The Deadliest Catch!

[excel]

A peek aboard 'Deadliest Catch' boat the Wizard


The Wizard, captained by Keith Colburn, is one of the boats featured in the popular TV show "Deadliest Catch." (Elliot Suhr/Seattlepi.com)

There's a television star moored at a dock in Ballard, but not for much longer.

Later this month, the Wizard will sail back to Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The crab-fishing boat, one of five featured on the Discovery Channel show "Deadliest Catch," spends its springs and summers in Seattle.

It spends autumn and winter on the Bering Sea while crew members pull pots of crabs up from the ocean floor. The Wizard's fishing season has been documented by camera crews for several years, but television can't quite capture what it's like to be aboard the 65-year-old vessel.

There's nothing like diesel fumes to bring on an epiphany -- except maybe standing inside the dim belly of a rusting crab tank.

You realize: There's nothing glamorous about life on a crab boat.

Meet Captain Keith Colburn

Keith Colburn wears Carhartts and a broken-in baseball cap that bears the name of his boat: "Wizard."


Captain Keith Colburn speaks to the press in the steering room of the Wizard. (Elliot Suhr/Seattlepi.com)

But this isn't his lucky hat. That one is up in the wheelhouse, a frayed brown cap with the words "Alaska" printed just above the bill.

That's the one Colburn has been wearing since he started fishing in 1985. He's not superstitious, mind you. But when you're staring down a winter storm on the Bering Sea, it's nice to have a comfortable hat on your head.

"It's kind of my go-to hat when I'm fishing," he says. "It's just about being in your comfort zone."

Colburn makes his off-season home in Redmond. Crabbing is a family affair; his wife Florence is his business partner and his brother Monte is his first mate.

Signs of his family are visible in the wheelhouse: There's his son's first pair of shoes, and drawings from his daughter that describe why he should stop chewing tobacco. (In season six, Colburn was trying to quit.)

Colburn moors the boat in Ballard between April and September every year, making repairs and preparing for the fall and winter crabbing seasons. Later this month, Colburn and his crew will make the eight-day trek to Dutch Harbor, where they'll start another season of work -- and the seventh season of "Deadliest Catch."

But Wednesday afternoon, he was giving journalists a guided tour of the Wizard. The tour preceded a preview for a new video game called "Deadliest Catch: Sea of Chaos."

Here's the scene: Thick ropes coiled nearly as high as a man's head give off the smell of the ocean. And the crab pots that stand in a line on the Wizard's main deck measure about seven feet tall -- much larger than they look as they're tossed over the side of the boat on the television show.

"As you can see, it's not a pleasure craft -- it's an industrial boat," Colburn says.

When he leads the way to the tanks that hold thousands of crabs for as long as a month while the boat is at sea, he apologizes for the mess. The tanks are used as storage during the off-season, and there's a dank, musty smell in the dimly lit rooms.

There are smells in the engine room too, though it's pristine and painted in shades of white and yellow.

"Eau de diesel is pretty much what we smell like," Colburn jokes. "When I get home, my wife just wants to burn everything."

Television stars

Celebrity hasn't changed a lot for Colburn and his crew. They still have to race to harvest their haul, and they still compete for prime crabbing territory.

But do they like being the stars of a hit television show? Depends on who you ask.

"Some guys love the camera, some guys hate the camera. Some guys don't have any time for the camera," Colburn says.

While the cameras don't capture the smells -- and they might make its small sleeping quarters and narrow galley look a bit bigger -- they don't change much else aboard the Wizard.

So, no, the patches of rust in the holding tanks aren't there to make the boat look like it has character; that's just because salt water quickly corrodes metal.

"The TV folks don't encourage me to do a whole heck of a lot," Colburn says. "They found out they're not going to get me to do a lot."

Filming for the seventh season commences in October with the king crab harvest; the show will return to the Discovery Channel in spring 2011.

Last season, the show chronicled the death of Phil Harris, skipper of the Cornelia Marie. The Discovery Channel announced Wednesday that Harris' sons will be returning for the seventh season.

It's not clear if Josh and Jake Harris will still work on their father's boat, or if they'll be featured elsewhere on the show.

"Josh and Jake are part of the Discovery family," Discovery Channel president Clark Bunting said in a prepared statement Tuesday. "We shared a very tough year together and look forward to continuing this special relationship in the future. Right now, they want to get back to fishing and we are doing everything that we can to support that."

Two other "Deadliest Catch" captains also call the Seattle area home: "Wild" Bill Wichrowski of the Kodiak and Sig Hansen of the Northwestern.

The game

The galley of the Wizard is transformed. There are television monitors and game systems -- not to mention stylishly clothed employees from Crave Games, based in Orange County, Calif.

First Mate Monte Colburn says it's been some time since there was a game system aboard the Wizard. He thinks there was a Nintendo 64 at one point, but he's not sure.

Now, the crew of the Wizard and the other "Deadliest Catch" crabbers are the stars of a video game. The "Sea of Chaos" game puts players through the same trials real crabbers face. They'll drop and retrieve the pots, sort the crabs (females and juveniles go back in the sea to ensure future hauls) and take their cargo back to Dutch Harbor.

Will the crew upgrade their game system so they can play "Sea of Chaos?"

Monte Colburn freezes for a moment -- he looks as if he's trying to picture himself playing a virtual version of his own life.

He admits: "We'll probably have to check it out."