Deadliest Catch Captain Jake Anderson is just 20 hours from docking when a “violent” mechanical failure threatens the Saga and the lives of his crew.
In a preview of Tuesday’s all-new Deadliest Catch, Anderson is just 200 miles from Akutan Island in a “race against the weather” as the largest storm of the season so far begins to swirl in the Bering Sea.
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With that on his mind, the young captain leaps into action when he notices that the 2-ton forward crane has come loose, swinging 30 feet on either side as the wind and waves roll.
“Twenty-five-foot seas strip the mooring gears from Captain Jake’s $50,000 forward crane,” narrator Mike Rowe explains. “Now with every roll, the two tons of hardware swings freely, bringing destruction to everything in its path.”
Calling his crew into immediate action in the middle of the night, Anderson implores them to don life jackets before they attempt to still the crane with ratchet straps.
“I don’t even know if we should touch it now,” Anderson says to himself, second-guessing putting his men in danger. “I mean, it’s violent.”
Turning the boat away from the wind, Anderson gives the crew a better chance of strapping down the crane without losing their lives, as they attempt to regain control with the limited resources they have.
“The poor guys, they’re gonna get their asses handed to them tonight,” Anderson tells the camera. “I hope it holds. I’m just so glad it’s holding on.”
With a tenuous solution holding the Saga together, Anderson hunkers down for the remaining trip back to land, keeping a wary eye on the approaching storm.
“This is just the beginning of the storm,” he notes. “We’re still not in the clear.”
Ahead of the Season 15 premiere, Anderson opened up about the difficulties he faced on the Saga this past year in an interview with PopCulture.com, admitting he was really feeling the pressure that came with attempting to buy in as an owner of the boat he captains.
“It’s a tough time to buy into the boat, especially because you’re not gonna make a ton of money if you don’t do it right,” he told PopCulture. “We didn’t even know how much money was to be made … it was really high stakes.”
As for people thinking they could make better decisions in the moment, Anderson reminded viewers, “It’s easy for someone to be an armchair captain and make the decision from their chair, but there’s a lot of circumstances that go into the choices the captains make.”
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.
Photo credit: Discovery
