Rochester, NY, United States (AHN) – Captain Sig Hansen stepped on the same 80-year old stage that has hosted cultural events from ballets to operas to orchestras.

The captain of the Northwestern crab vessel, best known for his starring role on Discovery’s “The Deadliest Catch,” looked out at the ornately decorated historical landmark—and lit a cigarette.

“They told us not to smoke in here,” Sig said, “but…” Then he shrugged.

Captain Jonathan Hillstrand, best known to “Deadliest Catch” viewers as the captain of the Time Bandit, completed the thought. “No one tells Sig Hansen what to do,” he said.

Hillstrand lit his own cigarette a short time later, and the two men were joined in the cloud of smoke by Jonathan’s brother, Captain Andy.

The captains of the wildly popular Discovery channel show are spending their time between king-crab season and opilio season on tour. “I’ve been in my house two days since we got back from sea,” Jonathan said. “I’ve been through those airport scanners so many times, I think I’ve got radiation poisoning.”

The tour came about during a dispute between the Hillstrands and the Discovery network. The brothers quit the show after Discovery filed a $3 million lawsuit against them for failing to complete work on a planned spin-off to “The Deadliest Catch.”

In a show of support for his fellow captains, Hansen also walked off the show.

Eventually, the two sides worked things out, and all three allowed cameras on their ships last month. Instead of replacing their television money, “this road show thing,” as Sig refers to it, will supplement it.

“Hey, I’ve still got house payments,” he joked.

Sending three hard-living blue-collar captains on a cross-country trip resulted in a decidedly NC-17 rated evening.

“Are there any children out there?” Hansen asked the audience. Spotting one seated in the second row of the orchestra pit, he spoke to the boy’s mother. “Oh, man. I’m sorry about this,” he said.

Hansen promised to “try to keep things clean,” a promise that lasted all the way into his next sentence, when he dropped his first expletive of the night.

“We got some bad reviews online,” Captain Jonathan growled. “One preacher brought a group of children, and he complained about how inappropriate we were. No kidding. Take them to see “Shrek” or something.”

The men agreed that the show gives fans a chance to see the way they interact in a way that can’t possibly be edited for television.

“They tried putting in a Galley Cam one season,” Jonathan said, “to show us talking as we eat. They came back and said, ‘We can’t use any of this!’”

Andy gave an example. “Let’s say you call home while we’re at sea and found out your wife left you,” he said. “We will never let you forget that. We’ll say things like, ‘Hey, it’s Friday night. What do you think she’s doing right now?’”

“We actually have to be nicer, because the cameras are there,” agreed Jonathan. “We don’t want to destroy some guy’s life in front of the whole world. “

“But if there weren’t any cameras,” he added, “we’d destroy that guy’s soul.”

It’s a tough crowd, and a tough job. The cameramen on board often find themselves subjected to tests of their manhood.

“We’ll turn off the hot water to their shower on the first day,” said Andy. “And when seas are rough, we’ll be sure to give them the greasiest bacon, just to make sure they throw up.”

“I’ve thrown cameras overboard,” said Hansen. “I’ve turned the ship around to go back and kick them out.”

“The best thing is just not to say anything to them,” Hansen continued. “My crew and I all speak Norwegian, so I’ll get on the loudspeaker and announce, ‘OK boys, shut it down. No one talks.’ They’re running around trying to get someone to say anything. They’re calling their producers on shore on their little satellite phones. It really messes with their minds. It’s great!”

All of the captains originally turned down Discovery when approached with the idea for “The Deadliest Catch.”

“I was worried about insurance rates going up when they saw what we did,” said Hansen.

Andy referred to an episode where Hansen had been at the wheel of the ship for more than 40 hours. “The insurance company sees Sig falling asleep while driving the boat. Yeah, they’re probably going to have some questions about that.”

Hansen claims producers convinced him to do the show by getting him drunk. “They met us in a bar and showed up two hours late. By that time, we were so far gone. They loved us. We loved them.”

The Hillstrands agreed for a different reason. “We always took home movies,” said Jonathan. “This was just a chance to have them edited by professionals.”

“We thought this was going to be something that went for a couple years, and ran at midnight, in between shows on how to change your transmission and how to neuter a cat,” said Andy. “No one ever thought all this would happen.”

The just-completed king-crab season and January’s opilio will be the show’s seventh year. The captains promise that fans of the show, accustomed to dangerous conditions and over-the-top personalities, will not be disappointed.

“The last six hours of this king-crab season were about the worst weather we’ve ever had,” Hansen said.

“There’s a new boat this season,” said Jonathan, “and they had 60 to 70 knot winds the entire time.”

The Hillstrands, who have 50 handguns and rifles aboard their ship and have been known to replace competing fishermen’s crab pots with old pickup trucks, also promise the season will feature their best prank ever. “We got Sig good,” Jonathan cackles.

All three captains promise that they have no plans of retiring any time soon. In typical crab-fisherman fashion, Sig explained, “I have a wife, daughters, and two Pomeranian dogs—both female. That’s five vaginas in my house. If they each have four days a month where you can’t talk to them, that’s 20 days that I can’t be there.”

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