Like most of the other captains out there, Johnston started commercial fishing before he could drive. He was running a boat by age nineteen and bought his first one at twenty-nine. Now, at thirty-six, he has a wife and two children and a small business back in Florida. He sells fishing tackle to commercial boats. There comes a point in every boat owner's life—after the struggles of his twenties, the terror of the initial investment—when he realizes he can relax a bit. He doesn't need to take late-season trips to the Banks, doesn't need to captain the boat month in and month out. At thirty-six, it's time to start letting the younger guys in, guys who have little more than a girlfriend in Pompano Beach and a pile of mail at the Crow's Nest.
Of course, there's also the question of odds. The more you go out, the more likely you are never to come back. The dangers are numerous and random: the rogue wave that wipes you off the deck; the hook and leader that catches your palm; the tanker that plots a course through the center of your boat. The only way to guard against these dangers is to stop rolling the dice, and the man with a family and business back home is more likely to do that. More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States. Johnston would be better off parachuting into forest fires or working as a cop in New York City than longlining off the Flemish Cap. Johnston knows many fishermen who have died and more than he can count who have come horribly close. It's there waiting for you in the middle of a storm or on the most cloudless summer day. Boom—the crew's looking the other way, the hook's got you, and suddenly you're down at the depth where swordfish feed.
Back in 1983, a friend of Johnston's ran into a fall gale in an eighty-seven-foot boat called the Canyon Explorer. Three lows merged off the coast and formed one massive storm that blew one hundred knots for a day and a half. The seas were so big that Johnston's friend had to goose the throttle just to keep from sliding backward down their faces. The boat was forced sixty miles backward—despite driving full-steam ahead—because the whole surface of the ocean had been set in motion. At one point the captain glanced out the window and saw an enormous wave coming at them. Hey Charlie, look at this! he shouted to another crew member who was down below. Charlie sprinted up the companionway but didn't get to the wheelhouse in time; the wave bore down on them, slate-colored and foaming, and blew the wheelhouse windows out.
That happened to be a particularly severe storm, and it devastated the rest of the fleet. A boat named the Lady Alice had her wheelhouse knocked in and a crew member paralyzed for life. The Tiffany Vance, which had just transferred fisheries observer Joseph Pelczarski to the Andrea Gail the week before, nearly went down with her sister ship, the Rush. The two boats were a mile apart when the storm hit, way out on the Flemish Cap, and both lost their portside stabilizing birds. The bird on the Tiffany Vance was hung from chain, and without 200 pounds of steel to keep it down, the chain started slamming against the boat. It had to be cut; Alex Bueno, the captain, stripped to his underwear, tied a rope around his waist, and waded out onto the deck with a welding torch. There was so much water coming over the deck that he had trouble keeping the torch lit. He finally managed to burn the chain free, and then he went back inside and waited for the boat to sink. "We didn't even bother calling the Coast Guard, we were just too far out," he says. "There's really nothing to do but rely on the other guys around you."