Lifesaving Lessons (3 page)

The sun was out in force now. Its beam on the water stung my eyes. So I closed them and easily drifted back to the warm and not so distant memory of great anticipation of slamming the herring. My crew—Dave Hiltz, Bill Clark, his son Nate—and I spent a very ambitious day and a half early last spring, driven by visions of dollar signs, working like mules to get the bottoms of three dories scraped and painted and launched, and six hundred fathoms of herring twine aboard Alden's boat, the
Grace Egretta.
The dories that we literally slapped antifouling paint on were the best of the bunch strewn around Alden's shorefront on Orr's Island, and were part of a package I agreed to, sight unseen. The guys and I had driven my Jeep to Alden's place with a plan to return home via water with our new herring venture in tow. Things went pretty much according to plan. Alden had seine twine in heaps all over the place—some on the wharf, some under tarps above the shore, and some stored in and on top of old truck bodies. Somewhat disorganized, Alden did manage to show us where things were and even dug up a couple of old paintbrushes from his fish house, or “condo,” as he delights in calling it. Although he kept assuring me that I was buying the best of what he had, when some of the twine ripped when pulled between two fingers, I had my doubts. It was too late to back out now. We had already named our business and had calculated the money we'd all save by catching our own bait and the profits we'd realize by selling what we couldn't use ourselves—and all cash to boot! I have never said, and never will say, that Alden ripped me off. I know he believes (mistakenly) that I got the better end of the bargain. “Do you know what it would cost to have a dory that size built today?”

“You mean as opposed to the year 1920, when it
was
built?” After a few of these friendly yet pointed exchanges, I let it go. What the hell, if Alden had fished this crap and made money, I guessed we could, too. Besides, it was his boat,
Grace Egretta,
that I wanted. And I was soon at her helm, bringing her alongside Alden's wharf to load the twine. Named for his mother,
Grace Egretta
was every bit as classy and stalwart. One of the more recently constructed wooden boats in the retro phase on the coast of Maine, she was bigger and much more capable than my own lobster boat, the
Mattie Belle.
The real advantage was the mast and boom she was equipped with and the hydraulic-powered purse block that is used to haul the twine, allowing my crew and me to step right into the present century rather than live in the past and basically manhandle miles of seine twine. Of course the first rule of business—especially business with pals—is to set it all down in writing. I should have spelled out my expectations to Alden, and he should have done the same with me. I believed I had given him a down payment on the boat. He believed I had purchased his junky herring gear and was borrowing the boat for delivery purposes only. Even if possession is indeed nine-tenths of the law, when it's Alden on the last tenth, you may as well give it up. But that didn't come until later.

So on this bright summer day (in my dream reverie), with a mountainous thirty-six thousand square feet of net filling the cockpit, and towing three dories single file behind us, we left Lowell's Cove and struck a course for home looking like a mother duck leading her triplets. Alden stood in his skiff and drifted by the mooring we had just dropped and waved until we couldn't see him anymore. He sure looked sad.

It was an ideal day for towing dories the eight-hour steam between Orr's Island and Isle au Haut, and I wasn't long forgetting Alden's forlorn good-bye and thinking ahead to happier things, like making money. Oh sure, we had plenty of work to do before we could actually catch fish. But we were all fairly gung ho and excited about engaging in a fishery different from the lobstering that hadn't been overly productive due to low prices and high expenses (one of which was bait, and we had a remedy for that now). Nate stretched out on the top of the twine, and Dave claimed a bunk down forward in the cabin while Bill and I sat in the wheelhouse and made a list of things to do before we could make proper use of our new acquisition.

Our arrival that afternoon into a glistening Penobscot Bay was special. We were filled with all the hope and goodwill that any bunch of friends embarking on an adventure would be. The first leg of the journey was complete. The dories were anchored in the thoroughfare at the town float where we could begin fixing their rails and refastening their guts. One dory needed a new stern fiberglassed into her as she appeared to have a big bite taken out of that end where the twine would catch when sliding from within to overboard during the setting process. All three dories needed some work before we could fill them with the seine gear they are designed to carry. I breathed a sigh of relief when we put the
Grace Egretta
on a mooring right in front of my house. I thought I'd feel pretty good looking at her first thing each morning. We went ashore by way of the town dock and were greeted with the fanfare appropriate for fishermen returning home with something that resembled employment and, more important, a way to provide bait to islanders, saving them the steam to the mainland that they would otherwise make. A few of the crustier guys shook their heads at the condition of our dories. But we had half expected it as that, too, is an island thing—negativity—especially when someone else is doing something constructive.

The head shakers and naysayers got fairly quiet in the days that followed when they saw how absolutely driven we were and how nice the first two dories came out. Bill, Nate, and Dave all neglected their lobster businesses to go hard at the herring venture. As soon as the first dory was repaired, we filled it with the first two hundred fathoms of running twine from the top of the pile aboard the
Grace Egretta,
mending holes and tears as we went. The holes and tears were quite numerous and it became obvious that Alden had a unique way of keeping his gear fishable. He hadn't, as far as I could tell, ever actually mended a hole in the net. He “puckered” holes and “laced” the straight cuts or tears. Puckering is where the twine around a hole is pulled together and tied in an overhand knot. It's “gommie,” a Maine word that means sloppy or untidy. Something done quickly and roughly is said to be gommed together, but quicker than “slugging,” or patching, with a new piece of netting to fill the hole. Lacing is similar to how a shoelace works. A piece of mending twine (like string) loaded on a special tool called a twine needle is pulled through the meshes on either side of a torn area; the mending twine is dispensed from the needle; and when a bit of tension is applied, it acts to draw the sides of the tear together, eliminating the places where fish can escape. We had no new twine with which to slug, so we got good at puckering and lacing. Some pieces of the net were so fragile from rot, they tore even more in the process of mending. Meshes popped from even the gentlest tug with the twine needle. It was frustrating, but we eventually had two dories full of some fairly tender “running twine.”

The running twine, as opposed to the purse seine, is used to shut off a cove or piece of shoreline after fish arrive there. One end of the seine is run ashore and tied to a tree or some other solid object. Once the end is secure, the dory carrying the bulk of the net is towed behind a boat around the targeted body of fish while the net spills into the water over the stern of the dory. The other end of the seine is also made fast to the shore so that the school of fish is surrounded or shut off from any exit. (Hence the importance of having no gaping holes.) Once the herring are shut off with running twine, it is possible to set the purse seine inside the stop seine to actually harvest the fish. A large school of fish can be held behind the twine indefinitely while a few are harvested with the purse seine as needed or as can be sold.

Unfortunately, before we had the new stern in dory number three, Alden phoned and demanded that I return the
Grace Egretta
. I put him off, denying the accusations that I had stolen his boat. But when he called and announced that he was on his way to Stonington and that I had better be there with his boat, or else, I took him at his word and gathered Omega Four and a half (the half being Dave's daughter Abigail, who at fourteen was damned good at operating the hydraulics). We hustled to move the only remaining seine—the purse—into the sternless dory. Luck was with us in that the purse seine was in very good condition. Other than a few nests made by mice or squirrels, the net was in need of very little repair. My crew was somewhat dismayed that we wouldn't have the power block or the big boat to work with, but I assured them that Alden had promised to deliver once we'd made a set on some fish. And Alden had assured me that we didn't need the boat or the block until we had fish shut off.

I met Alden in Stonington, sent him off in
his
boat, and returned to the island aboard the mail boat. Then it started to rain. And it rained for six weeks. It poured night and day for a month and a half. The state of Maine set a new record for rainfall that month of June, breaking the number of inches that had held that honor since 1917.

Our introduction to being members of a seining operation had not been pleasant. We bailed and pumped rain from dories on a daily basis. One day in week five produced a particularly heavy rain accompanied by wind. It was my turn to keep the dories afloat. The weather forecast had called for easterly wind, which suited me fine as that would leave all three dories in the lee of our island, and make for easy access by skiff to pump them out. Well, the wind wasn't out of the east. And it blew much harder than expected. I watched the two dories I could see from my parents' house fill with water and begin to wallow in the building sea. It had become impossible to go alongside to dewater now that the boats full of twine were bouncing all over the place. One knock with that weight to the side of my skiff, or even the
Mattie Belle,
and I might just be swimming for shore. I was kicking myself for not pumping earlier when one of the dories began swinging back and forth until a big wave crested over its stern quarter and capsized it. Down she went, stern first. Because there was flotation in the dory, and the twine apparently got caught on the stern, it stayed vertical with the tip of the bow above the surface and pointed toward heaven. (Being the glass-half-full gal that I am, I naturally failed to acknowledge that the stern of the dory was pointed in the opposite direction.) I learned then and there that there is no more helpless feeling in the world than watching a boat sink.

The heavy rain didn't take a breather for another twelve hours. The dory we had placed in Laundry Cove sank, resting fully in the mud on her bottom. The water was so shoal where she went down, all two hundred fathoms of cork line bobbed on the surface like a giant cluster of mushrooms, and the entire dory was quite visible when I drifted over it in my skiff after the gunk churned up by the storm had settled out of the water. Understanding that the Laundry Cove mishap would be the easiest retrieval, we focused on what seemed the bigger problem: the heaven-pointing dory in Robinson Cove. I called Alden for advice on how best to proceed and let him know that I could really use that power block to retrieve two-thirds of my gear. Pulling it back into dories by hand—if we could float the dories—would be foolhardy (not to mention backbreaking). Alden agreed to come with the boat, and gave me some specific instructions about what to do while I waited.

Alden had seen it all in his many years on the water. He didn't sound surprised that two of my dories were down. He told me everything would be fine and even volunteered that he'd been in much stickier situations. Our first task was to upright the vertical dory by untying it from the mooring and towing it by its painter. Alden claimed that once the dory was horizontal, and if it was towed at just the right speed, the water would spill out over the rails and stern until it was buoyant enough for us to go alongside with our twelve-volt pump to finish the job. Bill Clark and I went out with the
Mattie Belle
to give this procedure a whirl. I pulled up to the dory, and Bill untied the bow line from the mooring and tied it to a line on my stern with which to tow. I put my engine in gear at dead idle and waited for the towline to become taut. As soon as the line was straight, the angle of the dory changed just enough to allow whatever was holding the stern down to let go, and the dory literally jumped out of the water and smashed into the
Mattie Belle
's stern with enough force to punch a hole just above the waterline. Bill and I were somewhat stunned. To see a big boat launch itself from beneath the surface with enough velocity to deny you time even to scream or hit the deck was simply amazing. It was like a giant fish breaching. I had my usual reaction to the last straw in a string of misfortunes: I laughed. I stopped laughing when a voice on the VHF radio said, “I thought that fish was coming aboard!”

Bill and I stood looking over the transom at the damage for a couple of minutes before moving on to step two. The dory was now horizontal but upside down. Alden had said that towing the dory would right it, and we were already tied in. So we towed. We towed slow. We towed fast, and we towed at half speed. We towed on a short line. We towed on a long line, and we towed with a midlength line. We towed straight. We towed in circles. The dory would not flip over. The only thing it did do was take an occasional deep dive. Each time the bow went for the bottom, I slacked the throttle until it came back to the surface. Up and down; the dory had become a gigantic porpoise. Bill suggested we tow the dory to the town landing, where we could pull one side up with the hydraulic winch on the end of the dock. That seemed like a good idea.

In the middle of the thoroughfare, I lost all ability to steer the
Mattie Belle.
I didn't know whether I had blown a steering line or lost the pump, and there was no time to check it out. Fortunately, we were towing very slowly and Simon happened to be nearby in his boat,
Scalawag
. I waved him over and asked for a tow to my mooring. He was happy to help. After securing my boat, Bill and I hopped aboard with Simon, tied the stubborn dory to
Scalawag
's stern, and asked for a ride to the dock. Within two minutes, the dory was easily rolled over and we were pumping her out. I decided that in the future I would listen to Bill, as he is always quite logical and extremely clever with most everything.