Real Talk!

Fabian and I were sad to learn that Phil Harris, 53, from the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" has passed away after complications from a stroke he suffered in January- while the crew were offloading crab in Alaska.

Captain of the Cornelia Marie for 18 years, Harris' boat (The Cornelia Marie) is one of a few boats that have been rigged with cameras since 2005 treating fans to a taste of the brutal perils of opilio crab fishing on the Bering Sea.

Since the earliest days of the show, Phil Harris has caught our attention. Big, burly, rusty-voiced and down to earth, Harris could be salty, wrangling the sea with a vigilant eye on the safety of his crew which has included his two sons, Josh and Jake. As Captain Phil said recently on a Larry King episode, "There's a lot goes on out there besides crab fishin'"

One season, his boat was plagued with propeller problems and there was an issue in one main engine, not to mention that Captain Phil faced ongoing medical problems- culminating in a serious crisis from a 2008 hurricane that launched him from his bed, breaking bones and causing a serious blood clot. He has to leave his boat. It was awful!

Through the seasons, we've watched Captain Phil Harris with fascination. Balancing business acumen with a straight shooting attitude, fierce passion and working without sleep, with broken ribs in some of the most dangerous conditions. His love of the sea, devotion to family and loyalty to friends and colleagues was obvious. He was always up for a good practical joke, too. In one interview, Phil said "The pranks – they’re all good, it just depends on who you’re doing them to! The one we did with Sig was funny because he’s Norwegian and I was trying to think of something rare. We’ve put toilets in pots, we’ve dressed a mannequin in rain gear and put him in the pots. It just goes on and on – it’s just endless that we do back and forth. That was probably one of the funniest ones though."

One can only imagine how much you need to have a good laugh to break the serious climate of the frigid sea life. Captain Phil confessed to being scared 3 times in his 33 years on the sea, "I’ve been scared on the water about 3 times in my career, and every one is a bit different but equally scary. We were at the Pribilofs and it was blowing in the area of 150-175 knots, maybe 100 foot seas. We came off a comber and there wasn’t any water on the other side and the boat just free fell about 100 feet. The boat weighs around 700 tons, so it just blasted all of us. It just ripped things off the walls inside the boat — the microwave and stereo went flying, dishes all over the place. We blew off one of our rudders too, and all the alarms were going off. We didn’t know if we’d punctured a hole in the boat or what. We were sideways at this point in 100 foot seas, We got it spun around and I knew I’d done something to the boat because it wouldn’t steer properly. It took a few minutes to get all the alarms shut off. Guys were checking the engines in the engine room to find out if there was structural damage. At that point we were going the same direction as the seas and the waves were so big that I was just terrified. A friend called to see how it looked and for 4 hours, I didn’t even turn around to look. I knew if I did, it would probably give me a heart attack. It was just too big."

He's also said, “You’ve got to be a little twisted to do this job and you have to like to live on the edge.”

Uh huh. Still, we've watched each season and always look forward to seeing Phil Harris. We've rooted for him during illness, disaster, weather and quotas. We've watched him in interviews, exhibiting a frank sense of humility, love for his friends and family, and a warm sense of comaraderie. Captain Phil was someone you wished you knew, personally. He was so real.

I would like to share a couple more quotes from the captain...

At the end of a Discovery Channel 2008 online live chat:

"I want to thank every single person that was on here tonight that supports me, takes time out from what they’re doing to even care. I guess that’s one of the best perks of this whole job is having people like you guys to sit down and talk with. Sometimes there’s some really interesting stuff. Especially thanks to the people that sent gifts and cards. It doesn’t get better than that. I’m a fortunate guy to have people do that. It’s a very neat feeling and something that I’ll always hold dear to me, if after this is all said and done, the show goes away and we’re just back doing our thing this is something I can reflect on that was pretty damned cool. I want to thank everybody, that means more to me than anything.

There’s a couple people I would like to thank that have been great and without them, this whole thing wouldn’t have been possible for me, Bonnie Rasmussen and Skip, and my manager Russ, and my partner on the crab boat. Everybody else, I could start naming names but we’d be here all night. Bonnie is exceptionally dear to me, just the sweetest thing in the world. Laura and the people who take care of my T-shirts and Roger from Kicker have been nice to me and helped me through tough times when I was sick. I want to thank them. Especially Bonnie, she’s a sweet lately and she does great work for me."

and in another interview, when asked about what lesson he hoped he'd given his boys, Phil Harris said, "I don’t know if there’s one lesson, but in general, if I died tonight and was gone, I hope they’d have the integrity to do what they say, be honest, and do honest work for an honest wage and not short change themselves or anyone else. To be honest about how they live and work. Don’t sidestep things or try to cut corners. Do an honest hard job, and do it to the best of their ability."

Dec. 21, 1956- Feb. 10, 2010
Bon Voyage Captain Phil
Rest in Peace