With his opie season off to a bleak start, Deadliest Catch Captain Keith Colburn was willing to weather the most treacherous of storms to try and fill his quota. But did he press his luck a little too far?
In Tuesday’s all-new episode of the Discovery docuseries, Colburn drove the Wizard into the heart of arctic storm Elsa in search of an opie honeypot, but spent most of his energy trying to protect his crew from “deck-clearing” four-story waves hammering the boat and turning its deck into ice.
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Narrator Mike Rowe set the scene: “Undeterred by the threat of massive waves, Captain Keith Colburn steers the Wizard into arctic storm Elsa’s frozen heart.”
“We’re driving right into the teeth of this freezing spray of storm Elsa, and we’re basically just trying to survive,” Colburn told the camera. “Weather’s coming at me every direction right now. I have to protect the boat and the crew.”
There didn’t appear to be any end to the squall either.
“Right now, I think we’re right in the meat of this storm Elsa,” Colburn estimated. “The problem is it’s a huge storm and we’re going to get this for probably another 24 to 36 hours of sustaining east, northeast heavy freezing spray.”
“It’s flat nasty out here,” he continued. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen ice like this on the boat.”
As the deckhands chipped ice off the boat in between bracing for massive waves, Colburn noted that with just 1 percent of his crab quota met for the season, he was counting on this risk to pay off.
“It’s feast or famine here, so we just gotta pray we can come up with something up here,” he noted.
He didn’t prove so lucky, with the honeypot proving to be a “complete dud” and forcing him south to try and get a jump on the season. Will he finally find some luck?
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.
Photo credit: Discovery
