Danforth anchor

The best part about being on winter break is that I get to be on the boat as much as I can.

Now, if only the weather would cooperate.

The weather is why we took a two-day trip. Dad said the low pressure systems coming our way would stir everything up and we might not get out later in the week, so he wanted to get as much fishing in before the weather got rough.

So we headed out beyond Malabar Island and spent the day hauling and moving gear. The wind had been blowing a couple of days before, and a swell from the north was big enough so that you felt as though you were sliding up and down small hills when we steamed from trawl to trawl.

I’ve always loved that feeling. Marie A puts her nose down and drives right up the side of the swell. Then you feel her top the wave and your stomach goes light and then you head down the other side.

Dad: The fishing’s been good. Got about five hundred pounds so far. Time to go anchor up.

That’s one of my favorite times, too. As we steamed toward Malabar Island, I scrubbed the deck and squared away all the gear. I was tired from hauling and picking and rebaiting and setting traps all day, but that kind of tired always makes me happy.

I could see the island getting closer. Dad knew a protected spot out of the swell with good holding ground not far from the abandoned lighthouse.

We got close to shore and Dad throttled down. I went forward with the anchor. He idled ahead, then signaled to me through the windshield. I let the anchor go, and it dropped into the water with a gulp.

For dinner we had a small codfish—a scrod—that we’d caught with a handline. Dad said he used to jig codfish all the time.

Dad: Used to even fish for them right off the beach. All you’d catch is cold if you tried that now.

The fish was so fresh that the flesh fell into white chunks in the frypan. That fish was the sweetest I ever tasted.

By the time we cleaned up the dishes, the stars were shining so bright I could see the silhouettes of two deer moving past the dark form of the lighthouse ashore.  I went out on the deck and saw the constellation Orion rising. It’s one of my favorites. Take a look sometime: It looks like a giant leaping across the sky.  Orion is also called the Hunter. Betelguese is the right shoulder. The left foot is Rigel. Belletrix is the left shoulder. Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak form the belt. Saiph is the right foot. They were so bright I saw their reflections on the small waves.

Dad stayed in the pilothouse all night, and I slept on the engine cover there, too, curled up in my sleeping bag.  Before I went to bed, Dad switched off the diesel. I thought that all the leftover ringing in my ears would never go away.

But the sound of the tide gurgling past the hull came to me along with the splash of the waves on the beach.

I conked out for most of the night, but whenever I woke up (I could see my breath by the starlight), I saw Dad at the helm, keeping watch.

We cooked eggs and bacon and toast before daylight, and then we steamed back to our sets. You could tell from the dawn sky that a change was coming. Long feathers and plumes of cirrus stretched from one side of the horizon to the other and turned blood-red and orange and cotton-candy pink as the sun came up.

We got home that afternoon. Rain mixed with snow spat down as we tied up.

Dad: A thousand-pound trip. Not bad for a camping expedition.

The other night when I got my homework done, I was heading into the kitchen for something to eat and passed Mom reading in the family room. She looked up from her book and told me she was proud of me for keeping after the writing I was doing.

My heart started racing.

Me: You mean I can stop now? You’re letting me off the hook?

Mom (laughing): What was our agreement?

Me (my heart sinking): I don’t remember.

Mom: Yes, you do. You’re writing to make up for disobeying your father and me and nearly getting yourself hurt—or worse.

Me: Oh, yeah.

Mom: So do you think you’ve completed your sentence?

Me (my stomach growled): I guess not. (My sentence would never be finished—not even the kind on the page.)

Mom (smiling): But you’re getting there. Just think: When school’s out in June, you can spend all your time on the boat.

Me (to myself): June is a hundred years away.

Mom: And you’re letting people know what it’s like on Fog Island and what lobstering is all about.

Me: At least Briggs likes reading my stuff.

Mom: Did you know that you were on the Marie A before you we’re born?

Me (probably looking at her like she had sprouted antennae): What do you mean?

Mom: I was actually working as sternman with your dad and your grandfather when I was pregnant with you.

Me (I must have turned about as red as a boiled lobster): How…I mean, how could you work like that?

Mom (laughing): I wasn’t that pregnant. I stopped making trips when I got too big to reach over the sorting table.

Me: That’s…good.

Mom: Not like Dot Newcomb.

Me: You mean Mrs. Newcomb over on Skinnequit Cove? Louise Newcomb’s mom?

Mom: Yes. She cut it a bit closer.

Me: What do you mean?

Mom: This was about twenty-five years ago—that’s how old Louise is—and Dot went into labor right on the boat.  Gave birth to Louise in the wheelhouse. Swaddled her in an oilskin jacket.

Me: Man. I’m glad I didn’t see that.

Mom (shaking her head): You know Bud? Mr. Newcomb?

Me: Doesn’t he work for Louise as her sternman now?

Mom (nodding): You’ll never guess what he made Mrs. Newcomb do. After she gave birth, that is.

Me (not knowing whether I really wanted to hear about it or not): Uh…what?

Mom: Well, he said the fishing was so good that day, and the delivery was so smooth, he was going to finish hauling the last two traps on the trawl before they headed in.

Me: What did Mrs. Newcomb do?

Mom: She said, “Don’t you worry about us. You finish all the trawls out here and then we’ll head in. Don’t want to miss a payday like this.”

I had to shake my head. No wonder Louise started running her own boat as soon as she could afford one. If anyone was, she was born to lobster.

You probably know that lobsters have two claws. But did you know that when they lose one—sometimes they even eject one if it means they can escape—they can grow them back? Regeneration, it’s called.

We call a lobster with one claw a cull. A lobster that has lost both claws is called a bullet.

Before we band the claws when we take them out of the traps, the lobsters try to get you. I can’t say I blame them. They’re fighting for their lives.

Reaching in to grab them, you have to approach them from behind their bodies where they can’t reach (although some lobsters seem to be able to reach anywhere).  Sticking your hand in when a couple of big feisty lobsters have their claws open, ready to snap, is like reaching into an attack dog’s cage. You better be fast.

Lobsters have two kinds of claws: a cutting or pinching claw and a crushing claw.

I don’t remember how many times I’ve been bitten, but just thinking about it makes patches of my skin crawl.

The bite of each claw feels different. Both can hurt like crazy if they get you right.

The pincher bite feels like the blade of a paper cutter slicing down on you. The crusher feels like a pair of heavy-gauge pliers gripping harder and harder—so hard you think the pain will never stop getting worse.  You can end up bruised and cut and bleeding and muttering if one gets you.

Once I had one reach out when I leaned over the sorting table and latch onto the skin of my stomach. It left a welt like a tattoo of a red horseshoe.

An unbanded lobster hasn’t caught me in a long time. I hope saying that doesn’t jinx me.

But I take that back. Watching the Patriots on Sunday made me feel like a lobster bit me with both claws—inside my stomach.

At least Briggs was happy. He sent me a “condolence” note.

Briggs: “Cheer up, Eddie. Think how long luck has been on your team’s side. I suspect that one of the laws of the universe is that luck must be distributed according to some cosmic statistic that we don’t understand.”

That’s all well and good—if you believe in luck in the first place. If you don’t, you just have to move on and get working even harder.

This winter has been pretty mild so far, even though we just had a few inches of snow and a nor’easter that kept Dad from going out for three days because of the seas.

During that storm, I helped Dad out doing some work on the boat. We changed the oil in the diesel, checked the electronics—the GPS, radar, and depth finder—and the hydraulics in the hauler, inspected the bilge pumps and lobster tank, hosed and scrubbed the deck (even though rain gushed down the whole time), and replaced the blade on the windshield wiper.

The wind was blowing hard enough to shove the boat around even in our cove, and the lines creaked and the antennas on the cabin roof moaned and whined.

I wondered about getting caught offshore in a blow like this.

Me:  Have you been caught out a lot in weather like this?

Dad (sliding the hauling door closed against the rain): Enough to not want to get caught out again. Your grandfather and I got hit hard a number of times when we fished together, and I’ve been out myself in rougher stuff than this when the wind hit fifty knots or so. Not by choice: On one boat I crewed on years ago we lost our steering, and the skipper didn’t want to call the Coast Guard even though we were getting slammed by a southeast blow.  We ended up jury-rigging the steering with trawl line and running up in the lee of Malabar to wait it out.

Me: How big were the seas?

Dad (squinting out the windshield): By the time we got the steering fixed, I’d say the seas were three-quarters the height of those pines out on the point, maybe twenty, twenty-five feet high.

Me: Wow. (And I thought Briggs and I had it rough when we got caught in the Gut in his catboat.)

Dad: But I’ll tell you one time after just a minor blow your grandfather and I were heading back from a trip by way of Outer Point on Malabar. It’s all rips and shoals there anyway. Somehow the crosscurrents caused a wave to pop up that flipped the boat up. I was on the port side, and he was at the wheel. I was tilted up so high I was looking straight down past him into green water out the hauling door.

Me: What happened?

Dad: Somehow the boat straightened herself out. It was a freak thing. I was kind of exhilarated by it at first. I didn’t get rattled till later, thinking about what might have happened.

We went back to doing chores. I couldn’t stop thinking about that green water. I sure didn’t want to flip a boat, or nearly flip the way Briggs and I did. I got back to work cleaning the insides of the cabin portholes, and I couldn’t help thinking how much a thrill being offshore and seeing those big green seas would be.

Oh, yeah: Briggs is all charged up about the Giants winning, being from New York and all. I guess we’ll see what the Patriots have to say about that on Sunday, won’t we?

Dad went to the Lobstermen’s Association seminar and event on the mainland over the weekend. I’ve gone with him before but I had about a million tests this week to study for so I had to stay back on Fog Island. He said the fishing was slow anyway, so being away for a few days would let the traps soak longer and maybe catch a few more bugs.

I wished I could have gone because you get to meet lobstermen like us from all over and go to seminars about all the stuff I like to hear about. Dad says he enjoys the “shoptalk.”

Here’s what some of the topics were:

It’s All About Bait, with an expert from the Lobster Institute talking about imported bait, how much bait to use, and what’s safe.

Medical Emergency First Aid, about dealing with injuries like bleeding, bone fractures or internal injuries, shock, hypothermia, drowning emergencies, and just about anything else you might run into on the water.

Creating Habitat for Lobsters, with experts from the University of Maine and the Lobster Institute, about a big problem lobsters face—not having home shelter—and some of the ways people are helping them out.

I wish I could have gone to the one called Whales, Whales, Whales, too, but I guess I’ll just have to wait till next year.

If you want to see more about what the association is all about, take a look at www.lobstermen.com. (Thanks to the association for letting me quote some of their seminar material.)

Oh, yeah: Briggs wrote to me about my dad’s library, and he wanted me to be sure to mention that one of his favorite books is Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling. That’s another one that’s on Dad’s bookcase, too.

You might think that a lobsterman doesn’t have much time for anything but lobsters, bait, and his boat, but somehow my dad has always found time to read. Mom and Laurie do, too.

I like to go into the little cubby hole in the house he calls his office—it’s beside the mudroom where we hang our oilskins and put our boots—and see what’s on the bookcases jammed in there. Sometimes he leaves a book he’s reading lying on the round table beside his lumpy chair.

Yesterday I found one called Seaworthy by Linda Greenlaw on his chair. (Another book called Seamanship by Adam Nicolson sits on the bookcase beside the Chapman book called Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling.)

Linda Greenlaw’s a lobsterman and swordfisherman from Isle au Haut, Maine, and Dad’s got a bunch of her other books including The Hungry Ocean, All Fishermen are Liars, and The Lobster Chronicles. I liked the last one best. It reminded me of life on Fog Island.

Here are some of the other books in his bookcase:

The Wooden Nickel by William Carpenter

Hull Creek by Jim Nichols

The Lobster Coast by Colin Woodward

The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger

Alongshore by John Stilgoe

One Man and His Sea by Gordon S. Smith

The Outermost House by Henry Beston (one of Laurie’s favorites)

I won’t list them all, but he also has a bunch of books by Henry Thoreau including his journal (I like dipping into it because it’s got good descriptions of nature), Cape Cod, and The Maine Woods.

Oh, yeah: He’s got a copy of Into the Trap, signed by the author. So do I, up in my room right beside my bed. Even my school library has a couple of signed copies.

We made a trip to Malabar last weekend. I was glad to get out after being back in school after the break—even though we caught almost nothing.

Dad: They call it “changing the water in the traps.”  Looks like the bugs are on the move again. Time to shift into deeper water.

We headed up to the northern tip of the island, past the World War II observation tower, and went out toward the wreck that’s out on one of the offshore shoals. We steamed right up to it. Dad eased the throttle back to an idle.

It loomed huge above us. The swells heaved inside it and made a gulping sound that echoed in the hull. Inside the hull the water turned marble green. Cormorants lined the rail, staggered up one after the other like sentries.  (We also call them shags.) Marie A rolled as Dad eyed the wreck. I wondered what he was thinking.

Me: How come we don’t ever set here?

Dad (giving a quick shake of his head): Never have. Wicked tides for one. It’s graveyard, too. Six sailors went down with the ship. She was a tanker, and broke up in a nor’easter. No sense in disturbing them with a bunch of traps, even though she went down twenty years ago.

Me (to myself):  That’s kind of creepy. I wouldn’t set out here, either.

We steamed away to the northwest. The wreck was still in sight when we set, and I kept looking back at it jutting out of the gray water like a whale frozen in mid breech. I wondered what crawling up on its slanted deck would be like.

Maybe we’ll do better setting out that far. We didn’t see any other lobster buoys in that area, meaning no one else shifted gear out there yet. But Dad has a nose for bugs. If the weather’s decent this week, he’s going again with Mom as sternman now that Laurie went back to school.

I hate missing a trip, but I guess I can’t always go. Not yet, anyway.

I spotted a small boat heading in my direction. (You remember where I was: drifting out by Tern Island, my motor dead.) I didn’t want to hail anyone because I figured I could get the motor going—I can usually figure out what’s wrong myself—or I’d just suck it up and paddle home. But the boat was heading right for me, and even though I gave the starter a couple more pulls, I was still dead in the water. The boat came up at a good clip—quiet as a whisper.

The boat was quiet because it was being rowed, and it was a gleaming white wooden rowing lapstrake skiff with Hallie Ryder at the oars.

Hallie (pulling alongside and shipping her oars): Hey, Eddie. Outboard doesn’t seem to be cooperating.

Me (to myself): I don’t think she’s ever said two words to me. And now she’s rescuing me?

Me (to Hallie): How’d you guess?

Hallie (laughing): I’ve only been watching you try to get it started for the last half hour.

Me (my turn to laugh): You’re right. It’s dead. Bet it’s water in the gas.

Hallie: I’ll give you a tow.

Me: You don’t have to. I can paddle from here.

Hallie (laughing again): Don’t worry about it. Here, take this line.

So I grabbed the line, tied it to the bow cleat, lifted the prop out of the water, and sat back while she turned us around and rowed off. She rowed fast and steady, and we flew right back to our cove, me being towed by Hallie Ryder, daughter of Bert Ryder, owner of Ryder Boats, one of the most successful designers and boat builders on the island, the same Hallie Ryder I’d seen all my life but who I bet probably had never seen me, even though we were in the same class and lived about as far away from each other as you could throw a clam.

Me: Your dad build this boat?

Hallie (smiling as she rowed): We worked on her together.

Me: Sweet. Pretty boat.

Hallie: Thanks.

I thought I’d mind being towed in like that—by a rowboat. But it turned out I didn’t. (Besides, nobody was home yet, so I didn’t get any ribbing, not right away.) When I told her I owed her one when we got back to the dock, she laughed again.

Hallie: Forget it. Just give me a tow if I ever need it.

Me (to myself): That’s a promise.

Oh, yeah: Dad and I had to replace all the gas and bleed the lines.

Dad: Water in your gas will do it every time. Next time remember to stow that tank in the shanty before a storm.

Thanks to Kirsten Cappy for posting the pictures of our winning lobster librarian’s dinner. Let me also thank the lobster librarian herself, April Van Buren, for capturing the big event. The lobsters sure look like they had some fight in them even after their cross-country trip. They look cooked to perfection, too—so much that my mouth is watering. The pots, too, made me think of our own kitchen. (Maybe I can work on Dad for another lobster dinner before Laurie heads back to school.)

Congratulations to April once again.