"My Life As A Sternman" Aug 2013

Mon Aug 5, 2013 

My Life As A Stern Man #5

Hi Folks,

We got down to the boat earlier than usual this morning and it was darn cold...the coldest morning in a long time. I thought August was supposed to be the hottest month but apparently no one told the weatherman. 

It's been cool and rainy all summer - except for that one weekend in July when the temperature almost reached triple digits.  

Anyway, the wind was blowing about ten knots and the further we got out of the harbor, the wind blew stronger and the rollers (swells) got bigger. 

And all the time we were steaming out, the song that kept running through my mind was...wait for it... The Edmund Fitzgerald. I might as well have been thinking of the Titanic! 
 
Speaking of Titanic, let me digress a moment. Waaaay back when I graduated from high school (don't even try to count that far back), my mother, brother and I spent the summer in Europe. 

We flew to New York and boarded a cruise liner, the SS Rotterdam, to South Hampton, England. The Rotterdam's Captain decided to hold a talent show with the passengers and my mom signed me up because I played the guitar...just Girl Scout campfire stuff, nothing fancy. 

Well, I didn't clear my repertoire with Mumsie and one of the songs I sang was a lively little ditty entitled 'Titanic'.  

It goes like this..."Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue and they thought they had a ship that the water would not come thru. But the Lord's almighty hand said this ship would never land, it was sad when the great ship went down". 

It gets even better with the chorus..."Oh it was sad, it was sad. It was sad when the great ship went down to the bottom of the... Husbands and wives, little bitty children lost their lives. It was sad when the great ship went down". 

Needless to say my mother was mortified that I sang a song about a sinking ship while we were on a ship! But I won second place so I guess no one was too upset!

Well, I've digressed enough for today. That's it for now. Be safe and, as the Cap'n likes to say, "stay out of the hot sun".

 

Fri Aug 2, 2013 

My Life As A Stern Man #4

Hi Folks,

We took a day off to go to the Lobster Festival in Rockland (go figure).  Back hauling traps today and picked up something I had never seen before...a sea cucumber. 

It felt kind of solid, not squishy and apparently is able to mold itself around the trap to get in or out thru the wire. 

We also get hermit crabs, star fish and regular fish in our traps....sculpin and flounder and even caught a spider crab last week.

But the strangest thing I've ever seen was something that lived in the red algae seaweed that was growing on the buoy line. I can only assume it was some type of protozoa/insect and it was definitely alive. 

And on our way back in, we picked up some rope and part of a spindle that got wrapped around the boat's propeller shaft. 

The whole way in from Ram Island Light that spindle kept hitting the hull. We ended up having to get a diver to go down and cut it it off. 
Thank goodness there wasn't any damage!

While we waited for the diver, the boat got a good cleaning. We have thick mats that are put down on the deck so we don't slip (fish guts make it awful slimy - ick). 

The mats are really just a bunch of 1 inch rubber holes joined together in a 3 foot square. These holes do let the water flow through but they trap seaweed, small crabs and all kinds of stuff and have to be taken up, shaken, and put on the (trap) slide so I can hose down the deck.

Then the rest of the boat got scrubbed down...that's me climbing on the side and cleaning windows.

That's it for now. Be safe and, as the Cap'n likes to say, "stay out of the hot sun".

My Life As A Stern Man #3
 
Hi Folks,
Today started out very slow for me. I was pretty much sleepless last night and 0:00 dark hundred came waaaay too early this morning. But we got underway only slightly later than usual, so the Cap'n decided he wouldn't dock my paycheck. 

Oh wait.... I don't get a paycheck😐 

 It was a beautiful day on the water - tank top weather - and by the time we reached our first string, I was feeling fine and dandy.
 

Here's a bit of trivia I'll bet most of you didn't know. Has nothing to do with lobstering but interesting just the same.

I'm sure you all have heard the term 'Down East' when people are talking about Maine but I'll bet you don't know what that really means. 

In the early days of sailing when ships sailed from Boston to ports in Maine (which are east of Boston), the prevailing winds were at their backs...so they were sailing downwind, or going 'Down East.' 

And when they returned to Boston they were sailing upwind or going 'up to Boston,' despite the fact that Boston lies approximately 50 miles to the south of Maine’s southern-most border.

 I'll bet you could win Trivial Pursuit with that knowledge!

Anyway, back to lobstering. Despite the fact that the day was beautiful, the lobsters just were not cooperating. It's very frustrating to pull up a trap that has about a dozen lobsters in it, only to have ten of them be under-size or notched females and have to be thrown back into the ocean. 

It takes approx. 7years for a lobster to grow to legal size. A notched female means that a V has been cut into the 2nd left segment or Uropod of the tail. She has reached a certain age and has been caught when she had eggs and is now considered a breeder/egger. The photo (above) shows the eggs and a green circle is where the notch is on this female. 
 
Maine law closely regulates the lobster industry to ensure the waters are not 'fished out'; lobstermen are required to throw back all notched females. 

That's it for now. Be safe and, as the Cap'n likes to say, "stay out of the hot sun".