Late middle September- We continue with tales of a very new captain:
I've hauled a number of days, getting more comfortable getting in and out of the harbor, onto the mooring, tying up at the bait boat and lobster car. It's a big heavy craft going through slippery water. Aboard Sweet Pea, the movement of the boat was immediate and physical, like a shopping cart or a wheelbarrow. If I moved my arms, the boat responded. Now there are diesel and hydraulic intermediaries between my hands and where the boat goes.
I gradually learn the coordination of throttle, transmission, hydraulic winch in two directions, flipping the trap aboard and running it back off without getting tangled. Every day a little more confidence spreads through my trunk and limbs. The moves get natural. Once again, I'm choreographing all the dance moves as I have for each boat I've worked aboard. Only this time, I am captain and sternman. On My Boat.
I deposit a couple of checks. Not big numbers, but huge for morale.
I've also become a gear and rope preparing machine, thanks to having a lot of gear and rope given to me. Whenever I'm not hauling, I'm in the yard, walking and unkinking rope, patching traps, rigging buoys.
I'm also starting to get seriously burnt out. 7 days a week I've been at it since early August- finding the boat, jumping through hoops, arranging financing, having drivers ed after taking the big rig on the road, learning to get to and haul traps, dodging large swells from distant tropical storms, rigging up more gear.
So I'm simultaneously getting more competent and burned out from total immersion. I start to set and haul pairs of traps for the first time. These guys can do it blindfolded with an arm and a leg tied behind them. For me it's quite a challenge. Setting pairs I quickly found out how easy it is for rope to get into a wretched ball. These hopeless tangles are a lot harder to deal with when there's two traps to haul up instead of one.
Pairs are also a lot harder to get into the boat. My first few efforts are a freak show. I'm grateful that no one is close enough to see how slow and clumsy I am with this.
Last night, today was forecast to have 5 to 15 knot winds. I should have checked this morning. Now as I'm listening to the radio and heading out, there's a small craft advisory for hazardous seas- by which they mean towering offshore swells that hatch monster breakers in places I only vaguely knew had shallow places. On top of the big waves- which are no big deal as long as I'm far away from ledges, shore or shoals- there is a robust chop from the gathering Southwest wind. After 4 hours or so of being sloshed and tilted and slapped around by the wind and water, I surrender for the day, slowly steaming back to the harbor through the very dark green water and slate blue-gray sky.
Towering waves, uncertainty about the winter, certainty of one more horrid financial gap. I've committed to the boat. Here we go. Yippy Ki Yay.
9/22
Today started actually last night. Remembered to call a friend at bed time who'd left a message at dinner. Friend advised me of a faux pas on my part. A bunch of them, actually. So I got in my first stew even though I'm hardly up to speed on any aspect of the business.
In the meanwhile, I'm taking care of the year's worth of the island's property tax calculations for the year. That piece of work always hits in the scurrying season with frantic fishing and panics that set in during September when we realize it's September, which means that winter is coming on fast.
It rained all day, and I dove into paperwork, bill paying, property taxes, gathering related signatures, rigging a few buoys and toggles, trying to keep busy enough to stay ahead of doubts and creditors. Off to sea tomorrow.
Sunday, September 25
I set 30 beater traps in dense fog and an unfamiliar area. I really love my radar. Not only because it keeps me from running into other boats, channel markers and ledges, but as a second visual navigation tool. The more time I spend on the water, the comfort level gradually comes up and the rush from learning how to navigate, learning how the boat behaves, reading the current, tending my gear with the amazingly powerful hydraulic pot hauler. So many new moves, motions, angles, sounds and smells to keep track of.
What makes it so special is that it's all been taught here, by my neighbors and friends and aside from the lobster apprentice program and one day coast guard safety course, completely unregulated. No driver's ed, no practice, very minimal instruction on the ONE Afternoon when Clayton and I brought the boat across from Rockland. The liberty to learn, challenge myself in nature without layer upon layer of restriction and constriction is precious.
September 27- At 6:15 or so this morning, I disentangled my skiff in the dusk of the wharf, rowed around the corner to face the harbor and was stunned by the sight of the harbor on a flat still morning, brilliant in the orange gold of the sunrise. The flatness amplifies the effect. This was an extremely unusual day of brilliant sunshine and no wind to speak of- very unusual in September.
I took out ten traps that had been in very close to the shore and put them into pairs with 25 fathom warps off to the norred, short version of northward. Had some tea while steaming over to the days work to the easterd, short for eastward. Am I lucky today? Yes. Unlike the first time I hauled these traps, I can see. Last time around, the fog was so thick I wasn't sure my eyes were really open at all.
What a lucky man I am to work on a boat in September in Maine.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Day 1, Again- How Many Does This Make?
Saturday, September 3.
The new boat, Close Enough, awaits me in the harbor. She's ready. Me, not so much.
Wee hours held many half awake, vague bad dreams about how I was possibly going to mess up driving the new boat. Some of them were comical, some plausible. In that nether state, I somehow believed that if I thought about it enough, I'd have experience that I do not have- I'd know what do do without ever having done it.
I anticipate all the steps- starting up, unhitching, working around the ledge and boulders, docking with the Liberty Risk for bait, get turned around and out of the harbor and heading out to get some work done.
Deep down, I am confident of my ability to learn this newest alien activity, to safely go out, work and come home dry and alive. I am also deeply aware of how little I know and how catastrophic a mistake can be. This isn't a sturdy slow 300 pound wooden boat powered by hand. I won't be just a few paces from the shore.
The other unwelcome night and dawn visitor was the wind.
It's now 7 am and I haven't found anyone to go out. I'm terrified of just getting around the ledge in the harbor and tying up at the bait boat, much less going out into the open ocean and hauling traps for the first time. I go out to the boat anyway, and start organizing. And agonizing.
I open the hatch to turn on the electrical switches and fire up the motor, but can't make my hand push the button and do it. I'm frozen. I'm also having a parental voice in my head saying that despite my probably making an idiot of myself, it is wise to have a second person aboard on this first time out.
I paddle back to the wharf and make a call, leaving a message for one guy and then convincing Craig to come out. This security and company makes all the difference.
We go out in some substantial chop and break me in and introduce the boat to Matinicus lobstering. Every move is unfamiliar. The wind is robust and the waves slosh us around. I manage to haul a handful and feel like that's enough for today.
Every transition is new and tightens my insides. My saving strategy is to go super slow. I approach the bait boat, the mooring, the dock with glacial slowness. Other guys bring in boats to the dock like snowboarders swoosh to a stop at the lodge. Not me. Water is very slippery compared to pavement, gravel or fields, where I've operated big equipment in the past. The water is slippery and boat hulls and docks are very heavy and unyielding.
Craig grabs the mooring for me and the boat is once again safely tethered to the bottom of the harbor.
The next day, I figure I'm heading out for the first real work day; I'll start making some money instead of spending like a congressman the way I have been. Note the "I figure" phrasing. I'm warming up the engine and feeling all captain-like when I notice the voltmeter is low. In instrument panel design, red is bad and green is good. My voltmeter is not in the green happy place. I stop, make calls, stop people in the road, talk to Joe in the harbor. Under 12 volts is not good enough. I decide to try it for a while thinking maybe when I rev the motor, the volts will come up. Think again. Even though the voltmeter keeps slumping further away from Green Land, I get to haul a few pots and catch some lobsters.
Further consultation with the island brain trust leads to the conclusion that I need a new alternator. I head out Monday morning with my handy U.S. Navy manual on the motor and get 95% of the way through removing the alternator- my first introduction to the cramped, awkward, knuckle skinning realities of engine work on a boat.
After loosening and removing the bolts, I smugly move to pull the alternator out, and there is a tug back from the dark recesses. There's one more nut to remove. I can barely fit more than a couple of fingers in there. There are a couple of hoses in the way. When I can get a glimpse of the last item, it looks crusted over with rust and grease. And very hard to reach.
I try open end, box end and socket wrenches. I try liberal amounts of lubricant. I try very liberal amounts of profanity. There is a single 3/8" nut between me and making a living, and it is successfully thwarting every idea, angle, heave and tool I can come up with. I try to fit a hacksaw blade in the space. I try a chisel. Morning turns to afternoon.
Eventually, Weston shows up. We spoke this morning and he told me it was "a ten minute job."
Weston sees something behind the nut that I didn't see and after a couple of "oh this is nothing" remarks that morph into "oh, no wonder you've been on this all day, it's a total pain in the ass," he gets pliers on one part and a wrench of the other, and turns until the bolt fatigues and melts itself into two pieces. The alternator is out. Along the way, I manage to mangle the wiring plug, and will need to get that ordered as well.
Unfortunately, getting the dead alternator out does not put the boat back in working order. Today is Labor Day, so I'm not getting a new one today.
Tuesday morning, Clayton advises me to remove the pulley off the front of the alternator because the new one won't have that piece. OK, I say, thinking that I'll pick up a couple of tools, apply them to the job and remove the pulley. Note the "thinking that I'll" phrasing. After an hour of wrestling, I feel as though I have as much chance of bending the doors on a wood stove with my bare hands as I have getting that pulley off the alternator.
It's a contest of getting a wrench on one part, and holding the rest of it securely. Actually, it's a matter of having an impact wrench. Silly me. I don't happen to have an impact wrench. And at this point, I don't even know I need one.
I'm near tears at this point because I manage to do 95% of the tasks, but get completely stopped in my tracks by the last 5%, simple things like old corroded nuts or things that need an impact wrench. I am ignorant of the world of diesel engines and rusted nuts and bolts and impact wrenches. I can't do the simple parts of these jobs. I need to start making a living starting last year and have been disabled by little rusted parts and things I don't know how to do.
I am in way over my head. Again.
Afternoon comes, and with it a shiny new alternator with no crumbling, rusted bits. The reinstall is a lot more fun than the removal, although I'm haunted by the fear that I have misdiagnosed the problem, and when I start the motor, the voltmeter will still be in the red place of worry and failure.
I feel I've invented cold fusion and won the Nobel Prize as I push the start button, start the motor and watch the needle majestically rise well into the green.
All is well.
The new boat, Close Enough, awaits me in the harbor. She's ready. Me, not so much.
Wee hours held many half awake, vague bad dreams about how I was possibly going to mess up driving the new boat. Some of them were comical, some plausible. In that nether state, I somehow believed that if I thought about it enough, I'd have experience that I do not have- I'd know what do do without ever having done it.
I anticipate all the steps- starting up, unhitching, working around the ledge and boulders, docking with the Liberty Risk for bait, get turned around and out of the harbor and heading out to get some work done.
Deep down, I am confident of my ability to learn this newest alien activity, to safely go out, work and come home dry and alive. I am also deeply aware of how little I know and how catastrophic a mistake can be. This isn't a sturdy slow 300 pound wooden boat powered by hand. I won't be just a few paces from the shore.
The other unwelcome night and dawn visitor was the wind.
It's now 7 am and I haven't found anyone to go out. I'm terrified of just getting around the ledge in the harbor and tying up at the bait boat, much less going out into the open ocean and hauling traps for the first time. I go out to the boat anyway, and start organizing. And agonizing.
I open the hatch to turn on the electrical switches and fire up the motor, but can't make my hand push the button and do it. I'm frozen. I'm also having a parental voice in my head saying that despite my probably making an idiot of myself, it is wise to have a second person aboard on this first time out.
I paddle back to the wharf and make a call, leaving a message for one guy and then convincing Craig to come out. This security and company makes all the difference.
We go out in some substantial chop and break me in and introduce the boat to Matinicus lobstering. Every move is unfamiliar. The wind is robust and the waves slosh us around. I manage to haul a handful and feel like that's enough for today.
Every transition is new and tightens my insides. My saving strategy is to go super slow. I approach the bait boat, the mooring, the dock with glacial slowness. Other guys bring in boats to the dock like snowboarders swoosh to a stop at the lodge. Not me. Water is very slippery compared to pavement, gravel or fields, where I've operated big equipment in the past. The water is slippery and boat hulls and docks are very heavy and unyielding.
Craig grabs the mooring for me and the boat is once again safely tethered to the bottom of the harbor.
The next day, I figure I'm heading out for the first real work day; I'll start making some money instead of spending like a congressman the way I have been. Note the "I figure" phrasing. I'm warming up the engine and feeling all captain-like when I notice the voltmeter is low. In instrument panel design, red is bad and green is good. My voltmeter is not in the green happy place. I stop, make calls, stop people in the road, talk to Joe in the harbor. Under 12 volts is not good enough. I decide to try it for a while thinking maybe when I rev the motor, the volts will come up. Think again. Even though the voltmeter keeps slumping further away from Green Land, I get to haul a few pots and catch some lobsters.
Further consultation with the island brain trust leads to the conclusion that I need a new alternator. I head out Monday morning with my handy U.S. Navy manual on the motor and get 95% of the way through removing the alternator- my first introduction to the cramped, awkward, knuckle skinning realities of engine work on a boat.
After loosening and removing the bolts, I smugly move to pull the alternator out, and there is a tug back from the dark recesses. There's one more nut to remove. I can barely fit more than a couple of fingers in there. There are a couple of hoses in the way. When I can get a glimpse of the last item, it looks crusted over with rust and grease. And very hard to reach.
I try open end, box end and socket wrenches. I try liberal amounts of lubricant. I try very liberal amounts of profanity. There is a single 3/8" nut between me and making a living, and it is successfully thwarting every idea, angle, heave and tool I can come up with. I try to fit a hacksaw blade in the space. I try a chisel. Morning turns to afternoon.
Eventually, Weston shows up. We spoke this morning and he told me it was "a ten minute job."
Weston sees something behind the nut that I didn't see and after a couple of "oh this is nothing" remarks that morph into "oh, no wonder you've been on this all day, it's a total pain in the ass," he gets pliers on one part and a wrench of the other, and turns until the bolt fatigues and melts itself into two pieces. The alternator is out. Along the way, I manage to mangle the wiring plug, and will need to get that ordered as well.
Unfortunately, getting the dead alternator out does not put the boat back in working order. Today is Labor Day, so I'm not getting a new one today.
Tuesday morning, Clayton advises me to remove the pulley off the front of the alternator because the new one won't have that piece. OK, I say, thinking that I'll pick up a couple of tools, apply them to the job and remove the pulley. Note the "thinking that I'll" phrasing. After an hour of wrestling, I feel as though I have as much chance of bending the doors on a wood stove with my bare hands as I have getting that pulley off the alternator.
It's a contest of getting a wrench on one part, and holding the rest of it securely. Actually, it's a matter of having an impact wrench. Silly me. I don't happen to have an impact wrench. And at this point, I don't even know I need one.
I'm near tears at this point because I manage to do 95% of the tasks, but get completely stopped in my tracks by the last 5%, simple things like old corroded nuts or things that need an impact wrench. I am ignorant of the world of diesel engines and rusted nuts and bolts and impact wrenches. I can't do the simple parts of these jobs. I need to start making a living starting last year and have been disabled by little rusted parts and things I don't know how to do.
I am in way over my head. Again.
Afternoon comes, and with it a shiny new alternator with no crumbling, rusted bits. The reinstall is a lot more fun than the removal, although I'm haunted by the fear that I have misdiagnosed the problem, and when I start the motor, the voltmeter will still be in the red place of worry and failure.
I feel I've invented cold fusion and won the Nobel Prize as I push the start button, start the motor and watch the needle majestically rise well into the green.
All is well.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
This is Why
'Why keep the church open when nobody comes?' -Summer visitor.
"This is why" said Suzanne as we all sat together remembering a friend. Not an employee of a service provider. Not a delivery person. A part of the community. We gathered as we gather when there are other losses, weddings, holidays. We gather as a community the likes of which I've experienced nowhere else. There is shared experience, hardship, aggravation, conflict, disagreement, joy, celebration. Shared. We are not hermetically sealed off from neighbors, knowing more about Jennifer Aniston's acquaintances than we know of our own. We shared unrehearsed and unpolished thoughts of our friend, Don. We sang. We prayed. We gave three cheers.
The same thisiswhy is why we tolerate the vicious weather, constant unpredictability, financial precariousness and isolation. The ass-kicking. We do it because the rest of american culture seems deadened by factory food, cubicle jobs, antidepressants and a thousand other life-sucking blandifications.
We live. It's not safe. It's messy. This is why.
"This is why" said Suzanne as we all sat together remembering a friend. Not an employee of a service provider. Not a delivery person. A part of the community. We gathered as we gather when there are other losses, weddings, holidays. We gather as a community the likes of which I've experienced nowhere else. There is shared experience, hardship, aggravation, conflict, disagreement, joy, celebration. Shared. We are not hermetically sealed off from neighbors, knowing more about Jennifer Aniston's acquaintances than we know of our own. We shared unrehearsed and unpolished thoughts of our friend, Don. We sang. We prayed. We gave three cheers.
The same thisiswhy is why we tolerate the vicious weather, constant unpredictability, financial precariousness and isolation. The ass-kicking. We do it because the rest of american culture seems deadened by factory food, cubicle jobs, antidepressants and a thousand other life-sucking blandifications.
We live. It's not safe. It's messy. This is why.
I Want to be Bored Now
First and most important, Don is family to us, like all the Penobscot Island Air folks. In addition, what happens to anyone here happens to everyone. It's close like that on this island. I am sad.
It also feels as though the mainland just got a lot further away. The wind is cold and dry today. The long winter telegraphs its punch way too soon. I am afraid.
I came here for adventure. I want to be bored now.
It also feels as though the mainland just got a lot further away. The wind is cold and dry today. The long winter telegraphs its punch way too soon. I am afraid.
I came here for adventure. I want to be bored now.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Breaking the Silence
It's been a while, so some explanation is in order. Sweet Pea and I are no longer an item. I'll probably never love a boat like I love the peapod, or have as much wonderment lobstering as I have poking cove to cove and rock to rock, up close, quiet, one with the seals and birds and porpoises.
I came to the wrenching decision to make a change earlier this summer. I believe passionately in what I did. I wanted to prove that traditional boats, solar power and hard work can create a small scale, super sustainable commercial fishing business. Solar power works! Don't believe the negative hype.
I also proved that it would be a great seasonable job for someone with no children who also has other seasonal work, or a college student. It did not produce the revenue our family needs. There were about 2 really good months both seasons. Not enough season or money.
After reaching that decision, the next question was- what am I going to do? Poor economy. Gappy resume. Eccentric credentials. I did a lot of networking and outreach that went absolutely nowhere.
Then my mind took a big leap in what seemed like the whole wrong direction. Maybe I should just go with what I know. Maybe a proper lobster boat. Instead of getting a haircut, straightening up and flying right, pleasing the people my people have to defend me to, I'll just dig myself in deeper, dangerouser, and precariouser financially. Great idea!
I may get back to the peapod some day. I may try and electrify a small, but bigger boat. Right now, I have a very deep hole to dig out of and an extreme accumulation of stress that goes with that condition.
Here's the journal of the beginning of the next phase:
September 2:
My new boat, Close Enough, came home yesterday, 2 weeks to the day from when I first checked her out. I waded into the virgin rainforest of purchasing a commercial vessel two weeks ago, weaving together my feeble negotiating skills with insurance, coast guard documentation, marine surveying and business loan processes. I had to learn my way through many terms and ways of doing things that were completely unknown to me. Meanwhile, I am racking up expenses flying back and forth, driving around, buying safety gear and repairing a few things, and am not earning any money.
Then after a seeming eternity of blundering and lurching through the various hoops and getting the vessel purchased, she slips in the water at the Rockland boat launch. Then the easy part is done and I'm bluntly aware of how vulnerable I am, how little I know about boats with 210 horsepower diesel engines and no brakes, hydraulics, marine wiring and electronics. I'll find out even more sharply in a few hours.
After pulling away from the launch pretty smoothly and wending my way across the harbor to O'Hara's north, my first docking experience does NOT go well. Throttle and transmission controls suddenly seem extremely confusing. I can't get it right and thrash and bonk my way to a stop at the wharf. After I've stopped hyperventilating, I realize that the throttle and transmission controls are catching on each other and contributing to my lack of coordination.
While Clayton's off doing errands, I try to lube up the controls. They move more independently and smoothly.
I'm in a large maze of lobster buying, big heavy commercial boats up on land for work, shrink wrapped pleasure boats, and a large charter sailboat operation. I love it in all directions. People here do more than push e-mails and sell lattes. They get to move big boats around, fix broken things, get them back in the water. Stuff goes on here.
As I get ready to pull away for the big trip home, all is chaos, the transmission lever won't take the boat out of reverse and the boat is hard against the pilings. We shut down and Clayton figures out that the throttle and transmission cables aren't secured to the controls. My lube job worked well in helping identify a significant malfunction.
The next adventure comes partway across Rockland harbor when the temperature alarm goes off. Clayton lifts a couple hatches and we turn around. I'm out my head with panic at my leveraged position, ignorance and an alarming malfunction. I get a quick lesson in changing an impeller in the water pump for the cooling system, and we head across to my home without incident. I manage to get to the dock with no big collisions which is amazing to me because I've never done this before, am fighting a nasty GI bug and had a couple brews on the way across. I feel like I'm driving the Queen Elizabeth after my peapod. And I didn't take drivers' ed for this.
We're home. It was a long time lost on the mainland.
I came to the wrenching decision to make a change earlier this summer. I believe passionately in what I did. I wanted to prove that traditional boats, solar power and hard work can create a small scale, super sustainable commercial fishing business. Solar power works! Don't believe the negative hype.
I also proved that it would be a great seasonable job for someone with no children who also has other seasonal work, or a college student. It did not produce the revenue our family needs. There were about 2 really good months both seasons. Not enough season or money.
After reaching that decision, the next question was- what am I going to do? Poor economy. Gappy resume. Eccentric credentials. I did a lot of networking and outreach that went absolutely nowhere.
Then my mind took a big leap in what seemed like the whole wrong direction. Maybe I should just go with what I know. Maybe a proper lobster boat. Instead of getting a haircut, straightening up and flying right, pleasing the people my people have to defend me to, I'll just dig myself in deeper, dangerouser, and precariouser financially. Great idea!
I may get back to the peapod some day. I may try and electrify a small, but bigger boat. Right now, I have a very deep hole to dig out of and an extreme accumulation of stress that goes with that condition.
Here's the journal of the beginning of the next phase:
September 2:
My new boat, Close Enough, came home yesterday, 2 weeks to the day from when I first checked her out. I waded into the virgin rainforest of purchasing a commercial vessel two weeks ago, weaving together my feeble negotiating skills with insurance, coast guard documentation, marine surveying and business loan processes. I had to learn my way through many terms and ways of doing things that were completely unknown to me. Meanwhile, I am racking up expenses flying back and forth, driving around, buying safety gear and repairing a few things, and am not earning any money.
Then after a seeming eternity of blundering and lurching through the various hoops and getting the vessel purchased, she slips in the water at the Rockland boat launch. Then the easy part is done and I'm bluntly aware of how vulnerable I am, how little I know about boats with 210 horsepower diesel engines and no brakes, hydraulics, marine wiring and electronics. I'll find out even more sharply in a few hours.
After pulling away from the launch pretty smoothly and wending my way across the harbor to O'Hara's north, my first docking experience does NOT go well. Throttle and transmission controls suddenly seem extremely confusing. I can't get it right and thrash and bonk my way to a stop at the wharf. After I've stopped hyperventilating, I realize that the throttle and transmission controls are catching on each other and contributing to my lack of coordination.
While Clayton's off doing errands, I try to lube up the controls. They move more independently and smoothly.
I'm in a large maze of lobster buying, big heavy commercial boats up on land for work, shrink wrapped pleasure boats, and a large charter sailboat operation. I love it in all directions. People here do more than push e-mails and sell lattes. They get to move big boats around, fix broken things, get them back in the water. Stuff goes on here.
As I get ready to pull away for the big trip home, all is chaos, the transmission lever won't take the boat out of reverse and the boat is hard against the pilings. We shut down and Clayton figures out that the throttle and transmission cables aren't secured to the controls. My lube job worked well in helping identify a significant malfunction.
The next adventure comes partway across Rockland harbor when the temperature alarm goes off. Clayton lifts a couple hatches and we turn around. I'm out my head with panic at my leveraged position, ignorance and an alarming malfunction. I get a quick lesson in changing an impeller in the water pump for the cooling system, and we head across to my home without incident. I manage to get to the dock with no big collisions which is amazing to me because I've never done this before, am fighting a nasty GI bug and had a couple brews on the way across. I feel like I'm driving the Queen Elizabeth after my peapod. And I didn't take drivers' ed for this.
We're home. It was a long time lost on the mainland.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Turning the Corner
Hurricanes make you pay attention. Not in the cable tv drama, ooh our power might go out way, but in the holy shit way, like I could lose all my traps because I fish up in the rocks and coves where big storm surf crumples traps like pages of bad song lyrics. All my fall income, all my spring maintenance work.
Of course this was the week that my seemingly bulletproof ox of a winch picked to die. I thought it must just be my homemade wiring job or a switch that corroded. I checked all of those things with my handy tester thing. Not the problem. Then I opened the winch housing, a very sturdy metal affair with a fat rubber gasket. Made for salt water crab fishing. Only thing is- it's not remotely water proof. There was rust on everything and a translucent gray gel all over the motor that I later found out is what happens when aluminum gets lots of salt water on it. The winch insides were caked with bad looking trouble. I craftily took a motor off another winch, but it was about a quarter inch too long to fit in the space.
I tried coordinating with friends to help me move some traps and get them away from the shoreline and jaws of doom. They were all scrambling too, so after a lot of hawing and hemming, I decided to go out and haul, lengthen lines and catch a few lobsters without the hauler.
At least I had the outboard, which now didn't have to share the battery and solar panel with the winch. Except that something happened and the battery was half flat even though it had been charging unused for a week. I got a few jaunts out of it before I realized I was not moving.
Funny how quick we become dependent. I thought I had to go in because there was no winch and no motor. Eventually I realized that rowing and hauling by hand were not dealbreakers, but were exactly how I started the whole thing to begin with.
I haul and lengthen out a few traps, make a day's pay. Irene comes and goes.
A few nights later, I'm wearing a film plastic grocery bag hat over a layer of plastic wrap over a layer of mayonnaise on my head. One of the kids had some lice. This triggered a frantic household emergency management response of vaccuuming, bagging up clothes, bedding, pillows and stuffed animals and the mayonnaise treatment.
On this evening, it's just before 10 PM on a Monday and I'm washing up the dishes and surfaces from the mayonnaise intervention. Wildfire comes on, an AM radio hit I used to hear from the bunks my Dad built in the shed.
In the summer, we'd sleep out there, listen to sox games on the radio, news and pop songs. Then it hits me as I'm remembering the 2x4 I wrote my name and other sentiments on in the bunk- Dad had to build those bunks. One tiny project out of the thousands that Mom and Dad did for us. It is so easy to forget all those things.
It'll be easy for my daughters to forget the mayonnaise I plastered on their heads, the plastic wrap that went on top and the thousands of other efforts, often done through half awake eyes, veils of stress from a thousand other things, financial worries, agenda items.
Maybe it's just the plastic wrap around my brain making me sentimental. Thanks Mom and Dad.
Of course this was the week that my seemingly bulletproof ox of a winch picked to die. I thought it must just be my homemade wiring job or a switch that corroded. I checked all of those things with my handy tester thing. Not the problem. Then I opened the winch housing, a very sturdy metal affair with a fat rubber gasket. Made for salt water crab fishing. Only thing is- it's not remotely water proof. There was rust on everything and a translucent gray gel all over the motor that I later found out is what happens when aluminum gets lots of salt water on it. The winch insides were caked with bad looking trouble. I craftily took a motor off another winch, but it was about a quarter inch too long to fit in the space.
I tried coordinating with friends to help me move some traps and get them away from the shoreline and jaws of doom. They were all scrambling too, so after a lot of hawing and hemming, I decided to go out and haul, lengthen lines and catch a few lobsters without the hauler.
At least I had the outboard, which now didn't have to share the battery and solar panel with the winch. Except that something happened and the battery was half flat even though it had been charging unused for a week. I got a few jaunts out of it before I realized I was not moving.
Funny how quick we become dependent. I thought I had to go in because there was no winch and no motor. Eventually I realized that rowing and hauling by hand were not dealbreakers, but were exactly how I started the whole thing to begin with.
I haul and lengthen out a few traps, make a day's pay. Irene comes and goes.
A few nights later, I'm wearing a film plastic grocery bag hat over a layer of plastic wrap over a layer of mayonnaise on my head. One of the kids had some lice. This triggered a frantic household emergency management response of vaccuuming, bagging up clothes, bedding, pillows and stuffed animals and the mayonnaise treatment.
On this evening, it's just before 10 PM on a Monday and I'm washing up the dishes and surfaces from the mayonnaise intervention. Wildfire comes on, an AM radio hit I used to hear from the bunks my Dad built in the shed.
In the summer, we'd sleep out there, listen to sox games on the radio, news and pop songs. Then it hits me as I'm remembering the 2x4 I wrote my name and other sentiments on in the bunk- Dad had to build those bunks. One tiny project out of the thousands that Mom and Dad did for us. It is so easy to forget all those things.
It'll be easy for my daughters to forget the mayonnaise I plastered on their heads, the plastic wrap that went on top and the thousands of other efforts, often done through half awake eyes, veils of stress from a thousand other things, financial worries, agenda items.
Maybe it's just the plastic wrap around my brain making me sentimental. Thanks Mom and Dad.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Off Course and Loving It
After a great rocking show at the Maine Lobster Festival, I was hoping to get back out aboard Sweet Pea today. The wind forecast was for 5 to 10 knots. The actual wind arrives at 16 knots, so I'm off the boat for the day. My mind immediately shifts to: how do I get some slow-down? I've been hauling hard or flying, driving to and from performances for weeks and would like to just take up space for a day. Other plans are presented, so Ryan, Fiona and I set off for a very soulful old empty house off the beaten track on the island. It has an enormous chestnut tree that we like to climb and hang around in.
Before we get there, we're drawn to raspberries and end up picking a quart of them and going home with a pint or so.
The big mama chestnut tree is there waiting for us in the overgrown yard behind the farmhouse. We climb. Here's the thing: my fears are weaker these days, and I am having more fun. I took a spontaneous opportunity for a radio interview yesterday. Wouldn't have done that. Jumped into a songwriting contest. Wouldn't have done that. Went swimming in the river in Bowdoinham, reached out to others, taken some leaps. It's some middle aged peeling off of layers of intimidation. Or possibly, it's my bleached hair. In any case, I decide to climb as high as I can get in the tree. There are many points of vulnerability in climbing a big tree- gaps between good handholds, awkward places where I have to get around to the other side of the trunk, commitments that need to get made before the security of the next resting place. Even with all the zinging inside that comes from heights and climbing, I keep going and emerge from the upper part of the tree, higher than the chimney on the house.
After an hour or so of climbing, talking and daydreaming, we three decide to head off into the woods to see the cool old 1960's era Impala, Rambler and pickup truck decomposing in the forest, then come out behind Watkinson's and go up the road for a donut. We've done this ramble before so I was surprised how much it had grown in and how much the old cars had deteriorated since our last visit. We had many yards of head-high (on me) brambles to thrash through. We managed, and found some early blackberries along the way to spice up the earlier harvest.
I don't think we ever got more than a quarter mile from home, but it sure was a nice adventure; each part starting from an intention and going in some unexpected course.
Before we get there, we're drawn to raspberries and end up picking a quart of them and going home with a pint or so.
The big mama chestnut tree is there waiting for us in the overgrown yard behind the farmhouse. We climb. Here's the thing: my fears are weaker these days, and I am having more fun. I took a spontaneous opportunity for a radio interview yesterday. Wouldn't have done that. Jumped into a songwriting contest. Wouldn't have done that. Went swimming in the river in Bowdoinham, reached out to others, taken some leaps. It's some middle aged peeling off of layers of intimidation. Or possibly, it's my bleached hair. In any case, I decide to climb as high as I can get in the tree. There are many points of vulnerability in climbing a big tree- gaps between good handholds, awkward places where I have to get around to the other side of the trunk, commitments that need to get made before the security of the next resting place. Even with all the zinging inside that comes from heights and climbing, I keep going and emerge from the upper part of the tree, higher than the chimney on the house.
After an hour or so of climbing, talking and daydreaming, we three decide to head off into the woods to see the cool old 1960's era Impala, Rambler and pickup truck decomposing in the forest, then come out behind Watkinson's and go up the road for a donut. We've done this ramble before so I was surprised how much it had grown in and how much the old cars had deteriorated since our last visit. We had many yards of head-high (on me) brambles to thrash through. We managed, and found some early blackberries along the way to spice up the earlier harvest.
I don't think we ever got more than a quarter mile from home, but it sure was a nice adventure; each part starting from an intention and going in some unexpected course.
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