SHORT GAP, W.Va. — When Dan McCormick left his home in Mineral County after graduating high school, he wasn’t sure what he’d eventually do with the training and experience he was going to receive during a stint in the U.S. Navy, but he knew he was attracted to the unpredictable current of the sea.
“There was a moment where I had to decide what I was going to do next,” he said. “I had to follow my heart, and it led me here.”
Today, McCormick works as a deck boss for Coastal Transportation of Seattle, Washington. A marine transportation company, Coastal operates five vessels with scheduled year-round sailings between Seattle and ports throughout Western Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.
“That is a good question,” said McCormick when asked where he makes his home today. “Right now it is Phoenix (Arizona) but I spend a lot of my time off in West Virginia, too.”
A good childhood
McCormick grew up in unincorporated Short Gap, West Virginia. The son of John and Nancy McCormick was a standout running back at Frankfort High School (2009) and played electric guitar.
“I was a military baby, so I traveled quite a bit at a young age and it started for me in Short Gap and then at 7 years old, we moved to Maine where my dad was stationed. We were there for about four years and when his orders were up there we came back to West Virginia.”
Once out of the military, his father began working on the railroad.
“It was during my senior year that my father passed away,” he said. “It changed me forever and for a bit, I went on a downward slope in my life. I decided to join the Navy because my dad did his 20 years and I found a path to follow in that. It felt right.”
McCormick reported to boot camp in Chicago. He said stepping out of his home state gave him some peace but eventually allowed him to appreciate West Virginia once again.
“I wasn’t looking to use the military for an education or for training purposes,” he said. “I genuinely wanted to serve like my dad.”
McCormick called his life as a child, “perfect.”
“When I meet people for the first time in my line of work, sometimes they have pretty sad stories to tell about growing up,” McCormick said. “I had a great upbringing, so that is kind of hard for me to relate to, I guess. I couldn’t have asked for more. I was active in sports, church and I had chores and responsibilities.”
In his bloodMcCormick said his military service was a springboard to a passion for the sea, which was born years before when he lived in Maine as a child and was further nurtured as he served in the U.S. Navy.
“My grandfather was a boatswain mate and it is the oldest rank in the Navy,” he said. “Out on the boat, what you think sailors do is we take the skiff (six-meter boat) out and we do maintenance on the gear and we do all of the hard work nobody wants to do. They are the only people you see on deck. Everyone else has their tech jobs, their fire control and gunner’s mates — but we’re the ones who keep the ship afloat.”
The rank of cadet boatswain is considered by some schools as the second-highest rank in the combined cadet force naval section but below the rank of coxswain and of higher rank than leading hand.
McCormick’s father was an aviation technician but he took his grandfather’s path.
“What my dad did really wasn’t a good fit for me,” he said. “I followed in the footsteps of my grandfather and I immediately loved it. The constant view of the water and the dangerous nature of the job were all elements that I gravitated to.”
Now 30 years old, he said he’s acutely aware of his own mortality and he tries to get the most of every day.
“In my family, we don’t have many people over 60 or 65 years old,” he added. “I have very bad high blood pressure, high cholesterol — but I’m otherwise healthy and fit. My work is physical, I work out and I eat right but sometimes genetics play a major role. My dad was only 49 when he passed. I was young when I lost my grandparents. I can’t say that I don’t think about it. It makes you value each day.”
He said that he feels more connected to his father when he is out at sea.
“I rarely go to his grave, but when I’m out on the water, particularly during down time, I can feel a connection to my dad. It is pretty relaxing, we only have eight people on the boat and you have a lot of alone time. It’s then that I feel super close to him.”
Making the transition
After two years into his military experience, he broke two bones in his leg and was assigned shore duty and had to leave his first ship, the USS Barry, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.
“Shore duty provides an opportunity for schooling or side work and is more relaxed than ship life,” he said. “I took that time to get my merchant marine credential. I was limited-duty for six months and it worked out well. I had a cool (naval operations) chief that let me go to school in the day instead of come to work every day.”
He attended MAMA, the Mid-Atlantic Maritime Academy in Virginia Beach where he earned his master-100 and lifeboat credentials, among others.
“This is a hard industry to break into and it is tricky because you need sea-time to get licensed,” he added. “How do you get documented sea-time without getting out on the water?”
Next, he was assigned to an LSD ship — an amphibious warfare ship equipped with a well dock to transport and launch landing craft and amphibious vehicles.
“This was much different than a destroyer,” he said. “The ship’s company was 300 people and that was the Navy alone. When Marines came on board, that was 3,000 people. It was insane.”
After serving four years in the U.S. Navy, McCormick said that he had a moment of clarity regarding what to do next.
“It is very scary transitioning and I joined right out of high school, so it was all that I knew at that point,” he said. “You have all of this direction that you get from the military but then when you are a civilian, you have to figure out how to apply it.”
His first civilian gig came from Norfolk Tug Company and it would require him to work out of Manhattan, New York.
“I took the job,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared for the magnitude of the job. We were maybe the world’s biggest trash company. We hauled 2 million pounds of New York City’s garbage on barges.”
His dock was in Queens, near LaGuardia Airport.
“I was a deck hand and the captain couldn’t see over the barge and we had to take it from LaGuardia down the East River down to Staten Island and we’d get on trains from there. I had to sit out on the barge and give coordinates about where other vessels were and where to turn and where the next buoy was.”
He added, “It could be very stressful and it was a tremendous amount of responsibility. It was a dirty job. There were maggots everywhere and we were constantly stopped by the Coast Guard looking for bodies. It was definitely a learning experience. Being from rural West Virginia, it was a bit overwhelming at times.”
He worked a schedule of 14 days straight, then he had 14 days off.
“It took a week to unwind and then you had a week to prepare to go back,” he said. “It was the absolute worst schedule. I was living in West Virginia and I would drive to Virginia Beach to get into a company and drive to New York every two weeks. I did that for a year-and-a-half.”
McCormick said he learned something through the experience.
“I’m definitely not a city person,” he said laughing. “It got my foot in the door in the industry. That was the benefit of the experience.”
Finally finding his fit
He left that position five years ago and joined Coastal Transportation, a transition that he called a “game changer” in his life.
With headquarters out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and Seattle, Washington, he had a conversation with the Port Captain that reassured him he was making the right move.
“At that point, I was done with tug boating and when I talked to him it was his knowledge and professionalism that made me feel comfortable,” he said. “I liked this because you’re out on the water, you don’t see land and you form a bond with your co-workers. You become a family of sorts and you look out for each other.”
He completed a series of personality trait profiling to determine whether he would be a good fit mentally.
“If you’re out there for 60 days straight and you are fighting with your mind the whole time, you’re going to make yourself and the other seven or eight people you’re with miserable,” he added. “As soon as I took the personality test, I knew this was the real deal and I was all-in.”
He said one person in 17 will make it one year on the job.
“I got to Seattle and sailed to Alaska two days later,” he said. “I fell in love with it.”
His employer has five, 260-foot boats that leave Seattle with 2 million pounds of freight and cargo and they make scheduled stops along the Aleutian Islands to nearing the tip of Russsia. A first stop may be in Chignik, Alaska, to deliver supplies to tiny villages with native Alaskans who have no other source for water, food, gas and other essentials. Their route will include stops at King Cove, Sand Point, Adak and Attu among others.
Working hand-in-hand with the fishing boats, once in Dutch Harbor they may tie up to a boat that is full of crab and could at any time transport 5 million pounds of catch, which would take 32-hours straight in shifts to load.
He cited an incident where one worker acquired frostbite in his big toe while unloading catch, which includes a freezer-holding process and a dangerous process of boat-to-boat transfers.
“Once we initially arrive at Dutch Harbor, our boat is pretty much empty of the cargo and we begin that process,” he said.
He added that due to the nature of the work, one may think that it is a young man’s trade.
“I’m a deck boss and I have guys with more experience than me who I’m in charge of that are in their 60s,” he said. “These are experienced people who just don’t want the responsibility I have and they’re happy doing their job every day and leaving the stress to others. Half of the time, they tell me what to do, and I draw on their experience and I listen and learn.”
He added with a laugh, “They drink tons of coffee and they smoke and probably fit the profile in your mind of what an Alaskan sailor would look and act like. That image of a Popeye-looking dude is pretty accurate.”
A chief engineer on a boat can earn $1,100 per day on the water.
He said that some of his co-workers have no family.
“They look forward to coming back to the boat because this is their family,” he said. “I try to be cognizant of that. The majority of the older people stay because they really don’t have anything to call home off of the boat. They like it that way and it just shows that family doesn’t have to always come in the traditional form, you know? I’ve worked with someone who has been divorced seven times so this life isn’t for everyone.”
McCormick served in the U.S. Navy with his girlfriend, and he said their relationship is aided by a mutual respect and understanding.
“She knows what deployment is like and knows how to hold it down at the house while I’m gone,” he said. “Most people struggle to maintain a consistent home life.”
Currently, he has four months off. Employees have some control over the annual scheduling cycle if they prefer to block off particular months. He prefers to work for three months and then take three months off.
“I’ve been off since April and I flew to West Virginia and stayed with my mom for a couple weeks and then flew to Arizona and we’re about to visit the Grand Canyon and then fly to Florida to visit my step-brother. I would call West Virginia my home but it isn’t where I am the most.”
Salmon season hasn’t been as fruitful as usual during the COVID-19 pandemic, partly because of the shutdown of restaurants in the states.
“With salmon fishery, most people come from the lower 48,” he said. “We’re actually a tender and we don’t actually fish as the smaller boats will come to us to unload their salmon. The season isn’t canceled, but it won’t be as productive.”
Facing danger
He has found himself working with the popular Discovery series “Deadliest Catch,” which follows crab fishermen aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab and snow crab fishing seasons.
“We are the ones transporting their product and they come to our dock,” he said. “They may come back with 5 million pounds, which we’ll hold in our freezer in one shot. We see them constantly and it is been a good experience seeing something like that in motion.”
While he hasn’t made an appearance on the show, some of his co-workers have been given the honor.
“I honestly hadn’t seen the show before I took the job and the element of fear and danger is real that is portrayed. I’ve feared for my life on multiple occasions and questioned why I was out there doing this,” he said. “We were once in 35-foot seas for about four hours. In those waters, you can’t eat, sleep or use the bathroom because it is so rough. I have things to tie myself down while I sleep so I don’t fall out. Our anchor broke loose a little bit during this and it was banging against the ship. I got the call at 3 a.m. to help bring it back up and me and two other guys and we go out there and the bow was completely submerged and I couldn’t tell if I was overboard or not. My adrenalin was pumping and I didn’t feel the cold. One guy was hung up by the sea wall on the ship, which saved him, and the other guy was caught in cargo and chains and had a leg injury.”
He continued, “We get back up there and start to bring the anchor up and we get hit again. This time my leg went down where the anchor was, which held me there. I wasn’t sure if I was on the boat or not. It was terrifying. The killer up there isn’t necessarily sharks — it’s hypothermia.”
Finding his peace
McCormick focuses on being a musician in his spare time out at sea and brings along related gear, along with a Gibson Les Paul guitar that he leans on as a companion.
“When you are out here, some people read and others play video games,” he said. “My guitar is my peacekeeper out there and I forget I’m on the boat. If we have calm weather, that is all I’m doing. Sometimes, I’ll go play in the galley for everybody and it is good for morale. Internet access is very inconsistent so you can’t lean on that at all for entertainment. All of our boats have wifi, but I’d compare it to bad dial-up at best. You’re not going to get access in 40-foot seas.”
In one video he posted to his Facebook page, McCormick is sitting on a stool on the deck of his boat playing an extended live guitar solo from Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” as a bald eagle is perched beside him on a hand rail — motionless and seemingly mesmerized by the music. McCormick said the birds are a powerful symbol and he has a tremendous amount of respect for them and enjoys their company. He is often taken by their curiosity.
“When you look at them, their faces are scarred and they are rough looking,” he said. “You can just see every battle they’ve ever fought in their faces. I’ve always thought they are perfect as representatives of our country.”
