Sweet Spot

I feel obligated to report that: Today everything worked really well. The weather made it easy to haul traps and set them back without laboriously rowing back upwind after tending each one. Having traps closer together meant less “steaming” between strings. Stand-up rowing made it possible to cleanly approach each buoy and make corrections without having to stop rowing and turn around to see I’ve missed. The new oars don’t want to slide off the boat every chance they get. There were lobsters in good numbers.

 The sum of all these variables means I made a decent day’s pay, had time to stop and visit with the school kids, teachers and Lisa on Markey’s Beach while they celebrated the end of school, and got into the harbor by noon. The wind started blowing just about the time I got home. Sweet!  Now I’m tired. 

Red light Green Light Red Light

I’ve not had much to do with lobstering lately. This is because today is day 8 of not being able to haul either due to weather- Tuesday-Thursday, Sunday-Monday; or an off-island commitment- playing music on the main street sidewalk on Vinalhaven on Friday; or Lisa’s many work commitments; or three kids, one of whom just got back from school in Vermont.

This morning, I dutifully arose and flipped the coffee switch at 4:40-something a.m. and packed up to haul. The view from the wharf was not encouraging. I observed a brisk wind and large breakers around all the ledgy places that I’d be visiting. I turned back and worked on a legal project til about 8, then got back in the skiff to go finish my last winter job commitment. Had serious second thoughts about bagging because the sea appeared to be flattening out and the weather more welcoming. After finishing the trail work, I skiffed across the harbor and realized I had no vehicle to get my chainsawing gear home from the wharf. I tried not to make eye contact with people because of irritability cramps and frustration from wanting to get something doneand having to hurry home to be ready for school music after lunch..

At lunch time I decided it was lovely outside and that I’d go haul after school music concert preparations. Of course, by the time I was done at school, the wind was back up with enthusiasm. Well, maybe I’ll at least pump out the boat from another big rainstorm, mount the radar reflector and bag some bait for tomorrow. As I’m drilling the first pilot hole, *drip* in the harbor. Ugly wet gray wool approaching from the west. What I’ve failed to recognize up to now is: This is not a boat day for me.

I put the tools away, row back across the harbor. The pickup is full of cardboard from a large delivery to the store, so I rush to get that in the recycle shed up in the middle of the island before it’s papier mache sculpto-mush.

I’m dry at the moment which is as it should be. Everything else is pretty fetched up. I will vote in the primary and referendum, go to Latin America night at school and let today fall behind and tomorrow wait til the morning.

Rocky Bottom

5/31

Rocky Bottom

Today is the first day of getting through all the traps in the water, except, of course, for the very last one which got stuck on rocky bottom behind Ten Pound Island. The wind is blowing hard and I am getting pushed toward the rocks, so I abandon that pot for a nicer day. The boat is very difficult to control as I try to round the corner in a cross wind. Aggravating, physically brutal and scary all at once. It won’t go where I point it. I am exhausted and a long way from the harbor.

Then the sail goes up and everything changes. It’s quiet. The boat wants to go smoothly to the harbor. I stick an oar over the side to steer and slide home with no effort at all. By the time I reach Old Cove and start taking the sail down, I have about 45 minutes’ sailing experience. 15 yesterday, 10 this morning and a 20 minute scoot across to the harbor. Every minute of that is pure magic. I’ve never even been on a sailboat, and now I have a working commercial vessel under sail.

That’s about as good as it got. Things went down hill steeply after that. I ended up being two hours and change late getting in. The afternoon turned to evening and the personal and financial realities started hitting head-on.

I fell asleep on the couch and woke to a muscle spasm in the back of my leg that felt as though it would tear all the meat right off the bone. That wrenching pretty well matched the anguish inside.

I can’t. I can’t do it physically. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The gripping on rope and pulling up a metal box from the sea floor. Every foot of rope requires every bit of strength. By the time I’m rowing into the harbor, my forearm bones feel sprung apart. Roofing, sheetrocking, farming, woodcutting, and being a sternman were all easy by comparison. And I’m a 47 year old guy waking up with a charley horse fit to tear my leg apart.

With all that effort, I’m not making money. Mortgage and power bill are due. I have a barrel of bait rotting on the float because the quantity I have to buy is more than I can use on my schedule. Money gone into the stink of rotten herring. Oh yes, and the boat is not paid for.

I can’t do it physically, financially or emotionally. Now I’m awake in the wee hours wondering how to get the boat shop to take Sweet Pea back. My question to myself is: Is it dumber to give up and bail out or dumber to keep trying?

I hope this is rock bottom.

6/1

The next day, Wes and I are sitting in the kitchen. It’s foggy and drizzly on the other side of the slider. I tell my woe and he tells me- again- that, yep, it won’t work. You’ve got to get rid of that boat. “I’ve got thirty years into this. I’ve seen the boats change, the gear change and the business side change. You can’t do it the way you’re trying to do it.”

Then I tell him how great it was to sail on the northerly breeze in the morning and the southwesterly in the afternoon. Then he grins and laughs. “You know, it’s really pretty cool what you’re doing. Let’s go set the rest of your traps right now.” And we do.

Bagging bait, loading 40 on the stern of Shameless, steaming out to Two Bush Island, slogging through rain which turns to downpour when we get in the harbor, getting the outboard stuck on a derelict buoy in the harbor. All of these things he put up with to help me.

That’s today’s lesson. Thanks to the Max, Peter, Frank and all the other predecessors who left tools and boat stuff in the barn. Thanks to whoever left the sail that fits Sweet Pea perfectly and makes me so happy every time I put it up. Thanks to the fishermen watching out for me. Thanks to Lisa tolerating yet another “adventure.” Thanks to Clayton for getting me into the water. Thanks for all the advice, even when it’s directly contradictory:

“You’ve got to get wooden traps. They fish great”
“Wooden traps don’t fish for shit.”
“I loved wooden traps. I bought 300 of them and lost every last one in a storm.”

I’m thankful and relieved to have 100 pots out now. I can visit more of them with a lot less traversing.

I’ve hit walls and taken them for granted, especially where I don’t know what I’m doing, there aren’t suppliers for key things I need and I get advice like “you’ve got to get rid of that boat.” It takes a good night’s rest to realize that I just need to look at the wall and figure out how to get over, under, around or through. The next big wall is getting those heavy wire traps up to the boat. I spent days getting the flipper functional to make boarding the traps easier. I know I can’t hand haul them without some help from Archimedes. Or a good 12 volt winch.

Day One, Take 3

5/25/2010

Today is the next Day One. It’s my first day of intending to haul all 50 of my traps in the water. It also turns out to be Generosity Day. Biscuit gave me a ride to the wharf. Darlene gave me a ride back. Dennis gave me a tote of bait. Jamie gave me an electric winch (unfortunately unresponsive, but nice nonetheless). What great support I've gotten from these supposedly tough fisherfolk.

I didn’t catch as much as I’d hoped. This was partly because I hurried things, hauling half the gear on three nights’ set, intead of 5 like I should have. In typical exasperating fashion, some places the bait hadn’t been touched yet, some places it was gone.

My invention, the trap flipper also began its latest demise. One bracket that holds the rig onto the gunwale let go, causing the whole thing to rack around in a crooked fashion. The crookedness gradually chewed up the other bracket, and it collapsed later on. I tied the whole business together with green nylon twine I found in the great barn cleanout of last winter. It was ok for the day, but had to basically be reassembled after each trap. The lesson after another several hours reinforcing with plywood is that: A- maritime work beats the crap out of everything. My flipper-as tough as it seemed, being heavily screwed together out of oak stock, could not stand up to commercial fishing, could not withstand my mightiness. It broke. Lesson B: when you’re making something that nobody has made before, it will evolve by showing you what breaks next. Fix this, that breaks. Now I’ve made the brackets nuke proof with sandwiched plywood, which means one thing. Some other part will break next time. Even broken all over and held together with twine, it works better than pulling the trap over the rail.

Today’s other lesson is that although fog may come on cat’s paws, it comes very quickly. It’s a blinding hot and sunny day until I’m 41 traps into my goal of 50. By 42, it was time to head in. No radar reflector, no compass. Gotta go. Cold and gray in a minute. The harbor was beautiful in the mist. I sold off and despite not finishing, despite the mechanical failure and the short set, I didn’t lose money. After my first essentially full work day, I was no more wiped than I had been after half that many.

Staring Seal

5/23

My hauling t-shirt has two big tears, one under each arm. Did I bust out from the rowing and hauling like the Incredible Hulk? I don’t feel that rugged. More like fishin’ E.T.

Today on the north side of Ten Pound Island, I was startled by a splash near the boat. A moment later, up pops a seal, staring. This seal looks big. Maybe it’s the size of my boat that makes him look bigger than I remember. He follows me for 10 minutes or so, coming up to stare every so often.

I’m on the last fifteen pots of the day, having started on the far opposite end of my gear. This was a big day. I did the two extremities of my territory at least an hour faster than last time. I didn’t miss buoys and have to lock the oars back in, go around and retry. The bait stayed on and there were lobsters present. The weather was nice the whole time.

Most importantly, I hauled two days in a row, which sets me up to do two things. First, haul all of the pots in one day next time. The bait and soak cycles will fit together. Second, after 10 days or so of hard, frustrating work and stumbles, I can take a couple of days off. Muscles can recover, other work will get done, home chores can be caught up on.

Oh, yes, there is also the healthy number of lobsters in my crate.

Little Increments and Little Obstacles

5/18

Today was the first taste of what I had in mind when I imagined this venture. The sound. The quiet. The water and birds. I’ve never heard birds taking off from the water because of the diesel roar. The sortie was good, most of the way. By the time I got to the last ten, however, the wind was bullying me and I had to row home upwind. When I crawled into the harbor, one foot forward and 9 inches back for every stroke, my hands were screaming. Elbows didn’t seem to fit together any more.

I rowed substantially farther than on previous outings- to the back side of Ten Pound Island, then back past the harbor to Two Bush Ledge. My whacky looking roller and trap spatula worked very well, taking a lot of strain off the back and keeping the center of gravity in the boat instead of a foot out over the water. I hauled 5 more traps this time. Little increments.

I’m a big fan of Roz Savage’s book Rowing the Atlantic- Lessons Learned on the Open ocean. Savage was the first solo woman to complete the transatlantic rowing event from either the Azores or the Canaries, I can’t recall which, and Antiqua. All the doubts, malfunctrion, inexperience and growth seem pretty parallel. Except she went across the Atlantic. I don’t have to do that. I do, however, have to push myself beyond all my physical and engineering limits and then go home and try to be father, husband, lawyer, tax collector and community member. When I got in today, Lisa was in dire need of help with kids so she could open the store for the year. The junk metal truck man, Dan, had this one afternoon to get my scrap metal ready to go on the ferry tomorrow. I start hucking rusted pipes, gutters, mangle bike frames, bed springs and the like out to the road and helped load up. The ferry tomorrow also means I can get rid of the six banana boxes-300 or so- of video cassettes left behind here by our predecessors. OK, except that they can't be in banana boxes for recycling, and I have to remove all the cardboard boxes, stomp those down and bag all of the stuff up. Blisters and barnacle cuts are a distraction. There are dishes to wash, calls to return and laundry to do from 2 weeks ago. Even as I post this, it's 8 minutes before my middle girl's school starts, so I have to have an ear downstairs to make sure she's not late. I'm not getting any traps hauled because my son left the car door open and the battery is dead as a stump. It's windy again. Little obstacles.

I’ve read a few books in the vein of “I undertook a challenge and sorely tested myself and found out the real struggles were not what I expected.” All of those books appear to be written by singles or couples with no young children. In addition to sea peril, physical limitations, and the great one-two combination of too much age and no inexperience, I have Daddy Guilt. Like our family’s move to Matinicus, the children really did not get a choice. I am not yet fulfilling my financial duties to the family, and have doubts about being able to with this fishing business. What kind of role model am I? I like celebrating and modeling intelligent risk, adventure, growth and trying different things. I don’t like modeling recklessness and financial irresponsibility. The truth is, this project is full of both.

Autopilot Through the Darkness

As I write for the first time since the Dark Days, I open my duffle, pull out my computer and see the videos I packed for the kids to watch. I haven’t unpacked from the road trip that began May 4, and it’s now the 17th. Since then, I’ve been back and forth a number of times to get the boat, not get the boat and then get the boat. Clothes, kids stuff books and travel necessities are all still sprawled on my side of the bedroom.

That explains, in part, why I’ve been so frantic and despairing. The Dark Days began a few hours after the boat came last Tuesday. The realization of what I was getting into hit all at once. No experience, tiny boat. Big Ocean. Cold water. Pep talks about rapid, cold and terribly uncomfortable death soon followed. Then I started taking the boat out on Thursday. The brisk southwest breeze spun me lightly around, pushing me, bullying the new kid. I hauled a total of 6 traps- a mighty wrestling match by itself- and then swooshed all over the place getting home, getting the boat moored, getting ashore.

The next day, I went out to haul again. Took some “suckerheads” for bait, thinking I was the sucker, later confirmed by others. Suckerheads are useless as bait. Live and learn. Hauling twenty traps was the most strenuous thing I’ve ever done. It didn’t feel very good thinking I was getting nothing back next time due to bait quality. By the end, every grasp of rope came with a gasp and grimace. Every trap resisted coming aboard and sorely tempted my and the boat’s center of gravity.

At this point the panic and shame set in full force. I wanted to return the boat and find a commune in Montana where I could get a new name. I knew the boat was not set up properly. I also knew that because nobody was doing this kind of fishing anymore, I couldn’t just go get the proper accessories in the local marine store. That meant expense. I haven’t paid for the boat yet, much less more gear. That no one sells. Then I’m thinking about solar panels, batteries and power winches, or better still a solar outboard. Or nuclear, maybe. That’s not really petroleum, right?

By Friday, I felt I had made a huge, expensive and utterly irresponsible mistake. What was I doing ditching my jobs and pursuing this idea? What kind of crackpot was I showing my children?! I hated myself. Fortunately, my autopilot said keep working on it. Go like hell. Lisa- bless her- reminded me that it was to be expected that I’d need to spend a couple of weeks getting properly geared up.

I started trying to design a ramp and lever device to take some of the strain and imbalance out of getting the trap aboard; one of the real vulnerable and strenuous parts of the process. I also started trying to create a roller to reduce rope friction and chafing and take some effort out of hauling the traps up. The trap flipper thing had worked really well on the Blue Note, my little aluminum skiff I hauled a few out of last year. Basically, it tilts the trap out so you pull it up a slant instead of deadlifting it straight up. My new version sucked. It tipped over on the rail, dumped the trap and was unmanageable. My new roller was made from a bike wheel hub. The box around it was also unstable. Next idea: fasten the roller and flipper together so they stabilize each other. By the time I’d confidently assembled this rickety, crude and Mad Max meets the Bayou looking device, it was late on Friday, so I couldn’t test it.

Saturday was very still and overcast- good for hauling. Right up until my boot sole touched Sweet Pea’s deck, at which time the fog instantly became clam-chowder thick and the wind, my new foe, had started. I wanted to go out anyway at least to test the new rig. I went out around Wheaton and started hauling. The flipper was marginally uselful but looking like it wanted to collapse any time. The roller spun well for about the first three traps, then got very reluctant. And tilted.

That day’s 20 traps also wrecked me, and projected a mental movie of my future either destroying myself physically for no money or bailing on the whole fiasco.

Autopilot saved me again. I obsessed and just about burned out my spatial relation cortex trying to design something that would work. I pulled out pvc pipe, vaccuum hose, toggles, a plastic candy cane, pipes, rods and stuff I can’t remember. I took a long walk, stewing, obsessing, visualizing, throwing out one idea after the next. Clayton produced the brass wheel that started things going in a better direction. Many more designs and layouts followed. Many trips across the harbor in the skiff, out in Sweet Pea, and back with a list of failures and another round at the drawing board. Late Monday, I came up with what I thought was the right design. The trap just popped up and in. The sun shone. The water was friendly. I got my first paycheck $42.10.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings. I guess I’m not going to the commune yet.