We continue our series on the teenaged young men of the Investor crew. There were four in all, including Coulthurst cousin Michael Stewart; veteran Coulthurst crewmember, Dean Moon; Dean’s high school friend, Jerome Keown; and Coulthurst family friend, Chris Heyman. In this installment, we focus on Chris Heyman. We owe many of our insights to Don Tapperson of the Bellingham Herald.
“Chris Heyman was into weight lifting and the California sunshine.
“But his biggest interest was to someday help manage his father’s Stowaway Marina in San Raphael. To give him some experience, he and his father, Don Heyman, arranged with their friends, the Coulthursts, to let him work aboard the purse seine boat Investor this past summer [1982] in Alaska.
“Chris has been around the marina since he was five years old,” said Don Heyman. “We used to live in New York (where they owned and operated a marina in Long Island Sound) and he would do bottom painting, run the work boats and drive the forklift around. He really loved it. He had just graduated from Redwood High School this past June and was going to start college in the fall, at the College of Marin. He was going to get a business degree and help me run the marina.
“He was an easy-going kind of guy. You just couldn’t fire that kid up — he would never lose his temper. I saw a picture of him and the Investor crew. It was dripping rain, but he still had a grin on his face — that never-say-die attitude. The whole crew was like that, and that’s why I wanted him on the boat. I knew them all and nobody thought they were hot stuff, they were a super team.
“He learned more in the last 10 weeks than he had learned in the last 12 months. Mark (Coulthurst) knew I wanted more than a deckhand and he let Chris run the boat a couple of nights — that’s a pretty expensive boat to be letting a young guy handle. [NOTE: On fishing boats, it’s common for all crewmembers to serve wheel watch, during which they are responsible for running the vessel.]
“The Heymans, who moved to California when Chris was 13, met Mark when he began traveling south to hit the San Francisco herring run.
“‘They became really close personal friends. We even flew up to up to spend Thanksgiving with them last year.’
“On board the Investor, Chris and Michael Stewart could continue their weightlifting programs while at sea.
“‘He was really into weightlifting and, like every other teenage kid, into building hotrods,’ Heyman said. “‘He and Stewart bought barbells while they were up there and would work out on the deck each morning, and do chin-ups in the fishwell.'”
Donald Tapperson, The Bellingham Herald, September 26, 1982
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