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".
