It's 21:18 on November 29th, and I'm at the helm of the F.V. Timberwolf, out of nowhere. The rest of the crew is asleep. I'm visiting home for thanksgiving, and Jamie needed someone to go fishing with him for a quick two day trip. I had called him in the morning to get the surf report, and the next thing you know, instead of visiting Mystic Seaport with my family I find myself on a 90 foot steel boat, in the middle of the ocean. We're headed just east of south, on our way to "the tail", an area about 100 miles south of Point Judith, Rhode Island.
I am working on going broke, without many prospects for work back in Washington, so I couldn't really pass up a chance to make a quick $500 bucks.
The imaginary little boat cursor on the chart plotter shows me that I'm more or less on course. When I first took the helm for my watch, there were no boats on the radar and the autopilot was dead on. Now I'm .03 Nautical Miles off, which is really nothing at all, but I'll adjust the auto-pilot by spinning the compass a couple of degrees to the easterly, and should be back on course in no time. I now also have a large target on one of the radar screens about 6 nautical miles to the south. I haven't determined which way the vessel is travelling yet, but I have an inkling that it's headed to the west, which might require a course adjustment to avoid a collision.
Driving big boats at night is a lot different than a small boat in the daytime. For safety's sake, I won't come within, probably 1, or one half of a nautical mile of this blotch on the screen. You never know, and it's never worth risking a close pass.
The Timberwolf is taking to my course adjustment, and the cursor is settling back into the little red line on the plotter again. It now appears that the target on the radar is indeed heading west, but at a clip that's just fast enough that it shouldn't require steering around it to pass safely. I'll stay the course. When I turn the wheelhouse lights off, I can just barely make out its lights on the horizon, and it looks like a big tanker, probably heading into New York. Herring Gulls, and a young Black-backed Gull wheel through the air, back and forth in the black in front of the bow. They're having fun.
When we first headed out of port, there was a stiff 25-knot breeze out of the southwest. The chop from the wind combined with the tide and the six-foot ground swell from the south to make for some nasty, unsettling conditions. I took some dramamine as a precaution, and was glad that I had. I was definitely feeling a little nauseous for the first two hours of the trip. The wind has since laid down a bit, and the ride is much nicer. We also have both birds in the water to stabilize any lateral movement.
The tanker is now on the 3 nautical mile radar screen, and a new blip is coming in and out on the coarse radar screen to the north. It comes in and out as the seas block the path of the radar beams. It seems to be on the same course as us, only slightly faster. We are only making 7 knots with both birds in the water, and the plotter says we will arrive at the first trawl at 0245 in the morning.
We have 14 trawls to do tomorrow, all of which are getting moved into deeper water to follow the movement of the body of lobsters, and to get away from the draggers, which are now fishing in the area. This will take a bit of time, since it will likely not be nice enough to put 3 trawls on the boat at a time. So, along with hauling them up from the bottom, emptying them, and re-baiting them, we'll stack two trawls at a time on the boat and steam to the new fishing grounds and set them back in. Then we'll head back and get two more. Jamie figures that we'll be working until 2300 or so tomorrow night, something like 20-21 hours.
It shouldn't be too bad though. We have 3 deck hands, so we should be able to switch off here and there to get a little rest in the cabin, and get some food. The crew is: Jamie, the captain, and my friend for 20 plus years; Will, the 6'6" huge deckhand that I fished with last winter who can throw the 70 pound pots around like toys; Myself, and another transit guy named Frank who looks to be about 38 and sounds like he has a lot of experience, though I could smell some booze on his breath as we left port.
We have now safely passed the tanker, and the other boat seems to have slowed down. The watch alarm has 2 minutes on it, so I'll get up and press the little red button to reset it to another 10 minutes so it doesn't go off and wake Jamie. He's a light sleeper on the boat, and is often up at the slightest sound.
Before my watch, I slept for about four hours in the tumultuous and frothy seas. It was cool because last spring, I built and sewed the new bunk mattresses but hadn't gotten the chance to try them out yet. With 2 inches of memory foam on top, they are really comfortable, and I slept really well, despite the state of the ocean. It makes me proud that I did a good job. I haven't done too many big marine upholstery jobs on my own.
The boat is cruising pretty smoothly now, and it's only the occasional westerly lump that pushes us to the port and interrupts the steady, predictable up and down as we crest the diminishing, now five foot southerly ground swell.
Time for some munchies, then, my watch will be up in an hour, and it's back to the bunk until it's time to work.
The next two days, revisited:
We got to the first trawl right as the chart plotter had predicted, and we were on deck and in our gear at 0310. Jamie eased the boat so the high-flyer and poly ball would glide down the starboard rail. Usually you can just lean out and grab the high-flyer as it passes, but sometimes you have to use a long boat hook, or even throw the grapple hook, if Jamie is a little off, or wave action pushes it away. Will was there and grabbed it and hoisted up, out of the water and on to "the table". I grabbed the line and threaded it into the hauler. Will then engaged the hydro-slave and started the hauler spinning, and pulling the line and poly-ball onto the boat. Jamie was out the door, and on deck now, and we assumed our positions, and explained the system to Frank.
The hauler screamed and whined as it pulled in the 170 fathoms, (1020 feet) of up and down line. I got in the first spot, which is the guy who empties "the kitchen", and re-baits the pot. Tonight we have two types of bait. One is a string of 5-7 skates (Raja erinacea), which are all sewn together through the plate in the top of their "skulls", the other is a mesh bag with a hunk of cow bait in it. Cow bait is a slice of cow skin and fat that has been soaked in god knows what and salted. It lasts forever, and continues to attract lobsters to the pots long after the skates have all been eaten. That's important in the winter because the weather will sometimes keep them from getting down here for a month at a time. Frank had the next spot which is to empty "the parlor", which is where the vast majority of the lobsters end up. He then has the main responsibility of sorting through and banding all of the keepers. Will was stacking the pots.
We haul fast, and each pot is handled for less than a minute. That means all of that stuff has to be done, and the lobsters dealt with. Frank was picking anywhere from 2-10 lobsters out of each pot. The lobsters looked nice. In the first trawl we ended up with 90 or so, but they were big and their shells were nice and hard. They would bring top price at the dock.
It took about 35 minutes to get through the first trawl of fifty pots, then we got more bait to the hauling station, put the lobsters and crabs into the tanks just in time to grab the high-flyer for the next trawl. Frank would now be stacking, as we rotate through the jobs, to keep things fresh, and have our bodies switching tasks and spreading out the fatigue. We got through that one with out incident and headed the boat to the east for a little steam. We got a bunch of bait ready and went in the cabin to get some coffee and food. It was about 0430.
Things continued like this for a long time. We had one long steam in between, so Jamie drove and we all got an hour nap. Jamie was on the radio with one of the captains on a dragger. There were three boats dragging all around where our pots were. Jamie was giving coordinates to some so they wouldn't mow the trawls over and smash the gear, or cut an up and down line. It's pretty easy for the boat to lose $10,000 worth of gear to the draggers, and although they try and set back in ways to be out of the way, sometimes storms move the lobster pots off, or the tide takes them as they fall to the ocean floor. It was a good thing that we were moving the gear. This whole relationship between the fisheries is always tough, and often a point of contention and heated discussions. A boat in a different area had lost two ends of his trawls that morning.
The lobsters were nice, and we were averaging 2.5 lobsters to the pot. It might end up being a good trip. The pace was not fast with all of the moving around, but the day was long, and the weather a little nippy. I hadn't gotten the chance to get new gloves before the trip, and was using a year old pair with holes all through them, (most deck hands go through 2-3 pairs per trip). On top of that my left hand was hurting pretty bad. The tendons that run down my hand from my pointer and middle finger had a sharp pain and was affecting my grip. I was having trouble grabbing things with any force with my left hand, and everything I did hurt it, especially banding the lobsters. I mentioned something to Frank and he busted my balls, " you want me to call the whha-mbulance?, or go cook you a whhaa-mburger?", as if I was whining. I had forgotten that by now, we all probably hurt a bit, and it's not that cool to talk about unless it's a real injury, like a deep laceration!
At about 0100 I moved a barrel and found a Wilson's Storm-Petrel hunkered down behind it. It was windy and rainy, and the bird looked cold and tired. These guys are little slender and black seabirds that make their nests in northern ocean islands. They burrow in small holes in seabird colonies, and then spend the next 10 months dancing on top of waves. Fisherman call them Jesus Birds because, as they hover above the water, they often look to be walking upon it as they feed on tiny floating particles and krill, or bait debris from lobster pots. It was really late for this guy to be in these waters, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do, but set him free to his destiny. I tossed it over the rail and watched as it weakly flew on the tops of the waves, and settled down to wait for a new dawn.
We had everything done, and had the last two trawls stacked on deck to bring north to the crabbing grounds. We cleaned up a bit and headed in as Jamie set the course to the northerly. It was 0215. We had worked for 23 hours, and Jamie had been up for 26. You'd think we would all just hit the sack, but after working like that you get amped. Not to mention the caffeine that was necessary for the work, was still coursing through our veins. We all made some food. I made my specialty, corn grits with black beans, hot dogs and cheese. It's my favorite boat meal, and always works to gross out the rest of the crew. We popped in the kings of comedy on the DVD player and laughed at those jokes that we could hear over the rumble of the engine and the wind.
Jamie kept the throttle low so it would take longer to get there so that we could get some rest. It wasn't until 0730 that he woke us up to start the grind all over again. We set back the two trawls that were on deck, and went to get another. This time we're on the crabs. The boat uses the same gear, but switches the bait to bags of Herring, and just sets the trawls in places that traditionally have a lot of Jonah, (rock) Crabs. Sometimes there can be 1,500 pounds or more of crabs per trawl. It can be really tough work, especially since the tanks are in the stern of the boat, so we have to wheel them in wheel barrels as they fill up. It can be 10 trips back with full wheel barrels.
The crabbing wasn't very good, but there were birds around. There were lots of Dovekies, and some Fulmars cutting through the building wind. A few Greater Shearwaters glided by as well. I tried to point out a few birds, but Jamie just made fun of me. He wasn't mean though.
The sea state was declining as the southeast wind steadily increased. The waves seemed to gain a couple of feet in size every hour. We could still work, but the crabbing was pretty poor. Luckily there were a few lobsters in these pots too. No one was very enthusiastic, but unless you pull the pots up, you can't put fresh bait in them for when the crabs do show up. It sucks to work, and not catch anything, but the next trip could be good.
It was raining, and it was cold, and I had to steal a pair of gloves from the cabin, I think they were Chris', the guy I was fishing for. Finally, Jamie said "one more". We were happy, and we were done, completely spent. Eight foot waves rolled the boat and made carrying the 70 pound pots back to stack them a bit more difficult. By the time we had finished, the boat was taking enough water on the decks that we didn't really have to clean it. Also, it was just too shitty to start scrubbing, so we went inside out of the weather, and sighed. We ate some food, showered and threw in another DVD. The boat was really being thrown about, and at points there were 12-15 foot waves smashing us on the starboard rail, and sending shit flying out of the cupboards. The hatch in the wheel house doesn't seal very well, so with the big ones would come a nice soaking of the floor inside. I tried to take pictures, but they never turn out.
We got back to port at midnight, and tied the boat up and raced out, hoping that the bar was still open, and that we would catch our friends there, and maybe drink a beer. Unfortunately, it was all closed up, se we drove around to another one, and then by a friend's house, but a cold beer would not be part of our night. We went back to the boat, and drank Gatorade, and ate some food, and watched the "Best of Will Farrell". " I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"
We cleaned the boat and took out our catch in the morning, and went surfing. The storm had brought in some decent surf, and Monahan's was overhead. I could barely hold my board with my left hand to duck dive, and although the price in lobster had dropped that day, it was still worth it. I ended up making $720. Not bad for two and a half days.
I am working on going broke, without many prospects for work back in Washington, so I couldn't really pass up a chance to make a quick $500 bucks.
The imaginary little boat cursor on the chart plotter shows me that I'm more or less on course. When I first took the helm for my watch, there were no boats on the radar and the autopilot was dead on. Now I'm .03 Nautical Miles off, which is really nothing at all, but I'll adjust the auto-pilot by spinning the compass a couple of degrees to the easterly, and should be back on course in no time. I now also have a large target on one of the radar screens about 6 nautical miles to the south. I haven't determined which way the vessel is travelling yet, but I have an inkling that it's headed to the west, which might require a course adjustment to avoid a collision.
Driving big boats at night is a lot different than a small boat in the daytime. For safety's sake, I won't come within, probably 1, or one half of a nautical mile of this blotch on the screen. You never know, and it's never worth risking a close pass.
The Timberwolf is taking to my course adjustment, and the cursor is settling back into the little red line on the plotter again. It now appears that the target on the radar is indeed heading west, but at a clip that's just fast enough that it shouldn't require steering around it to pass safely. I'll stay the course. When I turn the wheelhouse lights off, I can just barely make out its lights on the horizon, and it looks like a big tanker, probably heading into New York. Herring Gulls, and a young Black-backed Gull wheel through the air, back and forth in the black in front of the bow. They're having fun.
When we first headed out of port, there was a stiff 25-knot breeze out of the southwest. The chop from the wind combined with the tide and the six-foot ground swell from the south to make for some nasty, unsettling conditions. I took some dramamine as a precaution, and was glad that I had. I was definitely feeling a little nauseous for the first two hours of the trip. The wind has since laid down a bit, and the ride is much nicer. We also have both birds in the water to stabilize any lateral movement.
The tanker is now on the 3 nautical mile radar screen, and a new blip is coming in and out on the coarse radar screen to the north. It comes in and out as the seas block the path of the radar beams. It seems to be on the same course as us, only slightly faster. We are only making 7 knots with both birds in the water, and the plotter says we will arrive at the first trawl at 0245 in the morning.
We have 14 trawls to do tomorrow, all of which are getting moved into deeper water to follow the movement of the body of lobsters, and to get away from the draggers, which are now fishing in the area. This will take a bit of time, since it will likely not be nice enough to put 3 trawls on the boat at a time. So, along with hauling them up from the bottom, emptying them, and re-baiting them, we'll stack two trawls at a time on the boat and steam to the new fishing grounds and set them back in. Then we'll head back and get two more. Jamie figures that we'll be working until 2300 or so tomorrow night, something like 20-21 hours.
It shouldn't be too bad though. We have 3 deck hands, so we should be able to switch off here and there to get a little rest in the cabin, and get some food. The crew is: Jamie, the captain, and my friend for 20 plus years; Will, the 6'6" huge deckhand that I fished with last winter who can throw the 70 pound pots around like toys; Myself, and another transit guy named Frank who looks to be about 38 and sounds like he has a lot of experience, though I could smell some booze on his breath as we left port.
We have now safely passed the tanker, and the other boat seems to have slowed down. The watch alarm has 2 minutes on it, so I'll get up and press the little red button to reset it to another 10 minutes so it doesn't go off and wake Jamie. He's a light sleeper on the boat, and is often up at the slightest sound.
Before my watch, I slept for about four hours in the tumultuous and frothy seas. It was cool because last spring, I built and sewed the new bunk mattresses but hadn't gotten the chance to try them out yet. With 2 inches of memory foam on top, they are really comfortable, and I slept really well, despite the state of the ocean. It makes me proud that I did a good job. I haven't done too many big marine upholstery jobs on my own.
The boat is cruising pretty smoothly now, and it's only the occasional westerly lump that pushes us to the port and interrupts the steady, predictable up and down as we crest the diminishing, now five foot southerly ground swell.
Time for some munchies, then, my watch will be up in an hour, and it's back to the bunk until it's time to work.
The next two days, revisited:
We got to the first trawl right as the chart plotter had predicted, and we were on deck and in our gear at 0310. Jamie eased the boat so the high-flyer and poly ball would glide down the starboard rail. Usually you can just lean out and grab the high-flyer as it passes, but sometimes you have to use a long boat hook, or even throw the grapple hook, if Jamie is a little off, or wave action pushes it away. Will was there and grabbed it and hoisted up, out of the water and on to "the table". I grabbed the line and threaded it into the hauler. Will then engaged the hydro-slave and started the hauler spinning, and pulling the line and poly-ball onto the boat. Jamie was out the door, and on deck now, and we assumed our positions, and explained the system to Frank.
The hauler screamed and whined as it pulled in the 170 fathoms, (1020 feet) of up and down line. I got in the first spot, which is the guy who empties "the kitchen", and re-baits the pot. Tonight we have two types of bait. One is a string of 5-7 skates (Raja erinacea), which are all sewn together through the plate in the top of their "skulls", the other is a mesh bag with a hunk of cow bait in it. Cow bait is a slice of cow skin and fat that has been soaked in god knows what and salted. It lasts forever, and continues to attract lobsters to the pots long after the skates have all been eaten. That's important in the winter because the weather will sometimes keep them from getting down here for a month at a time. Frank had the next spot which is to empty "the parlor", which is where the vast majority of the lobsters end up. He then has the main responsibility of sorting through and banding all of the keepers. Will was stacking the pots.
We haul fast, and each pot is handled for less than a minute. That means all of that stuff has to be done, and the lobsters dealt with. Frank was picking anywhere from 2-10 lobsters out of each pot. The lobsters looked nice. In the first trawl we ended up with 90 or so, but they were big and their shells were nice and hard. They would bring top price at the dock.
It took about 35 minutes to get through the first trawl of fifty pots, then we got more bait to the hauling station, put the lobsters and crabs into the tanks just in time to grab the high-flyer for the next trawl. Frank would now be stacking, as we rotate through the jobs, to keep things fresh, and have our bodies switching tasks and spreading out the fatigue. We got through that one with out incident and headed the boat to the east for a little steam. We got a bunch of bait ready and went in the cabin to get some coffee and food. It was about 0430.
Things continued like this for a long time. We had one long steam in between, so Jamie drove and we all got an hour nap. Jamie was on the radio with one of the captains on a dragger. There were three boats dragging all around where our pots were. Jamie was giving coordinates to some so they wouldn't mow the trawls over and smash the gear, or cut an up and down line. It's pretty easy for the boat to lose $10,000 worth of gear to the draggers, and although they try and set back in ways to be out of the way, sometimes storms move the lobster pots off, or the tide takes them as they fall to the ocean floor. It was a good thing that we were moving the gear. This whole relationship between the fisheries is always tough, and often a point of contention and heated discussions. A boat in a different area had lost two ends of his trawls that morning.
The lobsters were nice, and we were averaging 2.5 lobsters to the pot. It might end up being a good trip. The pace was not fast with all of the moving around, but the day was long, and the weather a little nippy. I hadn't gotten the chance to get new gloves before the trip, and was using a year old pair with holes all through them, (most deck hands go through 2-3 pairs per trip). On top of that my left hand was hurting pretty bad. The tendons that run down my hand from my pointer and middle finger had a sharp pain and was affecting my grip. I was having trouble grabbing things with any force with my left hand, and everything I did hurt it, especially banding the lobsters. I mentioned something to Frank and he busted my balls, " you want me to call the whha-mbulance?, or go cook you a whhaa-mburger?", as if I was whining. I had forgotten that by now, we all probably hurt a bit, and it's not that cool to talk about unless it's a real injury, like a deep laceration!
At about 0100 I moved a barrel and found a Wilson's Storm-Petrel hunkered down behind it. It was windy and rainy, and the bird looked cold and tired. These guys are little slender and black seabirds that make their nests in northern ocean islands. They burrow in small holes in seabird colonies, and then spend the next 10 months dancing on top of waves. Fisherman call them Jesus Birds because, as they hover above the water, they often look to be walking upon it as they feed on tiny floating particles and krill, or bait debris from lobster pots. It was really late for this guy to be in these waters, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do, but set him free to his destiny. I tossed it over the rail and watched as it weakly flew on the tops of the waves, and settled down to wait for a new dawn.
We had everything done, and had the last two trawls stacked on deck to bring north to the crabbing grounds. We cleaned up a bit and headed in as Jamie set the course to the northerly. It was 0215. We had worked for 23 hours, and Jamie had been up for 26. You'd think we would all just hit the sack, but after working like that you get amped. Not to mention the caffeine that was necessary for the work, was still coursing through our veins. We all made some food. I made my specialty, corn grits with black beans, hot dogs and cheese. It's my favorite boat meal, and always works to gross out the rest of the crew. We popped in the kings of comedy on the DVD player and laughed at those jokes that we could hear over the rumble of the engine and the wind.
Jamie kept the throttle low so it would take longer to get there so that we could get some rest. It wasn't until 0730 that he woke us up to start the grind all over again. We set back the two trawls that were on deck, and went to get another. This time we're on the crabs. The boat uses the same gear, but switches the bait to bags of Herring, and just sets the trawls in places that traditionally have a lot of Jonah, (rock) Crabs. Sometimes there can be 1,500 pounds or more of crabs per trawl. It can be really tough work, especially since the tanks are in the stern of the boat, so we have to wheel them in wheel barrels as they fill up. It can be 10 trips back with full wheel barrels.
The crabbing wasn't very good, but there were birds around. There were lots of Dovekies, and some Fulmars cutting through the building wind. A few Greater Shearwaters glided by as well. I tried to point out a few birds, but Jamie just made fun of me. He wasn't mean though.
The sea state was declining as the southeast wind steadily increased. The waves seemed to gain a couple of feet in size every hour. We could still work, but the crabbing was pretty poor. Luckily there were a few lobsters in these pots too. No one was very enthusiastic, but unless you pull the pots up, you can't put fresh bait in them for when the crabs do show up. It sucks to work, and not catch anything, but the next trip could be good.
It was raining, and it was cold, and I had to steal a pair of gloves from the cabin, I think they were Chris', the guy I was fishing for. Finally, Jamie said "one more". We were happy, and we were done, completely spent. Eight foot waves rolled the boat and made carrying the 70 pound pots back to stack them a bit more difficult. By the time we had finished, the boat was taking enough water on the decks that we didn't really have to clean it. Also, it was just too shitty to start scrubbing, so we went inside out of the weather, and sighed. We ate some food, showered and threw in another DVD. The boat was really being thrown about, and at points there were 12-15 foot waves smashing us on the starboard rail, and sending shit flying out of the cupboards. The hatch in the wheel house doesn't seal very well, so with the big ones would come a nice soaking of the floor inside. I tried to take pictures, but they never turn out.
We got back to port at midnight, and tied the boat up and raced out, hoping that the bar was still open, and that we would catch our friends there, and maybe drink a beer. Unfortunately, it was all closed up, se we drove around to another one, and then by a friend's house, but a cold beer would not be part of our night. We went back to the boat, and drank Gatorade, and ate some food, and watched the "Best of Will Farrell". " I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"
We cleaned the boat and took out our catch in the morning, and went surfing. The storm had brought in some decent surf, and Monahan's was overhead. I could barely hold my board with my left hand to duck dive, and although the price in lobster had dropped that day, it was still worth it. I ended up making $720. Not bad for two and a half days.
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Besos!