He went overboard for just a few seconds…Our friendship flashed before my eyes before I could even move my legs. Where do I even begin a story like this? Let’s go way back. Another childhood friend of mine and I were playing catch in his backyard. When we accidentally threw the football over the fence. When we went to retrieve it from the neighbors house, a man opens the door, Chris’s dad, Angelo, who’d I’d later adopt as my “godfather”. Chris, my childhood friend, grabbed the football and came outside with us. From there, the friendship deepened into brotherhood. We spent summers roaming the neighborhood, sleepovers that stretched for days sometimes, bus rides home from school that turned into daily rituals. We fought like brothers too; one time I punched his football helmet at practice for some random reason. He always knew how to get under my skin, but he was always my brother. Years later, I graduated photography school while Chris returned from the military and joined his uncle’s fishing boat out of Half Moon Bay. One night, he called “Come crash on the boat,” he said. That first night, I drank too much and tossed pesto fettuccine overboard, true sailor style.
A season later, they invited me back, this time with my camera. Three days out at sea, hauling traps for black cod. You can’t comprehend the depth of the ocean until you’re lowering a fish pot to the seafloor and finish a cup of coffee before it lands. The hum of the winch, the salt spray, the smell of diesel and brine, it all seeps into your skin. The sea commands respect. I left that trip both humbled and haunted by its vastness. When I returned again for crab season, the sea was calm at dawn and raging by noon. I was elbow-deep in ground bait when I heard shouting, Chris was overboard, hanging off the rail on the outside of the boat. Before I could move, another deckhand had him by the collar, pulling him back to safety. If a rope had caught his ankle, that could’ve been it. The ocean takes what it wants, and that day, it decided to give Chris back. We saw everything out there: mirror-flat waters under pink skies, fog so thick you couldn’t see the back of the 62ft vessel, blooms of jellyfish drifting like galaxies beneath the surface. It was an incredible experience to say the least. Today, Chris has traded his fishing gloves for woodworking tools. He’s married now, prepping for fatherhood, shaping new life with the same steady hands that once hauled crab pots from the deep.
And me? I’m still grateful for the ocean’s lessons, for the friendship that weathered every storm, and for that one backyard toss that started it all.
