed to dream of better conditions for a more dramatic group suicide

    We all stopped , looked around for a moment....then several of us saw it, drifting downwind towards the rocks where twelve to eighteen foot seas crashed, blowing white water and spray twenty to thirty feet into the air like an exploding case of dynamite. I looked at Dan (the owner of the raft) and watched his face as it distorted into a horrified gasp. Everyone started running around madly like ants on a hot skillet. We looked like the closing air raid scene from the movie "Das Boot" with Dan screaming:

"Save my Zodiac! Save my Zodiac! Oh God, my outboard motor is going to be smashed to pieces!"

    Carol ran forward to raise the anchor. I started the engine again and as soon as the anchor was barely off the bottom we turned around and ran at full power towards the Zodiac, breakers and rocks, dragging the shark cage and a 35-gallon barrel of blood through the water. A Kamikaze pilot high on opium would be hard pressed to dream of better conditions for a more dramatic group suicide

"Faster. faster, closer, closer!" Dan screamed as the raft blew downwind toward the rocks.

That was when a little alarm started to buzz inside my head and a soft voice somewhere from the depths of my brain said: "What is wrong with this picture"? Compute: four people plus one forty foot boat running  full tilt towards breaking surf on pinnacle shaped rocks dragging a barrel of blood shot full of holes to attract sharks!

    I jammed the engine into reverse and began to slow down as we neared the surf line and raft just fifty feet away. The boat shuddered from stem to stern as I opened the throttle of the GMC diesel to full power. Dan dove off the bow as we stopped and swam like a cat that hated water toward his raft. I don't think the author of  "Jaws" could have created better conditions for a shark attack. I prayed quickly for Dan's soul as I looked behind us and noticed several tell-tale fins break the water and circle around the barrel and blood trying to figure where "dinner" was. He swam, it seemed, forever. I could feel my heart beat like someone thumping on my back. He reached the raft, crawled aboard and began pulling the starter chord on the engine like an animated cartoon character in the "Laff In" TV show, only nobody was laughing. A large wave rolled under my boat and a second later carried Dan half way into the rocks and broke with a burst of spray completely covering him and the raft. Everyone froze stiff and stared for a few minutes that seemed an eternity at the dark space between the rocks covered with spray and mist where Dan was last seen.
    The next thing we heard was the roar of the outboard motor and saw the gray nose of the raft shooting out of the jaws of death with Dan hugging the motor trying to get control, like a mother holding a long lost child, as it ran with its throttle stuck wide open.
    My only concern now was that the lines holding the barrel didn't foul the propeller and cause us to drift helplessly  back into the rocks with plenty of blood in the water to seal our fate. Dragging the cage in the water didn't help much either not to mention the anchor line that was still in the water. We motored back to our anchoring spot and everyone collapsed into a heap on deck. I was beginning to wonder what horrible crime I had committed in the past to be condemned to a life on the edge of disaster and ruin not mention a horrible death.

    Although we didn't see any Great White Sharks that day we had a couple of fins parading around the boat that later followed us home. They were Gray Sharks sniffing the bloody barrel as it left a pink wake behind the boat. I was glad they didn't show up earlier around Dan when he did his cat crawl on the water act. It is amazing how fast someone can swim when they are scared and have lots of adrenaline pumping through their veins. I felt a little sad that he didn't hand the camera up to the crew person on the mast. I would have loved to see a replay of the whole scene;.
    The wind started to blow and the seas began to roll the boat causing the outrigger pole to jerk hard on the cage. We couldn't stay out any longer for fear of tearing the shark cage off the side of the boat in the heavy swell. So we pulled up the anchor and headed in....a little tired and shaken. but undefeated. Next time we'll find Big White and hopefully Dan will be in the cage with a camera and not splashing around trying to become a shark burger.