This week and next I’ll be taking some time off for the holidays. While I’m away I’ll be sharing excerpts from an interview I did in 2016 with local fishermen John Corbin and Scott McMullen, all about the local Dungeness Crab fishing industry. At the time, Corbin was chair of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, and McMullen is chair of the Oregon Fishermen’s Cable Committee. Today we’ll hear Part 1 of that interview.

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A  look at the next round of weather coming our way.

And a preview of next week: an archive interview about the local Dungeness crab industry, while I take a much needed break for the holidays.

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Today we’ll look at data from Tuesday night’s storm, which left much of our coastal area without power on Wednesday.

We’ll also take a look at a new set of small experiments I am compiling to help land dwellers understand what it’s like to be a mariner on a vessel at sea. I call it the Sailors Empathy Kit.

So far in my kit there are two things you can do to get an idea of what it’s like to work on the deck of a boat or ship. 1. To get a feel for wind velocity, stick your head out the window of a moving car at different speeds between 30 and 60 mph. 2. To get a feel for water temperature, run the cold water in your sink at home and stick your bare arm under the water. Better yet, your head. Now you know what it might be like to fall overboard in our cold Pacific Ocean water or be hit by a wave.

You’ll have new found empathy for mariners and the dangerous and challenging work they do, often at night, and in the winter, in difficult weather.

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The National Weather Service says we’ll be looking at 20 foot seas and 60 mph winds offhore by the end of the week. Ships are already waiting out in the ocean. Another wintry week on the lower Columbia.

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We have another round of winter weather coming in with high seas and winds, meanwhile ships that were stuck in port or out at sea over the weekend, during our previous storm, are hoping to move on before the next one hits.

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Today, as we continue through the season of short days and lots of darkness, we’ll talk about getting around on the river at night.

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Those of us who l,ive on or near the Lower Columbia River tend to think of bar restrictions as things affecting the Columbia River Bar. But actually, there are river and bay bars up and down the coast and they all are dynamic and dangerous areas where inland waterways meet the ocean. Today we’ll take a look at what’s happening along the PNW coast.

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A listener sent me a photo of a ship in the Astoria Anchorage that had some unusual looking equipment on deck. It’s called  gantry crane, and it allows the ship to handle containers using onboard equipment.

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In a follow up to a story I shared with you earlier this year, here’s the latest on the Port of Portland’s container service, which faced closure in the face of financial losses. Now it looks like the Port has a new agreement for operating the container service but still needs funding from the state of Oregon. We should know more  about that funding by summer.

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Today we’ll talk about the just-in-time rescue of a sailor from a sailboat in flames, over 400 miles offshore, by a cargo ship – carrying a cargo of orange juice. So a bit about rescues at sea, and the specialized ships that carry our juice.

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