Pick Your Pounding

The wind and waves are into many weeks of consecutive irksome uncooperativeness. Eventually, financial pressure and domestic friction force the fishermen to choose the least bad next day. We had two.

One day was unpleasant, the next offensive. The similarity ends there. Sunday was cracking cold, blowing hard from the north, high glare and harsh brightness. The next was damp and blowing harder from the Southwest.

Sunday wasn't that rough because the mainland is a mere 20 some miles to the north and the waves can't get enough fetch to grow large.

The problem Sunday was the sandpaper cold on my face all day, the creeping chill in fingers and toes that never went away. I normally cannot get cold if I'm working. Not so on Sunday. On the way out to the back side of the Wooden Ball Island, I bagged bait turned sideways the whole way because the wind picked up water and garden hosed it over the port side at a height coincidentally similar to me from head down. The tv meteorologists make much mention of wind chill. They haven't developed a measurement for when you add salt water to the wind and temperature coefficients.

Monday there was plenty of fetch. The 10 to 15 knot forecast seemed short by about half.

Up two stories, down sideways. Tipping and rolling. What is horizontal or level becomes meaningless. I am peripherally aware of the rapid appearance and vanishing of water pyramids, the boat at all angles while my equilibrium is only related to the deck. Despite the wild swinging of the horizon and other normal references of balance, the boat hull is evolved such that it orients itself to the waves by swinging and rolling so my center of gravity gyroscopes along with it. Staying up is relatively easy considering the range of motion. I swing like a spindle top.

My main goal is to stay on the boat, surfing weightless then multiple G-force moments. There is some detachment, not of rotator cuffs, but between the crazed orientation of the boat and the simultaneous routine of me just doing my job. It seems impossible to a short term mariner like myself that the boat isn't flipped, rolled, or folded in half. It just sort of glides up and down, occasionally offering the unexpected snap and sudden tilt. The movement is fine when I'm in the open. I ain't no gymnast, but the autogyro seems to work pretty good except when hard objects with corners do not share my ballet of motion and gravity.

Got to get out of the house sometimes.

Vacation, Staycation, Throw it Awaycation

The wind slows down a little today. Maybe tomorrow, Clayton and I will be back on the water. By my count, we've had 2 nice days since early September. The kind of days where I work with 2 feet on the platform at the same time instead of doing the try to stay standing up dance. What would have been impossible conditions aboard Sweet Pea become normal as fall fades into winter.

Two days ago I flew into town. I kept thinking we must be flying really low because the waves seemed so big. I had no trouble at all locating the wind direction as the tops of the waves were all smeared very straight and long across Penobscot Bay. The plane ride back was fine except for the last 500 feet of elevation, which was only terrifying except for the last 100 feet when it got really tilty and I panicked and grabbed the woman's knee sitting next to me. I apologized immediately. She seemed to understand completely. I'm glad it wasn't a tough sternman sitting next me. That could have been really awkard.

My staycation turned into throw it awaycation. I've wanted to clean out the extra bedroom/dumpster for a couple of years. The junk and clutter offends me almost as much as the lack of space for art, music, and hanging out as well as being utterly embarrassed when offering a place to stay to our friends. Or being too embarrassed to even think of offering any accommodation.

The upstairs hall was just as bad. Hand me downs that were outgrown before they were handed down. Lots of paper from school, doodles and unknown origins. About 172 mateless socks jettisoned by my almost always sockless children. You'd think I'd see them running around all the time with one socked foot judging by the number of singletons I found in the rubble.

After several days of bailing stuffing and hauling (being a sternman was just the training I needed for this) there was a nice, startlingly spacious extra room. A free addition. Probably should get a padlock on there.

3,080 Pounds of Carbon Dioxide

A hundred times in the last month, I've thought I was going to get back aboard Sweet Pea and haul more traps, or try out my ultra cool electric backup motor. Storms have threatened, good days have gone to making some cabbage for the long, poor winter. One thing or another has kept Sweet Pea sitting awkwardly on the grass instead of swanlike in the harbor. 

Today I started pulling the operation apart and bringing the pieces home. Solar panel, winch, safety gear, trap flipper, bait bags and iron, oarlocks, oars. The boat will come tomorrow, though I really have no idea how to accommodate the craft inside my congested and tiny barn. 

It's a lifetime of 5 months ago that the boat was towed into the harbor. There was no winch, no trap lever to help get the traps aboard. The sail was still a curiosity I'd found in the barn. I had no idea how to sail- still really don't even though I've done it a few times. I had no idea how to row, how to approach buoys, how to haul traps, judge the weather, moor the boat. I had no clue about any of it.

The boat arrived in Matinicus harbor not only lacking proper oarlocks, but having been sent with only one that fit the socket. Great for rowing around in a small circle. I rowed for weeks sitting down, trying to learn the approach to traps, hurting my neck, and, really, everything else. Wind was an invisible bully. Waves and rocks terrified me as I tried to gauge how close was too close without finding out. Pulling up steel traps standing in this very small boat was the hardest physical challenge I've ever experienced. 

By far the most stressful element I can share was the financial realization that poured over me cold and abrupt as a bucket of snow melt. On the worst of those early days, I came home very sore and $25 or so richer. The emotional impact and panic around making the thing pay was far worse than the rowing and pulling on ropes. Shame. Guilt. What have I done!? What will I do now!? How do I get out of this?

It got better. First the standup oarlocks finally came a month later. Then Clayton rigged them to the proper height. Then Dad, bless him, bought me an electric winch. The number of traps per day rose. The time out on the water came down dramatically. I got more comfortable staying out of the breakers but getting into rocks. I sailed. Lobsters were plentiful. The price was decent. There were many beautiful and profitable days on the water, at least for a few weeks after the operation was up and running properly.

Though I'm sure they had their own conversations, incredulous and laughing, the fishermen never stopped helping and advising and checking on me out on the water.

All told, I brought in about 2,800 pounds of Maine lobster this season. Based on a boat using 25 gallons of diesel per day for 250 traps that yield 2 pounds per trap, my harvest saved about 140 gallons of diesel which, according to the EPA, saved about 3,080 pounds of CO2 emissions.

Sweet Pea is done for the year. She did beautifully. The boat was the one thing I could absolutely count on every day. Here's to the Carpenter's Boatshop and to the design, evolved right here on tiny Matinicus Island.

Next time, I'll look at next year, the evolution of my operation, the bigger issues of food, environment, economy and community as well as marketing and logistics.

Thank you for reading!

Why Would You Want to do That?

Good question as I'm doing the staggering drunk orange rodeo clown act in the stern of the Samantha J.

During a particularly absurd sequence where the boat jumped and rolled in many directions simultaneously, I thought I'd be clever:

"Bull riders only have to stay on for seven seconds or something."

Captain Clayton trumped me instantly:

"Yeah, and they get to sit down!"

Why indeed? It's a good question on a day when it's blowing 25 out of the northeast. Not many boats ventured out of the harbor this morning. It's starting to get cold. Norah Jones's warm sleepy soft flannel voice sounds wicked out of place here.

The deeper question is why not? Many of the comments on articles about what I'm doing, many of the conversations I've had and a lot of the obvious unstated points all ask why I would quit being a lawyer and work as a stern man. I have felt disapproval and bafflement from close points in my life and from people who do not know me. Aside from the fact that I never made much money as an attorney, my question is why is that kind of work respected so much more than being a sternman? Like being a lawyer is so great. I've come to realize how much status has to do with it and how stupid status is.

Call me crazy, but I am at least as proud of learning to work on the ocean as of getting through law school and handling cases. Working on the sea has unique challenges and its own language just like the law. Well not just like. Fishing is fun. And it hurts a lot.

"He was just some stern man. They all look the same to me." Lisa and I have heard this a number of times.

Sternmen do arrive here with tattoos, scars, conditions of release, varying phases of opiate dependence, and garnishment orders for child support, taxes and medical bills. That's not all of them and that is not all there is to them, either. I've also found them to be generous, extremely hardworking individuals with surprising amounts of specialized skills and knowledge. There is that status thing, though.

So again, the question is, why would I do this? I was trying to answer it for myself this morning, while also trying to admire the gray wet desolate beauty of the ride out to the westerd (local variant of westward). Then onto the stereo comes Desperado, by the Eagles, that somewhat hokey but extremely well crafted song about a guy who makes life hard on himself out west somewhere. Way out west where they would not know what "westerd" means. I am not a desperado, but the answer to the question came to me while the song was playing.

Somewhere around 1978, the Eagles released a live double album with Desperado on it. The song is preceded by a beautiful string section intro that reminded me of wilderness. Mountains, streams, valleys. I loved that intro. I loved reading Edward Abbey. I also was living amidst some turmoil at 16 , but if I was in the woods, or out in a field, I was happy. At ease. The nagging, itchy square peg divorce kid feelings did not follow me there.

So that's basically it. I like being outdoors, and always have. Status or no. Why give up status and security? Why be so hard on my body? Shouldn't I be doing something respectable and letting my body rot from the inside in a chair or car and then trying to make up for the inactivity in the gym? Won't I have to pay the piper? Oh, probably. Definitely eventually. This day looks like at least an installment on the piper payment schedule.

Salty Hell and Feisty Sweetness

First, I didn’t think we were going. It was blowing hard. Undersides of leaves showing on bowed over shrubs. That kind of wind. Blue gray sky. Really? We're not going, are we? Maybe the phone battery quit.

I walked to the wharf with a slight headache which had all day to grow into a vicious octopus of pain, all tentacles and beak inside my skull. Large seas and sharp chop below Matinicus Rock enhanced the experience.

I’ve been out in rough weather occasionally over 5 seasons. The waves grow, and pile up unexpectedly when you’re carrying a trap or walking around a corner. The lobster tank or bait box digs into the lower back or rib cage as the deck tilts suddenly. Traps fall off the washboard. Knees drop out by reflex to keep the center of gravity inside the boat.

I’ve been out when I personally was many points below a hundred percent. Kids up all night, viruses, one hellacious case of poison ivy. People don’t call in sick in this business.

After 160 or so, I kept thinking I needed to pull the cord and ask to be taken in, something I have not done in 5 years in the stern. I kept thinking and hoping the weather would settle down, or the headache would ease, or that I was just seasick, and it would pass. My head was a bundle of very highly functional pain receptors. I kept thinking I was going to toss into the bait box. My knees got rubbery. After an hour or so of that, stubbonrness gave way to the need to be horizontal. And dry and quiet. At the end of the 18th string, I made the call. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to take me in.” Capt. ‘Brook never hesitated or scowled. “It happens” he said.

I’ve never been through anything like that. Kind of stupid I waited so long.

Apple Festival 2010

A growing season we have had. Apples are no exception. Matinicus Isle from the air looks about 90 percent wooded. This was not so back a few generations. The island was almost all pastured, gardened, or otherwise wide open. Places that seem very removed from each other now were easily visible. And there are apple trees everywhere. Side of the road, front yards, tucked in the woods. For a couple of weeks now, on slower afternoons, the kids and I have wandered around with a shopping bag and a gaff, then made lots of applesauce, apple crisp and 16 jars of genuine island apple jelly.

Wild apples are a lot less uniform and photogenic, and a lot more flavorful. Humble a dish as it is, the applesauce has a zing and depth to it nonexistent in jars from the mainland, from trucks, factories and fluorescent lit retail environs. The flavor journals all the sun, fog, wind, rain and feisty sweetness of the place.

Sweetgrass and Saltwater

Sweetgrass is an excellent movie about sheep herding in Montana. One particularly striking scene showed the flock on a bright green meadow, moving for all the world like a school of fish as the dogs tried to keep them moving in the right direction. The camera was located high above the flock and gradually zoomed out to show how tiny the group of sheep, dogs and one guy on horseback were in the Montana wilderness. As stunning as the scene was, it was the soundtrack that hit home. In the midst of the visual grandeur, the herder was having an all out tantrum because the sheep were trying to move up a rocky bluff where they shouldn’t go. The herder was fit to be tied, and trying to come up with stronger and more obscenities.

I have done this very thing.

Surrounded by hypnotic beauty, interacting with nature and mad enough to split in half. With me it was probably the wind, waves, my ineptitude, lack of lobsters, sore everything. Muttering sometimes, yelling myself hoarse other times. Resisting the urge to smash something. With my luck, that kind of tantrum would probably leave a big hole below the water line.

Since I’m now back in the familiar and comfortable role of sternman, the highs and lows are gone. My few traps have been undisturbed, at least by me for my two days off the Samantha J. The wind has been going and there is big towering surf from Hurricane Igor. As with Bill last year, it’s sunny from horizon to horizon, yet the destructive surge erupts over shoals I didn’t know existed and in great unzipping curls off the ends of the islands and ledges. All of the islands and shoreline are glowing at the margins, fringed in aerosolized salt water. Highway sized trails of foam extend from the lee shores of islands, rocks and ledges.

Beautiful and forbidding of a man in a small rowboat. I stay on shore and have no tantrum today.

Motive power converted from solar energy is coming to Sweet Pea in the next day or two. It will be an experiment.

Sweet Pea Returns, Classic Rock Too

September 10, 2010-

Today was the first day back out on Sweet Pea after Hurricane Earl prompted me to haul her out onto the grass. Yesterday, I got inspired to drag the boat across the grass, then got into the gravel road and wondered if I'd get her across or gouge up the hull, or be tying up the main access to the wharf in my stubbornness. She's way too stout for me to move by myself, I find. Then I rolled the boat with buoys under the keel. After that, Eric and Kyle helped me get her the rest of the way into the water. 

I ventured out this morning and found 4 of my 19 remaining traps gone. Caught a few lobsters and a bunch of big fat crabs which became supper for Ryan and myself. Rowed around Wheaton and the harbor. Hauled up gear and rowed back in a frisky headwind. Me, the boat, the wind, the water, and the lobsters.

September 13, 2010

Clayton has somewhere on the order of 3,400 songs on the official Samantha J IPod, which works out to a random assortment of 1,700 or so, being that I can only hear one side of the stereoscopic field. The IPod vapor-locked 1 second from the end of Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton. Strange because classic rock songs seldom come up in the random mix. Stranger still because then we were stuck with classic rock via old fashioned FM. 

These tunes are what I grew up with. I taught myself Band on the Run, Sweet Home Alabama, and a lot of songs in that vein starting in the 5th grade. The problem with this radio format is that it takes a tiny cross section of artists and songs and plays them incessantly. It's a buffet with 200 kinds of mac and cheese, varying only by how mild the cheddar is. I don't prefer to hear 4 Journey songs in one shift in the stern, thank you. Bob Seger has an extensive catalog, but this station thinks he had only 2 or 3 songs to his credit.

Damn the Telecommunications Act of 1996, allowing unprecedented media consolidation and giving rise to monolithic radio conglomerates all pouring out the same tired playlists of Classic Rock. I love these songs, and hate to see them ruined by franchisement. Business-wise it makes perfect sense. Keep people listening to the same catalog and you don't have to develop new material or fresh takes on the older stuff. Play the song, condition the response, deliver the listeners to advertisers having only enough brain function to pull out the debit card and buy the advertised goods and services. 

As much as I'd rather not hear songs that remind me of youth and keep my brain in a soupy mushy place of familiarity, but rather songs that expand my palate and make me look ahead, I work repetitively, so I guess the repetitive format is OK. I sing. I swing traps around. They swing me back. The deck sways-gently today, which is nice.