Typical Day
Jonah's alarm goes off at 5:15AM, a nice surprise that means he just got a full two-and-a-half hours of sleep. Slipping out of the cramped cubby hole he calls his bunk, he slips on the same clothes he's been wearing for days, ties on his trusty deck shoes, and heads on up to his day job, night job, and basically entire-life-job for weeks at a time.
Up on deck at 5:18AM, Jonah takes in the 360-degree surroundings. The brisk fortyish degree weather is great for waking up still sleeping brain-cells. The water is incredibly clear today, at least what he can see of it between the dozens of other fishing boats in the general vicinity.
A few of the vessels are part of the same fleet as Jonah's, while the vast majority belong to other companies, and all of them are preparing their nets for a morning spent trying to catch the same fish as everybody else. Land is visible as a long thin line just off in the horizon. By 6:30AM, the nets are set and the crew begins the commotion of hard, sweaty, stinky, salt-watery labor.
The morning is a hubbub of crowded nets, crowded boats, and crowded crewmen fixing, jigging, rejigging, and hauling all over the deck of the commercial trawler. Around 10:30AM, one of the more experienced deckhands tells Jonah that the bilge pump has stopped turning and it's Jonahs's turn to deal with it.
Heading below deck, he hits the fuse, crawls into a teeny tiny space, and checks out the issue. Sure enough, it's all sorts of clogged up. After a good twenty minutes of hands-on clearing, he hits the pump back on. It sputters, quirts some disgusting sludge in Jonah's face, then starts to work just fine.
After a decent morning's catch and a couple hours spent breaking down the nets, lunch comes around 1:00PM; the clockwork delivery follows the final roundhaul of fish into the hold. The Skipper has noticed that the currents are changing with the tides, so rather than wasting an afternoon trying to catch the two or three goth fish that didn't feel like joining the rest of the school, he decides to change course.
As Jonah downs a hot cup of stew with a strong coffee chaser, the boat travels ten miles southeast. The smaller vessel hits the massive wake of a cruise ship as it passes, and the stew goes all over Jonah's shirt. Considering the weeks-worth of stains decorating his clothes like a moldy Jackson Pollock painting, the only thing he's upset about is not getting to eat the whole thing.
The afternoon is a much slower experience. Not as many fish are biting and the atmosphere aboard ship becomes a little more laid back. Some of the guys decide to head below deck for a quick poker game.
As many real-money games go, the mood shifts from happy to cutthroat in a matter of hands. The fish tender boat shows up around 5:45PM in the middle of Jonah's incredibly strong bluff, and with the Skipper's call the game is put on hold (good for Jonah, because he's a horrible bluffer).
The tender's job is to pick up all of the fish the crew caught that day and return it to shore, so that the fishing boat and her crew can stay on the job. Assisting as usual, Jonah silently curses these guys for never having to actually catch a thing.
As the ship travels to its evening moor around 7:30PM, Jonah takes the opportunity to grab a wink or two. While the boat is anchored, sleep can be more difficult than usual due to the extra strength that waves have against an object not in motion (physics, yo). It's always been easier for Jonah to grab some shut-eye when the boat is on course.
Sliding into the bunk, he drifts off a little quicker than usual. By 9:00PM, Jonah's up and back to duty, checking rigging and keeping an eye out for night-time predators. Nope, nothing scary about this part of the job.
He spends a lot of the rest of the night doing what doesn't happen during the day―cleaning. While the deck of a commercial fishing vessel is never going to be a place you'd want to lie down, its important to get as much of the last day of fish guts cleaned up as possible, so that the next day of fish guts doesn't just get piled on top.
Midnight hits, and as usual, the crew welcomes a new day with an enthusiastic howl. These are the moments Jonah lives for, although that bit of sleep he'll get to have at 4:00AM is pretty sweet too.