Keith Colburn Hands Off The Wizard to Monte After Breaking Point
keith colburn reached his breaking point on the June 15 episode of Deadliest Catch and handed The Wizard to his brother Monte after rough Bering Sea conditions pushed him past what he could keep driving. He had already burned $5,000 of fuel per day while chasing a remaining 360,000 pounds of bairdi quota worth $2.2 million.
The Wizard Under Pressure
A massive wave came up on deck, and Colburn rushed to get everyone inside before checking on the crew. Freddy Maugatai, a longtime deckhand, was hit in the back from the crane, and Colburn said, "I thought I was a goner." That kind of deck-level violence turned the episode from routine quota chasing into a survival problem for the boat.
Colburn also pulled on an older memory, recalling a 2008 season when The Wizard took on a wave and he could not even see the crew. This time, he said, "I don’t think I can drive this boat…That’s all I got…Enough is enough," before setting course for town and calling Monte "Mouse" Colburn to come up and take over.
Monte Takes The Wheel
When Monte arrived, Keith handed off The Wizard with a short instruction: "Take care of my girl." That transfer matters because it was not a routine change on deck; Keith stopped operating the boat entirely and shifted command in the middle of a quota run that still had 360,000 pounds left to catch.
Monte then found that Keith had set 50 baited pots in an out of bounds area, adding a separate problem to a night already defined by weather and fatigue. The move from captaincy to handoff gives the episode its sharpest business consequence: every hour lost in rough water makes that $2.2 million bairdi target harder to reach, and the boat was already spending $5,000 a day just to stay in the hunt.
Weather Hits Other Boats
Rick Shelford was on the Aleutian Lady on Day 4 of a devastating weather front while chasing the remaining $1 million Northern king crab quota. Sig Hansen was under the clock on the Northwestern for 30,000 pounds before conditions worsened further, and Karl Rasmussen injured his toe on deck from a pot.
Sig also called Shelford for azithromycin because it was not in the Northwestern's supplies, and Shelford met him to pick up the medication. Hansen then volunteered the Northwestern to guide Shelford's vessel through the area so he could drop his pots in good spots, a sign that the weather was forcing captains into cooperation as much as competition.
For Keith, the clearest takeaway is the handoff itself: once a captain says the boat cannot keep going, the season becomes a race against weather, fuel burn, and what is left in the quota hold.
