Looking back on that first entry in my log in 1979. I was struck by how green and ignorant and lucky I was. When I wandered onto Dead Man Sands I was like a little chipmunk playing in the mouth of a grizzly bear. The Sands got it’s name the old fashioned way….It killed a lot of men over the years. There was a storm in 1948…. real screamer out of the S.E., on a +20 foot rising tide…The tidal bore drove boats onto the sands, swamped boats and rolled them in the surf. There were no survival suits, no radios…and no one to call for help even if you had a radio…in those days. Ten men died in that blow. I know this because I talked to a survivor…he was the winter watchman at the old Bumblebee cannery in S. Naknek. He was 18 years old when he rode out that storm. In those days, and right up till 1951 they fished in 25 foot open sailboats…Columbia River doublenders…for power they had oars and a spirit sail….no hydraulics of course…they pulled the net by hand…two men to a sailboat…a skipper and a crewman…he was called the puller…You learned the trade serving with an old-timer. There are some really tough guys who fish the Bay and a lot of young guys like me who thought they were pretty tough. I reckon that the gold standard to measure yourself against is Sailboat Tough….