Captain Phil Harris Read Online Free Page A

whole bow was caved in,” said Phil. “My dad did a million dollars’ worth of damage, but he saved everybody’s life.”
    •   •   •
    Grant was still saving lives in his seventies when he was supposed to be retired, though he will never be completely retired as long as he can walk onto a boat.
    At age seventy-one, Grant was in his familiar role as a hero on a cod-fishing trip off Unga Island, also in the Aleutians. Joining him on his forty-two-foot fiberglass craft, The Warrior , were Phil and Jake.
    As the boat headed to nearby Sand Point in choppy seas at the end of their outing to unload their haul, a leak was detected in the hose leading to the oil filter.
    While Phil got on the radio to issue a Mayday alert, Grant went down into the engine room with a patch and clamps to cut off the flow of escaping oil. It was the kind of repair job he had been doing for much of his life. Given a little time, he could have done it with his eyes closed.
    But he didn’t have any time. A strong wind and a fifteen-foot swell were pushing the boat on a collision course with a huge pile of rocks dead ahead.
    Because of the angle of the leak, Grant was forced to lean against the engine’s exhaust manifold in order to complete his task. The urgency of the moment denied him the opportunity to find a better position.
    Without flinching, he focused on patching up the leak, even though his arm was getting burned by the exhaust pipe.
    “I’m kvetching,” said Jake, recalling the scene, “because I got hot oil sprinkled on my arm while I was holding a flashlight for my grandfather. He had third-degree burns on his arm and he didn’t say a fucking word. Four hours later, when all was said and done, he just calmly and quietly peeled his shirt off his arm. The skin was all gone, leaving this huge, raw burned spot. He didn’t complain or nothing. I felt like a damn wimp.”
    When Jake suggested to his grandfather that he get medical treatment for his arm, Grant just shrugged, went to his first aid kit, got out some balm and a bottle of iodine, and that was the end of the conversation.
    Grant had repaired the hose with no more than fifty feet separating the boat from the rocks, saving three generations of the Harris family.
    To this day, he has a scar down his arm as a reminder of that day, but no regrets about allowing himself to be painfully branded.
    “That was a lot better,” he says, “than drowning or crashing on those boulders.”
    A sea captain requires more than bravery and nautical skills. Sometimes patience and determination are also necessary. On one trip in 1964, Grant, with a load of processed crab aboard the Reefer II , set out from the south end of Alaska’s Kodiak Island bound for Cape Spencer.
    That journey across the Gulf of Alaska would normally take two and a half to three days. But because of violent storms that lasted the entire voyage, the boat’s journey stretched to eighteen days.
    “We weren’t sinking or anything,” Grant said, “but we were taking on water that whole time. We had the pumps going. If we had sprung a leak, I’m sure we would have sunk.”
    Barely able to make any headway, the boat limped along.
    “We were going just as slow as you could possibly go,” Grant said. “It wasn’t a good trip.”
    Grant didn’t even need to be at sea to find trouble. Artist Mike Lavallee, a friend of Phil’s, noticed something strange about Grant one day in 2010 when he walked into Mike’s custom automotive airbrush studio in Snohomish, Washington. Grant’s shirt was twisted into a knot centered at chest level.
    “Grant, what’s going on with your shirt?” Mike wanted to know.
    “Well, I almost screwed myself today,” he replied.
    He meant it literally.
    Grant, who likes to do everything for himself, was attaching a shroud to his truck’s radiator. Although the protective guard was going to be in the front, he had to stretch his body out and drill a hole from the back end.
    Once the