‘Deadliest Catch’ season 5?

According to this latest release, Discovery has already renewed ‘Deadliest Catch’ for another season, amongs other shows!  Great news to have so early in the season!  It just goes to show that ‘Deadliest Catch’ continues to gain popularity as it surpasses it’s super cult-status and begins to compete with the more mainstream prime time shows!

LOS ANGELES, Ca., April 08, 2008 – Discovery Channel announces an ambitious Upfront slate packed with specials and series that embrace imagination, exploration and adventure.

 

From the last great race left on the planet to the competition for a new kind of life beyond Earth, from the heart of Amazonia to the caves of Timbuktu, Discovery Channel documents the world in all its wonder.

 

“Discovery Channel is a window into the awesome power of the Earth,” said John Ford, president and general manager, Discovery Channel. “Using the highest-quality storytelling and filmmaking techniques, our programs delve into topics ranging from science and engineering to anthropology and archaeology. No one can match Discovery’s ability to invite our viewers into the action as it unfolds.”

The highlights of Discovery Channel’s 2008-09 Upfront schedule include the following:

RETURNING SERIES

DEADLIEST CATCH
Alaskan crab-wranglers fight the most dangerous working conditions, including 40-foot waves and 80-mile-per-hour winds in the gripping 10-part series DEADLIEST CATCH. Deep in the Bering Sea’s frigid waters, 250 boats tempt fate and nature in “The Last Rodeo” season trying to bring in a season’s catch of the highly coveted and lucrative Alaskan king crab.

DIRTY JOBS
In the feisty DIRTY JOBS, host and everyman Mike Rowe gets the grimy scoop on downright nasty occupations. That foul play for pay could be processing smelly seafood in a fish factory, collecting bat guano for prized fertilizer, combing creek bottoms for edible wildlife or cleaning septic tanks to maintain a fresh-smelling environment.

MAN V. WILD
Adventurer and survival expert Bear Grylls is put to the ultimate test. Left in the middle of nowhere, Grylls employs his encyclopedic knowledge of nature to scavenge for food and keep his body in order. Headache? Grylls searches for pain-relieving plants. Hunger? He eats maggots in the Rocky Mountains or a fresh zebra kill in Africa’s savanna. No matter the climate or locale, Grylls is up to the task.

MYTHBUSTERS
Are the stories about the exploding dog in a microwave and keeping cell phones away from gas pumps true? MYTHBUSTERS is back, continuing its mad scientific quest to discover the truth behind popular myths and urban legends. Hosted by quirky special effects experts Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, this mentally tantalizing series takes on the myths and uses modern-day science to show what’s real and what’s fiction.

SMASH LAB
Follow a team of maverick engineers as they take everyday technology and apply it in new, revolutionary ways. Could bulletproof Kevlar protect an airliner from bombs? Could truck dampers be used to earthquake-proof a house? Our experts bring their professional expertise to the table and ask the questions that the viewers may also be asking—how in the world is this technology possible, and why can’t it help others? Their mission: to make the world a safer place.

 

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED
People are fascinated by how things work. From incredibly high-tech items like plasma TVs to remarkably mundane objects that we use every day, such as toilets, tissues and toothpaste, every object has a story and an incredible process behind it. Host Brian Unger meets the people behind the building process and discovers the often dramatic, funny, ingenious solutions people come up with to make products bigger, better, cheaper or faster.

Make the jump to check out Discovery’s 2008-2009 Specials and new series too!

Sig Hansen in NewPort, RI, today!

East coast fans in the area may want to steer on over to Newport and catch Sig Hansen!  He’ll be signing autographs, posing for pics, and most likely chatting about ‘Deadliest Catch’, the new Xbox game, and his Helly Hansen Northwestern gear….So ‘Shut Up and Fish!’

NEWPORT — Nancy Piffard, director of the Newport Spring Boat show, has said that rising fuel prices have had little effect on big-boat sales. The 34th edition of the show opens today through Sunday at the Newport Yachting Center in a new atmosphere.

A few years ago, it was almost impossible to find a boat slip from the top of Narragansett Bay to New Haven, Conn. As fuel prices at marinas approach $5 a gallon this season, dock owners are using craigslist.org to sell slip space at bargain prices. One Rhode Island boat yard on craigslist recently offered 10 gallons of gasoline to boat owners who rented a slip for the summer.

For bargain hunters at the boat show, organizers are introducing a “Marine Consignment Tent” filled with nautical goods. “If the consignment item sells, the owner will then receive a percentage of the sale and partial proceeds will benefit the Seaman’s Church Institute,” Piffard said. “With the show going back to our traditional May time frame, the tent should draw crowds of true boating people not only looking for bargains, but who’ll also be tempted by the new-boat specials and enticing brokerage offerings that will be close at hand.”

The boat show is sanctioned by the Yacht Brokers Association of America (YBAA) whose members will be offering used yachts there this weekend. More than 50 YBAA members and a similar number of boat dealers are expected to exhibit nearly 200 boats, with 300 exhibits in the water, on land and under tents.

Tomorrow at noon and 4 p.m., at the Helly Hansen tent, Sig Hansen from the Emmy-nominated TV series Deadliest Catch will be signing autographs. He has one of the most lucrative yet deadliest jobs in the world.

The Bassmaster CastingKids contest, sponsored by the Rhode Island B.A.S.S. Federation Nation, will be held for youngsters between 7 and 14, competing for scholarships. The challenge is to flip, pitch and cast a hookless lure to a bull’s-eye target.

Show hours are today and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Seminar schedules and discount coupons are available online at www.newportspringboatshow.com.

A Proper Tour of the F/V Northwestern

Watch Edgar Hansen give Kiro TV a tour of the F/V Northwestern.  While Edgar shows the news crew around, he also lets fans in on a few interesting tidbits you may be interested in hearing…For example, it sounds like we’ll soon be watching Edgar get thumped in the head by the pick hook.  Yes, that’s him in the previews we’ve all watched!  He said it rattled his teeth when it happened.  Also interesting to note, there are no extra bunks for the cameramen and one of them apparently crashes on the wheelhouse floor when it’s time to catch a few z’s…

Discovery Livechat with Johnathan and Scott Hillstrand

Discovery has posted their livechat with Johnathan and Scott Hillstrand from April 29th.  Learn a bit more about this skipper and his up and coming fisherman son!  Later, after tonight’s new ‘Deadliest Catch’ episode, you may want to make the jump over to the Discovery website and join in on the livechat taking place with Sten Skaar of the F/V North American!  From Discovery…

Johnathan Hillstrand: Hi everybody! Thanks for being fans. I’ve met some really great people, and I love you all.

chip2004: Were you happy with the results of your prank on Capt. Phil
Johnathan Hillstrand: Yes. It’s hard to do a prank out there because we can’t drive around forever, and Phil was the perfect one. It was a green truck - no engine, no transmission, no batteries, no axles. He was the first person I found and I wanted to find Phil, because he wanted that truck. It’s hard to do a prank because it’s a huge ocean; you don’t have time to look for a boat. I found him, and knew where he was fishing.

Lisa: I met you in Philly last week at the DC fan thingy, had a blast!! Were you this popular with the ladies before the show?
Johnathan Hillstrand: <laughing> Ladies always love sailors and pirates. I don’t know how long that’s been going on, but hundreds of years. Ladies always love seamen! I’ve always loved ladies too.

Turtlekins: John, I am currently reading your book and loving it! What made you and your brother decide that it was time to put it all down on paper?
Johnathan Hillstrand: We wanted to show the people the real, uncut version. The show is candy-coated, and we wanted to lay it down behind the scenes. When you watch the show, you just see crab fishing. It takes us a week to get out there, and a week to get back. That’s a whole story in itself.

sissyann39: Do you ever get scared?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Yes. When we have 80-100 knot winds, which we had two last year, you know how small you are in the universe. You’re smaller than a speck of sand. The thing I’m most afraid of is a boat fire. If you can’t put out the fire you have to get off the boat. If I’m in trouble on a 100 foot boat, the last thing I want to do is get in a little 10-foot rubber raft.

phoenix rising: Hello Johnathan! What do you like doing when you have some off time?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Hotel rooms, room service, ladies. I love horsepower. I have a Corvette with 540 horses, and a Fat Boy Harley with 296. I love jumping out of airplanes. I used to love diving. Anything that gives me a rush, and you forget about all of your worldly problems. Sort of like crab fishing.

sissyann39: If you could do it all over again, would you do another job?
Johnathan Hillstrand: <laughing> No. I would do the same thing again. I have no regrets.

Lisa: Did you get hurt falling off the boat?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Yes. I fell 13 or 14 feet and fell in the water sideways, like a sideways belly flop. I pulled every muscle in my arms, and I scraped about 8 feet. Just do a belly-flop of a high dive and you’ll know how it felt. I’ve just started getting back to doing pushups, and it was in October I did that.

Sandi: With all the great things that have come from your celebrity status, have there been any drawbacks?
Johnathan Hillstrand: No. I have good times everywhere I go. I have a lot of great fans. Haven’t really received a lot of money; we make more money crab fishing than we do off the show. And thank you for being a fan. We don’t think of ourselves as celebrities though.

Bandita Erin: What do you do on board during opies while Andy and Neal are captaining?
Johnathan Hillstrand: I do whatever I want. I can go on deck, work with the guys, help Andy with the boat. I have no weight on my shoulders like Andy - he has all the stress. Oh, and I can read Hugh Hefner’s novel. <laughing>

storms brew: When you have down time, do you go to a lot of Harley events?
Johnathan Hillstrand: No. I wish. I fish 8 months out of the year, and have 4 months off. So I’m usually traveling, promoting the show or the book, so I don’t have that much fun time.

Instigator Kate: Hey Captain Johnathan–I know Captain Andy has a horse farm, do you/did you ever ride?
Johnathan Hillstrand: No, I don’t ride horses. Superman died on a horse. I think my brother is crazy.

linzer: I’ve gotta say, the Time Bandit is tops when it comes to pulling pranks. Do you think you’ll ever be able to out do the pick-up truck?
Johnathan Hillstrand: That was a laugh. I’ve got a thousand tricks up my sleeve. In fact, there isn’t one day that goes by on the Time Bandit that someone doesn’t get Punked.

 phoenix rising: How often does the Coast Guard board the boats for inspection?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Way too much. <laughing> We get boarded by the Coast Guard before each season, and then we have to report to the Coast Guard when we sail. And then they board us out on the fishing grounds. But lately we’ve been working together, and it’s made things a lot nicer.Instigator

Kate: Hey Captain Johnathan. If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go? Would you bring anyone with you? PS-great meeting you last week!
Johnathan Hillstrand: I would come see you again! <laughing> I’ll have to think about that one.

chip2004: Of all the places you have gone to promote the show what is your favorite so far
Johnathan Hillstrand: New York. You can get lost there. You can go to a different restaurant every night for a year, but I have to go to the same ones. I think they spoiled me when they sent me to New York.

Mama nutmeg: Do you have a lot of people asking for jobs since the show has become so popular? And do you ever employ anyone that says they came because of the show? Lastly, my husband and I take every Tuesday off just so we can watch it together! We LOVE it!!
Johnathan Hillstrand: Thank you, but if you watched tonight’s show, look at that young kid that’s so physically fit, and with all the bruises on his body. A lot of people want this job, but don’t know what they’re getting into. I could probably take out Dennis Rodman, and he’d be crying for his mama, but his mama would be too far away. They don’t know what they’re getting into.

Johnathan Hillstrand: Hey, my son Scott is here. He’s been running the Time Bandit, and doing a hell of a job. Love you, kid!

Scott Hillstrand: I’ve been doing the best I can. The boat’s looking sharp, and I think they’ll be impressed with what they’ll see.
Johnathan Hillstrand: I’m a lucky man.
Scott Hillstrand: It hasn’t been easy, with the rules different from Alaska to here. It’s been rough, but we’ve managed to work through it, and I think they’ll be happy with what’s been done.

Bandita Jackie: Hi John! What do you think was the most valuable thing that your son Scott learned this season?
Johnathan Hillstrand: I don’t know. Scott?
Scott Hillstrand: Family comes first. In the end, that’s all you’ve got is family.

beanie07: Hi Johnathan - I have to say that the flour pot is my favorite prank so far. Do you brainstorm ideas in the wheelhouse?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Yeah, in my off time, everywhere. Always coming up with good ideas. The flour pot trick never gets old - kind of like the pie in the face trick.

grudawg-3: Was there any damage to the boat at the end of last year, when you were in the ice field?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Yes. We’re currently in the shipyard, putting about $300,000 in the boat. The new boat is pretty impressive.

Nancy Catch Fan: What would you do with your quota and your boat in the future if your son doesn’t take it over?
Johnathan Hillstrand: We make more money if someone else fishes our quota, so if my son does not take over, we will have someone else fish our quota.

phoenix rising: Do you think Scott will commit more in the future?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Let’s ask Scott!
Scott Hillstrand: I wouldn’t be putting in time in the shipyard if I weren’t going to commit in the future. It was great spending time with the new baby and the wife I just married. It took commitment from both of us, and there will be a lot more in the future.

Instigator Kate: Hey Captain Johnathan. Does it hurt to see Scotty say that you were never around when he was a kid?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Scotty said that? I wasn’t, and I wish I had been. The seas robbed me of that; I can never get that back. I’m trying to make up for that now.

miso: Was there anyone who really stepped up this season and impressed you? What did you think of Scottie’s performance by the end of the season?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Eddie with the broken leg, who still fished through the season, and my son who was such a good stand-up guy. I’m a lucky man.

Lesley: Do you respect your son’s decision for leaving in the middle of the season?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Well, no. But I respect him for standing up for his family. For the boat, no, but I respect his values.

sable2043: What is it like to have your son on the boat?
Scott Hillstrand: I don’t get to see much of my father when he’s in town, so it’s a little like being on vacation, but not. I get to have conversation with him when we’re out there, more than when we’re not. So for me, it’s good father/son bonding time.
Johnathan Hillstrand: It’s great having him on the boat. Any time I have a chance to hang with him. He’s one of the best people I know.

sea2see: HI Jon! Me and my 10 year old little girl love ya bunches! She says she’s a bandita. She has a question for her fav captain. Before you became a fisherman captain, were you very interested in fishing?
Johnathan Hillstrand: Thank you! I love all the banditas. And yes, ever since I was 6 or 7 I used to watch my dad sail off into the sunset to go crab fishing. I always wanted to be a crab fisherman.

heroic man: Hey Scott do you cook for your dad when you’re on the boat, or who does the cooking?
Scott Hillstrand: My dad loves grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, and that’s easy to cook. I don’t do it very often, but he loves my tacos that my wife taught me to cook so well.

Bandita Terri: Scott…Is running the Time Bandit something you would like to hand down to Sawyer?
Scott Hillstrand: Yeah, I would. I could always wish that he’d stay in school and make more money, but I’m going to let him make his own decision. And if that’s something he wants to pursue, I’ll be behind him 110 percent. It definitely gets to a guy when you’re stuck in traffic every day, and then working 8-10-12 hours a day, and you don’t have time to spend with your family. But if you go out fishing, and spend that time in the middle between the seasons, you actually spend more time with the family if you add it up, and you can take off and have that family time.

(Photos courtesy of Discovery)

MDCrabber: Scott, is your dad as much fun off the ship as he seems to be pulling pranks on?
Scott Hillstrand: My dad is always fun. He’s the funnest guy I’ve ever met. We’re more friends than father-to-son. If you were to see us together, you wouldn’t know we were father and son; people mistake us for brothers. He’s a really fun guy to hang out with.

The Hillstrands, their book and how they live on the edge

In an article by Michael Armstrong from HomerNews.com, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand explain how they came to be the adventure seekers that they are.  If you’ve already read their book, Time Bandit, then you have probably already surmised that these fishermen were raised to deal with danger as if it were the standard every-day lifestyle…Probably not a bad idea if you were raised in Homer, Alaska, with five brothers, and a father who was known as one of the best fishermen in the area….

TIME BANDIT MORE THAN A FISHING TALE

Between broken bones, boat sinkings and bee stings, that Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand lived to adulthood could be considered a miracle. They went so many times to the emergency room for stitches the doctor told their mother, “Mrs. Hillstrand, you’ve seen this done enough times. Why don’t you do it and save yourself the trip?”  

“We thought of danger merely as a higher form of fun,” Johnathan Hillstrand writes in “Time Bandit: Two Brothers, The Bering Sea and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs,” the new book he wrote with his brother Andy. “A popular book today is ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’; we did not need to read about danger. We lived it without knowing what it was; we know how it felt, and it felt fine.”

Photo by Michael Armstrong
Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, co-captains of the F/V Time Bandit, pose in the wheelhouse at dock in Homer after a successful crabbing season. The Hillstrands’ new book, “Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea and One of the World’s Deadliest Jobs,” will be published in April by Ballantine Books.  

Written with former Newsweek writer Malcolm MacPherson, publisher Random House released “Time Bandit” last month, just in time for the F/V Time Bandit crabbers to promote their book at the start of the fourth season of “The Deadliest Catch,” The Discovery Channel’s top-rated series. The Hillstrands have done book signings in New York, Pennsylvania and will do signings this month in Seattle, Portland, Denver, North Carolina and Evansville, Ind. They also have been promoting the cable TV show, as well as a companion book to the series, “Deadliest Catch: Desperate Hours,” edited by Larry Erickson.

Andy Hillstrand said the signings have gone great, with up to 650 people showing up. Reaction from readers has been positive, Andy said in a phone interview this week from his horse ranch in Indiana.

“They say it’s a great read. They say they can’t put it down,” he said. “Our mom was kind of sad because we cussed in it,” he added.

Co-captains on the Time Bandit, one of the six crabbing boats featured on “Deadliest Catch,” the Hillstrands have become as popular as NASCAR drivers. Some of their biggest fans are race car drivers, in fact, along with soldiers, firefighters and cops. Fishermen have hailed them as bringing respect back to the profession and showing the world the hard work of fishing.

While “Time Bandit” tells a lot of the white-knuckle, teeth-gnashing adventures seen on “Deadliest Catch,” the real story is one familiar to many a Homer fishing family: growing up wild, loose and free at the end of the Homer Spit in the 1960s.

“The Spit’s a good baby sitter,” is how Johnathan put it.

The sons of the legendary fisherman John Hillstrand and grandsons of Earl Hillstrand the founder of Land’s End Resort and a former owner of the Salty Dawg the Hillstrand boys fished, played, caught crab and raised heck back in the days when Homer didn’t have many paved streets and everyone knew everyone else, sometimes too well. The guys don’t hold back there is a lot of cussing in the book and write frankly about alcoholism, divorce and the challenges of growing to adulthood in a family that wasn’t exactly “Leave it to Beaver.”

What stands out, though, is the love Andy and Johnathan show each other, as well as for their brothers Neal and Michael. Though they might fight and play pranks on each other one time, Johnathan chopped down a tree Andy stood in while bear hunting the brothers take care of each other.

There’s the time Andy hauled Johnathan to the hospital after Johnathan jumped off a boat onto the beach, breaking both ankle and his wrist and that was days after Andy had injured his back and broken ribs in a motorcycle accident.

The doctors looked at them and said, “You two just used up eight of your lives,” they write in “Time Bandit.”

MacPherson and the Hillstrands have crafted a narrative arc in their book that keeps the memoir suspenseful, but allows them to jump around from childhood to adulthood and in between. The book starts with Johnathan stranded on his salmon fishing boat, the F/V Fishing Fever, adrift in lower Cook Inlet with motor and all electronics down. As Johnathan ponders his uncertain destiny, he thinks back about his adventures. Andy’s story comes in, too. Periodically Johnathan returns to the Fishing Fever and the latest crisis.

Fans of “Deadliest Catch” will find plenty of crabbing stories. The saddest is of the Hillstrands trying to save the captain of the F/V Troika. The Time Bandit and several other vessels ran to a report of the Troika taking on water. They got the captain out of the sea, but he’d already swallowed water and become severely hypothermic. Despite hours of CPR, the captain died in the Time Bandit’s stateroom.

Read the rest of the story after the jump

Hillstrands headed to Vancouver May 17th

When the Clark County Skills Center celebrates its 25th anniversary, Saturday, May 17th, the captains of the “Time Bandit” from the Discovery Channel’s top-rated “Deadliest Catch” will appear as part of the celebration.

(photo courtesy of Discovery)

Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand will be signing copies of their new book “Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea and 1 of the World’s Deadliest Jobs” from Ballantine Books.

The signing is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1:00 p.m at the Skills Center, northeast 28th Street in Vancouver.

The celebration runs from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. It also includes tours and displays from the Skills Center’s career and technical programs, live music from three local bands, a car show, food booths, a silent auction.

Opened in 1983, the Clark County Skills Center is owned and operated by ten southwest Washington school districts. They provide technical and professional training programs that prepare Clark County high school and college students for the workforce.

A New ‘Deadliest Catch’ Marathon!

After you’ve tended to all of the Mother’s Day festivities, don’t forget to tune in to the ‘Deadliest Catch’ Mother’s Day Marathon all day and night Sunday, May 11th!  Catch repeats of Best of Season 2, Best of Season 3, and all of season 4 that’s already aired.  On Mother’s Day, you can never have too much of diamonds, flowers, and ‘Deadliest Catch’!

For the Russell Newberry Fans….

He’s outspoken, he’s experienced, he’s a life-long friend of the Hillstrands, he has a great sense of humor…He’s Russell Newberry and this is where he’ll be at this weekend!

 

When Russell Newberry signed a contract with the producers of “The Deadliest Catch,” a reality show about crab fishing off the Alaska coast, he never read past the document’s first sentence.

“It said the Discovery Channel had the right to film me clothed, half-clothed or naked,” Newberry said. “I didn’t have to read any more. I signed it right away.

“I wonder why it took 45 years for someone to discover me.”

The show documents the around-the-clock schedule of working on crab boats and has made celebrities of the ship’s captains, Johnathan and Andy Hillstrand, who have written a book about their ship, Time Bandit, and will be at the Clark County Skills Center May 17 to autograph copies. But crew members such as Newberry also enjoy  the media attention and often make appearances.

Read the rest here