'I didn’t quit, cry or throw up'

COEUR d’ALENE — Fishermen off the coast of Alaska call January the “A Season” because of its intensity.

Sitting at the bar of the Norwegian Rat Saloon (affectionately referred to as “the Rat”) in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Tracy Paola had only stopped to recharge on her way back to Idaho.

“In January and February, that’s when you don’t want to be on the Bering Sea,” Paola said. Waves can often reach heights of 30-40 feet.

The two captains of the Wizard and producers from the reality show “Deadliest Catch” arrived at the Rat to drum up a temporary replacement after a medical emergency caused a deckhand to be rushed to shore.

“Our expediter was with us and she knows everybody and she was kinda joking and pointed at me and said, ‘Well, she can cook’ and I kinda glared at her,” Paola recalled.

The Coeur d’Alene native was reluctantly persuaded to join the crew of the Wizard for 10 days under the understanding that she would cook, clean and help sort crab, but when she set foot on the vessel, it became clear that the actual job was different from the terms she had signed on under.

“What they did was they put me in as a fully fledged bait b–ch on the boat, and I was definitely a deckhand. They did not take it easy on me,” Paola said.

In the past, Paola has split the year living in Prichard in Shoshone County and part of the year working as a cook on a trawler captained by her husband off the coast of Alaska, but she had never worked as a deckhand on a crew before.

Paola said that she was worried about her endurance, but her determination kept her focused on the task at hand in spite of the chaos of the crabbing boat. Through her time on her husband’s trawler, she’s seen a lot of workers quit within the first two days and she swore she wouldn’t let the situation get the better of her, no matter what happened.

“When they hired me to help out on that trip, they figured there’s no way this 49-year-old chick is going to make it. I told them I could handle anything for 10 days and help you out,” Paola said.

Having never watched the television show before, she wasn’t quite sure what she had signed on for, but was up for it, for the sake of the adventure. She said her fellow deckhands were grateful to have another person pitching in but she quickly got the impression the producers expected her to give up.

“I paid attention to what was going on around me and asked questions. By day five, they figured out that I wasn’t going to quit. They were a little surprised at the end when they had to pay me. I didn’t quit, cry, or throw up,” Paola said. “You can take the girl out of Idaho, but you can’t take Idaho out of the girl.”

Depending on the conditions at sea, deckhands can work 12- or 20-hour shifts to keep the vessel safe and keep up with the haul. She tried to conserve her strength, and instead of napping during short breaks like the other deckhands, she did yoga in her bunk to stay flexible.

“That’s how I got through it. I’m not going to run around like a chicken with my head cut off. I’m glad I proved to the captain that it’s the size of the dog,” Paola said.

Not many women have been a part of the Wizard’s crew. Paola said that while there was some hazing she was put through, she wasn’t going to let herself down by quitting.

As it turned out, she was pressed into going through the Wizard’s initiation ritual of drinking the cod blood before the crab boat returned to shore and she was able to stand on the bow of the vessel with pride at the end of the job.

That marks probably the last time she’ll be working on the water for a while, though.

“I’m retiring from fishing. My goal is to have an uneventful life for a while,” Paola said.