While fishing on the Bering Sea, Sig Hansen and his crew found themselves in the middle of a sudden power outage. Zero power equals zero control, meaning the vessel is a bobbing disaster waiting to happen. Furthermore, the situation was brought to a different level of danger the moment a deckhand yelled “Fire!” In that instant, Hansen’s professionalism kicked in, as he quickly answered back with, “Stay calm! Stay calm!”
Despite Hansen immediately showing his sturdy leadership in the middle of this emergency, he explained to TVLine that this reaction is a necessary façade, masking what’s really going on inside his head. “Honestly, I think I was more afraid than anybody. I just wanted to stay calm,” he recalled. Well, Hanson had some extra motivation to take his own advice, as one of his deckhands is his daughter, Mandy. However, he explained, that fact needs to stay out of his mind until after they are all safe. He shared, “Yeah, Mandy was on board. But I wasn’t thinking so much about her. You think about that after the fact, which is bizarre.”
In the end, Hansen kept his captain’s head straight and the Northwestern safe, as the fire was discovered and put out. Of course, even one experience like this would cause most people to find a new line of work, but Hansen is not like most people. When asked if he ever has second thoughts about this line of work, he responded with “Yes. But I’m too stupid to do anything else”
