Cooking at Sea: How Buns Led to Boats for Captain Marilyn

Captain Marilyn's journey from crafting balsa wood boats in Seattle to becoming a seasoned maritime captain is one of passion, resilience, and adventure.

 From her early days racing hydroplanes to serving on university research vessels, Marilyn shares her remarkable experiences. 

Despite the male-dominated industry, she navigated her way through with skill and determination, facing unexpected challenges, from fighting fires on sea vessels to tendering crew amidst perilous situations.

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Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

Jan: Are you looking for an inspiring listen? Something to motivate you? You've come to the right place. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where we have conversations with ordinary women leading extraordinary lives. Motivating, inspiring, compelling. In today's episode, we delve into the extraordinary life of Marilyn, a woman who started with a passion for hydroplanes and ended up as a seasoned maritime captain. From her early days crafting balsa wood boats to becoming a pioneering woman in a male dominated industry, Marilyn shares tales of adventure, resilience and her unique experience on the water. She recounts her time fighting flyers at sea, working on university research vessels. Pretty fun experience there, and unexpected challenges she faced along the way. So let's listen to Captain Marilyn.

Jan: Hello, listeners. So happy today. I get to interview Marilyn Dueher Loving. All right. Okay. And we're going to tell sea stories, right?

Marilyn: Yeah.

Marilyn: Sea stories are us.

Jan: Welcome, Marilyn.

Marilyn: Thank you.

Jan: Okay, well, I don't even know where to start at the beginning, right. No.

Marilyn: Well, yeah, it was 70 some years ago. Yeah, no.

Jan: Back in the day.

Marilyn: Yeah, I found myself. Well, I grew up in Seattle and I was real close to Lake Washington and the hydroplane pits, and I was probably the only girl in the neighborhood who made little balsa wood hydroplanes and raced them behind my bike then, too.

Jan: So it sounds like that was what you were meant to be on the water and doing things.

Marilyn: Doesn't surprise me that I ended up being a captain instead of an artist. I mean, I'm still an artist. I'm trying to get back to those roots. But as retired as a captain, I couldn't pass the coast guard test anymore. You're not going to get me crawling back through tubes with full frontal fire gear on.

Jan: Slowed down a little bit.

Marilyn: Yeah, just a little.

Jan: Yeah.

Marilyn: Yeah. I fought so many fires on boats over the years that I only can remember the amount of people that have lost, been lost in them. 27 people.

Jan: Ugh, that's gruesome. Yeah. But what was your first job?

Marilyn: Well, my first merchant marine job where I got my merchant marine documents. I wasn't even 21 yet. I think I had. I would. I had. I was 20. I was working at Lake Union dry dock, and I'd cast a new cleat for an old Mickey. Mickey tug and their cook got sick, and they needed somebody. It was. School hadn't started yet. It's the middle of the end of summer, and I had made my grandma's famous sourdough sticky buns for the crew at Lake Union shipyard. So these guys had partaken in those. And so they asked if I wanted to cook on a tugboat, which in order to get a z card or get a job on it, you had to have promise of a job. So they wrote me a letter to the coast guard, and I walked in the office and got my first z card.

Jan: It didn't even have to their stomach. Yeah.

Marilyn: You know, it's kind of a girl thing, I guess, being the only girl in the family. And my grandmother was a good cook. My mom was a good cook. So that that was. Cooking was easy for us.

Jan: A no brainer, right?

Marilyn: Yeah, no brainer. I can cook on a boat, in a bee. How hungry are you? God. Yep. So we did ran to catch a can, picked up a barge full of mining gear, and their cook had gotten better. So they dropped me off in Seattle and went on picked up their old sea cook, which I guess they complained about forever after.

Jan: Once the panel, real cooking was like.

Marilyn: Oh, I made them sit down at the table and eat, you know, the wet paper towel on the table to keep the plates from vibrating, you know.

Jan: And the tricks of the trade.

Marilyn: And I would take the helm because I already was a sailor, a sailboat sailor, and motorboats and fascinated with hydroplanes and all that stuff. Like Washington, you know, the Girl scouts. We used to race sailboats, compete with the Boy scouts.

Jan: Yeah.

Marilyn: So that was my first tow boat job. We got me a z cart, and then I went off to do other things, but in the art world, I thought I was going to. You know, I was. Went to Cornish, and I graduated. My first job out of Cornish was LA at a big record company, designing album covers and doing all that kind of stuff. I didn't drive. And so bicycling in Los Angeles is not something you want to do.

Jan: Yeah.

Marilyn: With portfolios. So I just got a six month job done in four and a half months. And the other things that were going on, quote, job requirements, unquote, of a girl, I was not acceptable to me. So I got on the train and came back, and I ended up. I had some friends in Portland. I ended up in Portland.

Jan: Okay.

Marilyn: And then I ended up marrying a furniture maker, and. But I got a job through my best friend and her husband were working for this Alaska Silver and Ivory company doing scrimshod, silver and ivory jewelry in Bellingham. So I moved to Bellingham with my husband and made a pretty good wage at $10 an hour in 1976.

Jan: Yeah, that was good.

Marilyn: Scrimshaw jewelry. Yep. So then that marriage fell apart, and I had a boyfriend who was a seiner, and I ended up going out with him seining and I got the bug back. Then the company folded for Alaska. Silver and Ivory company had folded, and I did have a studio on the top of the Herald building, which was a cool place to have a studio back then. You know, it was only $25 a month. We all shipped. Six of us shared this whole dental office. So everybody had a little cubicle and then a common room and, you know, lab and everything if we wanted to use it. Yeah, so we. It was good. But teaser the. Going to Alaska was what got me. So I got. I was working on boats and various things, and my first odd job was Bristol B.

Jan: Did Alaska turn out to be what you thought it was going to be?

Marilyn: Uh, well, when you show up at the Dillingham airport with all this web for building nets and stuff in the. And you're, you're the only one in there. The airports breaking up, so we, they had to fly us back to King Salmon. And we were then shuttled in small planes and I had all this gear that I was waiting for. And there's the only guy in the airport is this little native guy asleep in a chair with his hat on. And I finally go to look at the hat and guess I'm going to be wearing a leg nick hat. No, boy, that was him. And he stands up, he looks at me square in the ****, and he goes, welcome to Alaska, white girl. So that was my introduction to fishing in Alaska. Needless to say, I ended up working at the Internet market in Dillingham and then getting off getting a job on a tender with some my buddies from Ballard. Having grown up in Seattle, we were all pretty tight back then, so. Yep. And that went on to be turned into pilot boat work and working, you know. And I ended up moving to Seward and worked out of there. Underwater construction company bought the pilot boat contract and all these negotiations that go on under the waves, so to speak, at these mariners clubs. So anyway, so that exposed me to a whole lot of really interesting maritime work.

Jan: And in that period of time, to begin with, what would you say the percentage of women were that were doing maritime things?

Marilyn: What I was doing, yeah. I never saw one other woman, really. There was women radio operators met Jackie Goodser talking to her on the radio. There were some women who were independent fisherwomen out of running boats and running pilots up and down. But the pilot boat business was pretty tight. And I was lucky in that I was a good mariner and a good cook. And by that time, I got my paperwork in order and was my first license. I got my first license before I was 30.

Jan: You kind of paved the way.

Marilyn: Paved the way? Docks. Sometimes you are paving over waves.

Jan: But, but when, when a woman steps out to do things that people don't normally do, it shows other people, like maybe the other gender, what is capable.

Marilyn: Yeah. At first, best people, the guys who helped the most were like the grandpa figures, the ones who appreciated what I already knew and were willing to teach. Some of the guys who are contemporaries were not so forthcoming, shall we say. They would rather be coming forth than being forthcoming.

Jan: I know what I mean. What was the most rewarding thing you.

Marilyn: Ever did in the Maritimes? I think my most enjoyable was working on university Alaska research boat.

Jan: Oh, really? What did you do there?

Marilyn: Oh, otters, chasing otters, being on the deck. And I went out as an officer on it one time, and I'd rather be on the deck because I didn't like all the paperwork. I'd rather be hands on, kind of a hands on girl. And when you're, you're out, you've got an inflatable, big, nice inflatable skiff with a large outboard. And you, you're got divers, scuba divers that scientists are diving and they're getting specimens and  they're finding specific otters that have had homing devices put in them to record their movements and where they've been. And we're doing a study of the sea otters that they, you know, they did nuclear testing clear into the seventies out in the Aleutian chain, and they transplanted a whole bunch of otters to California and the north end of Vancouver island. Since then, since the seventies, now the population has researched in the north of Vancouver island. And they were, they were, otters were gone since the Russians, you know, basically fished them out clear down to California. And I know the guy in charge of this research was from the Scripps in California there. And I, we, you know, chasing otters is definitely a fun thing to do. And you get a mother that had a homing device implanted in her, so you gotta hold the baby while they're working on the mom. And they usually don't reimplant. They just take the old monitor out of the otter. And the only other girl on board who wasn't a scientist was the cook. And she and I did share a stateroom, and the two of us would babysit these baby otters. And it was probably the most wonderful thing I ever did. Until they wake up and see you and you don't have hair on your face. And they scream. Oh, my goodness. An otter scream is something. Yes. And you can't give them your knuckle to suck on, believe me, because that's not done.

Jan: That's interesting, huh?

Marilyn: Yep.

Jan: Yeah. Have any disasters along the way in any of your adventures?

Marilyn: Well, the pilot boat service out of Dutch harbor, one of the calls I would get would be from the coast guard, would wake me up and say, we need somebody to run out to Beaver Inlet, which is a place where there's a lot of processors doing crab, and they're floating factory ships or barges. And one time some of the workers were gambling and had gotten into some drugs. And one guy went a little ballistic and started killing people, and he was caught.

Jan: Ouch.

Marilyn: By an observer. A gal who was an observer had heard this noise on deck and opened up a porthole to look out, and this guy was chopping up a body with an axe. And I got sent out to go with body bags to go out and pick up these cadavers and bring them into Dutch Harbor because they couldn't. The helicopter was busy doing another rescue off of a crabber.

Jan: Wow. Wow. That was a little. Not what I signed up for.

Marilyn: No. Yeah. No. Some jobs that come along are very unusual. One time I went to Dutch harbor out of Seward, got a call. Somebody needed a captain to run. Well, it was worked as a pilot boat sometimes, but it was more a personnel transfer boat that we picked people up in Dutch Harbor and take them out to these outlying stations to do crew shift changes. And this was a 35-passenger boat. And I knew the boat, but I had no idea what I was getting into this time. I show up with my duffel bag, and there is one guy, supposed to be the crew, and the place is a mess. There's beer cans and condoms, stuff all over the place. And I'm like, what the is going on? And so first thing I did was throw that guy off the boat and find myself another crew. I called some of my crabber buddies, and they said, I need a deckhand, somebody who knows what a cleat is and can wrap a line around a cleat. That's all I really need at this point, but I need somebody who can clean up and get this thing going. And then I get port captain calls the boat and says, oh, your twin disc drive is arriving on this western pioneer boat coming in. And I'm going, what? And apparently the port main needed a new twin disk drive. Twelve seven twin 1270 ones. And that was so before I could even move the boat, I had to replace a twin disc drive on a 1271.

Jan: Did you do that all by yourself?

Marilyn: I had a good grunt. He was the crabber and I gave him a's and he got, he got to go out on the crabbers the next season. They got him out of the cannery that way.

Jan: Yeah.

Marilyn: And boy, he was good. He was able to take instructions and he even had all the bolts. You got 38 bolts holding this. It's a transmission for twelve-cylinder engine is what it is. And so, you know, it's automatic transition. So it's got all these discs in it just like, it's like a giant version of what's in your car. So. And he was able to keep, he did the star pattern laid out on paper and had taped down and just did exactly what I asked him to do. And he kept track, and he gave them back to me when I was putting the bolts on in order. And it was just like a dream. Had a good crew and I said, you're hired.

Jan: And he was thrilled.

Marilyn: Yeah, yeah. He had fun. He was young and he was anxious to learn, and he was totally respectful of me. And I was. Yeah, that was one of those weird things that you learn over the years is first ask about the owner of the boat before you take the job.

Jan: And see are we going to be a good fit or not, or is this just money?

Marilyn: Yeah, yeah. Well, she can be on a boat.

Jan: For a long time.

Marilyn: Yeah, you can get stuck on them for a long time. My regular job to go back to. So I was only out there for about a month and a half for that one and that was enough.

Jan: So you write some poetry and stories and things?

Marilyn: I'm working on it. I'm trying to be more literal about my experiences. I realize that very few people have done what I've done and probably been some places that maybe there's been other women out there since then, but I don't know of them.

Jan: Yeah. So what are some of your stories about?

Marilyn: Oh, getting the 97 men and me being the girl in the system. You learn to get all the whistles and bells you can. The state of Alaska was.

Jan: Wait, what kind of whistles? Like guy whistles or no whistles?

Marilyn: No, no whistles. Now there's a whole other chapter. Ay, ay. Aye. But yeah, the whistles and bells, in nautical terms, means your paperwork, your classes, you've taken, your knowledge base. Your whistles and bells would be basically your knowledge base. And what you've done and the firefighting was one. That state of Alaska actually sent me to the myriad, which is the maritime training association firefighting school in Toledo, Ohio. That's Lake Michigan. And I have, you know, I'm a Bering sea girl, and I had no idea that flying that Lake Michigan big.

Jan: I've heard that.

Marilyn: Yeah. You know, and I've been to Lake Baikal, but that's another big one. But I was frozen when I was there. That. But anyway, they sent me there to become marine firefighting instructor. And I was the first woman to go through that program then. And that was the late eighties. No, that was before Exxon Valdez. So that would have been the early eighties. A lot of my references pre Exxon Valdez. Post Exxon Valdez.

Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marilyn: That's a whole other story. But anyway, the 97 men and me, that was right after the Exxon Valdez thing. And I. That's a whole nother chapter. But I had all my whistles and bells and I signed up for unemployment in the state of Alaska because I was through with going offshore for a while. And they call you. They get jobs. People are looking for people. Arco had leased this arctic exploratory ship from Canada, and it was in Tuktoyuktuk on the Canadian side of the border in the Arctic. And they needed people with my qualifications to move this thing. And I did have ice experience already, so that got me the job. And so I apparently had enough chutzpah about it. And I did have fun. I had a whole crew of Newfoundland sailors I was working with. What a fun bunch, those guys. Yeah.

Jan: So you went from fire to ice.

Marilyn: Yeah, well, from firefighting school. Got me the job on the ice. Yeah. And then we were bashing this thing out of the ice. I got to ride on Miss Karoo, a Canadian icebreaker, and actually play with the toys. I was up in the pilot house. They let me use the bubblers and lift the bow and crash it on the ice. That was so much fun. I had a lot of fun with a canoe.

Jan: Who needs a carnival?

Marilyn: Yeah, where's the carnival?

Jan: Yeah.

Marilyn: No, it was, to me, that was fun because this thing, this is a 1200-foot-long ship, you know, this is. Yeah. And it's married to an SS. They called it. The SSDC was a platform. The ship was married to that. They then sat on and the ice. And it has these giant spear-like things, but I don't know how you describe it. They're just sheets of three-inch steel that are driven into the bottom of the mud, the muck bottom. We moved this thing from Tuktoyak tuk to Dease Inlet, which is about 56 minutes helicopter ride from barrel.

Jan: Oh.

Marilyn: And that's where it stationed for the winter. And it was two weeks on, one week off. Two weeks on, one week off. It was pretty fun.

Jan: Wow.

Marilyn: And I had a crew of 17 guys, and I was in charge of maintenance of 497 fire extinguishers that were portable, and that includes the big suckers that are on wheels, the 200-pound ones that are on wheels. It's not the little high golly enemy safe here.

Jan: No cooking fires.

Marilyn: Oh, yeah. And then they actually, Arco sent me to Texas A and m to learn about helicopter fires, and I had to learn how to put out helicopter fires.

Jan: Oh, really?

Marilyn: Which is. Yeah, you. You wear a harness as the helicopter is landing in the arctic. You have to. Somebody has to run out there with a degaussing wand, giant steel wand on a. Like the cables on your jumper cables? Yeah, only about three times the size. The spark comes off of the helicopter. Blades have created static electricity, and you degas. You take the static electricity off the helicopter before it lands so it doesn't arc out on the landing pad.

Jan: Did you ever have to do that?

Marilyn: Oh, yeah.

Jan: Actually, yeah. Besides practice.

Marilyn: Well, no, we. Yeah, no, somebody's got to be the jumper.

Jan: Yeah, you.

Marilyn: We. And we traded off, and somebody had to be in harness with the helmet on, be behind a screen. And this harness is a shoulder mount, and you've got two inch hose of dry cam on one side and two inch hose of foam on the other and shoots out dry cam and foam at the same time, so it encloses the helicopter. And this is. This is the old style of foam, too. It's not the modern stuff. This is the stuff made from cow's blood. And.

Jan: Okay.

Marilyn: That actually creates a crust over the metal so it doesn't catch on fire because there's so much magnesium and aluminum on a helicopter that if it catches on fire, it will burn through anything. You do not want a helicopter fire. Last thing you want. So I've been to school to learn all sorts of things.

Jan: Wow, and you've written poetry, too, and done Fisher poets?

Marilyn: Yep. Yeah, I got kind of addicted to fisher poets when I came down with some friends from the port Townsend area. But the first, that one gal that was with me, is now chief engineer on the Washington state fairies.

Jan: Oh, fun.

Marilyn: Yeah.

Jan: Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about your art.

Marilyn: Well, besides scrimshaw, when I went to. When I went to art school. I wanted to be a botanical illustrator. I kind of went the other way. Although I have lots of drawings and sketches. Seaweed. Yeah, seaweed and wildflowers. And the aleutian chain. But, yeah, that's. The scrimshaw thing came very natural to me because I'd already done etching and art school and stuff, and I really like doing scrimshaw, but it's not something that cells really now. Yeah. Yeah, it's. And now these days, I'm. I do. I do make jewelry, and I love to use found objects. My. Right now, I'm doing a bunch of things with chitin shells.

Jan: Okay, those are fun.

Marilyn: Earrings with chiton shells and. Yeah, found objects. But I want to get back into painting and my pastels. I have a lot of pastels. I want to just go, hey, that's kind of what I am down here, because I like the area. I like being near the ocean. I missed it, being inland. Yeah. Yeah.

Jan: Something about living by water.

Marilyn: It's the consequences always changing.

Jan: And sea lion.

Marilyn: Oh, yeah.

Jan: Well, Marilyn, this has been delightful. Thank you.

Marilyn: Well, thank you. It's been enjoyable talking to you, too.

Marilyn: Per bird up, down or below my bully boys blow soon may the willowman come to bring her sugar and tea and rum one day when the tongue is done we'll take her leave and go she'd not been two weeks from shore and down on her right whale bore the captain called all hands and swore he took their wheel and toll.

Jan: Well, now, wasn't that a life of adventure?

Jan: Oh, my goodness.

Jan: All kinds of places, all kinds of ships, all kinds of adventures. Well, if you know anyone else that's just full of adventures or an interesting woman that you think that should be on our show, let me know. You can text me now on the show notes, at the very top of the show notes, there's a place to text, so that's easy peasy. You can let me know if there's anybody else there. Thanks so much for listening, and we will see you next time.