Seaworthy Page 13
CHAPTER 9
The Grand Banks Bubble
Light westerly wind teased up the ocean’s surface to just beyond ripples. The rising sun shone across and through, rather than down upon, the surface that flickered in flamelike, yellow squirming shimmers. It was unusually clear and calm for this late in the Grand Banks season. I had always been thankful for good weather. But more so today, since great conditions would be appreciated as the five of us ironed out wrinkles that had set in during a decade of storage. Mornings are gung ho at this longitude, fully alert and broadly lit while daylight to the west is still sleeping soundly. I had been up for an hour when I pulled on my knee-high rubber boots. As I stepped from the fo’c’sle onto the deck, I took in a gulp of cool air and exhaled a sigh of warm anticipation. This was day one in the persistence and determination that defined Linda Greenlaw. No matter what this haul produced—good or bad—it was only one day of many to come. Nevertheless, the first haul of any trip can be a defining pacesetter. A slow start could amount to a marathon, while a great day could mean a sprint to a quick finish. I had competed in a few hundred-yard dashes in my career. But most races required a little more leg and wind.
The first haulback would be primarily a physical test. I wondered if muscles had memory that could stretch to bridge a ten-year gap. Or would my physical ability be more like an old piece of pot warp left to dry out in the sun, faded and kinked beyond usefulness? Although I’d been tending lobster traps since my departure from blue-water fishing, my inshore life on the water was tamer in many ways. When I wake up at home to a screeching gale, I pull the covers over my head and wait for a better chance to haul my traps, with a comfort level enhanced by the thought that the traps are getting an extra night to fish. That is not an option offshore. If gear is in the water, it must be hauled back aboard or be lost. It’s that simple. I am physically weaker than I was at thirty-seven. But I was confident that I could indeed work smarter and not harder, a combination that might make me more efficient than the younger, tougher me. This work would certainly lead to some sore muscles. I actually looked forward to some aches and charley horses. Like the emotional/psychological element, the physical component needed to fish for sword is more endurance than sheer strength. And I have always been more of a distance runner than a sprinter in terms of work.
Last night I’d given the crew the option of a wake-up call that would allow them time for breakfast. And all but Machado had agreed that they would indeed like to get up when I did. Machado wanted the extra thirty minutes in his rack, evidence that he was my only true veteran. I knew that the breakfast club would dissolve as the trip wore on and hunger was quickly upstaged by sleep deprivation. But this morning we ate oatmeal. I couldn’t wait to leave the galley, as excitement mounted for what our first haulback would produce. If you’re not excited for the very first haul, there’s no hope. I had a reputation of being first on deck and last off when I worked as a crew member, and that attitude and persistence followed through my years in the captain’s chair.
I took my position at the hauling station and looked upwind for the beeper buoy that marked the southeast end of our string of gear. I had steamed to the buoy just prior to inhaling my oatmeal. And sure enough, there it was, bobbing slowly and wagging its whip antenna. I put the engine in forward and jogged toward the buoy while the men watched and waited from their single-file lineup behind me along the port rail. Machado had not yet emerged into the light of day. Although it would have been nice to have him conduct very basic instruction to the others, I didn’t actually need him until there was a fish on deck to be cleaned. Some guys are just unleadable. Machado might be one of the few who truly can’t be pushed. Trying to light a fire under his butt could be counterproductive. Forcing, threatening, cajoling … My read of Machado so far was that nothing would work. Good thing I hadn’t counted on him to set an example of a work ethic. And, I knew, the rest of the guys were all seasoned fishermen and had a good understanding of the process and procedures without ever having experienced longlining for sword per se. We would get along fine without Machado. I hoped he’d come to life when a fish hit the deck.
The device used to steer the Seahawk from the hauling station was a jog stick, a small lever that sent an electrical signal that controlled the rudder. The jog stick was mounted on a steel plate next to the gearshift and throttle, where I could easily operate all with my right hand. The valve that drove the hydraulic main-line spool was just below the engine controls. And I could reach that with either hand, depending on what else I had going on. The men had built an eight-inch platform from some scrap wood for me to stand on while I hauled, without which the main line (as it is retrieved) would be too high for my five-foot-three stretch. I needed to be tall enough so that the hauling block, which was welded to the overhead, hung just above my left shoulder. Comfortable and effective hauling technique calls for the line to run over my shoulder and through my left hand while it comes out of the water so that I can grab or remove the snaps that attach the leaders to it and also to feel fish coming. I knew I would be a bit awkward at first, especially with the line rigged on the port side. But I’d hauled what I estimate to be tens of thousands of miles of longline gear in my life. So I assumed that I would adjust somewhat easily to being left-handed. Attitude would carry me until my rusty skill loosened up.
The beeper was alongside. I knocked the boat out of gear. Hiltz tossed a small grapnel to catch the line upwind of the buoy and pulled the rope tied to the grapnel hand over hand until he had the monofilament main line aboard. Timmy grabbed the line that was secured to the beeper and hauled the buoy aboard through the “door,” or the cutout in the side of the hull through which fish are pulled. Timmy turned off and stowed the beeper in its spot in the steel rack along the starboard rail, while Hiltz coiled and stowed the grapnel. Archie cut the knot from the end of the main line meant to keep the beeper from sliding off the bitter end and, with a barrel knot, tied the end leading into the water to the end coming from the spool. Timmy took a wrap of line around his hand on one side of the knot, and Arch did the same on the other. The two 280-pound men each gave a heave in opposite directions to cinch the knot up tight. We were hooked up.
I pushed the gearshift forward, turned the jog lever to straighten the rudder, and twisted the valve to start the drum spinning. As the drum turned, it wound the line onto it. The line was pulled from the water, through the single-sheave hauling block behind and above my left shoulder, through a second identical block mounted at eye level on the setting house’s forward bulkhead, and across the work deck onto the spool. My left hand rode the line as it came aboard, feeling for the right tension. I would go through a lot of left gloves, I realized. Too bad I hadn’t saved all the lefts from the years of right-rigged hauling. At the end of a trip, the captain always has quite a collection of gloves for the nonhauling hand, while the other half of each pair has been totally destroyed and discarded.
I adjusted the throttle and the main spool’s hydraulic valve to achieve the correct angle of line from hauling block to water, then tweaked the jog stick back and forth to get the correct angle in the other dimension of boat to gear. Hauling gear is not pulling all forty miles to the vessel, but rather driving the boat along the string while winding the line up and out of the water. A snap broke the surface. The leader was slack, indicating nothing on the hook. I grabbed the snap from the main line and handed it to Arch, who stood beside me at the rail. Arch clipped the leader to the messenger line that ran to the stern, where the leader was received by Dave Hiltz, who coiled it neatly into a box. “One down, seven hundred and ninety-nine to go,” Arch said.
Hauling back is the time to ditch the rose-colored glasses you’ve donned while setting out and replace them with the 3-Ds. The physical realm of boat and gear is all-dimensional. The line wanders around just below the surface in every direction on the compass and at different depths. And the boat follows it left and right, but in rough weather it may go up on a wave and down into a
trough when the gear is doing the reverse. The emotional side of hauling gear is all up and down, and dramatically different. While the mental state during setting out is relatively buoyant, the mind makes so many transits through the multitude of psychological altitudes during the haulback that to refer to a roller coaster doesn’t even come close. Constant retallying of our status, measured in a number of ways, is how we mark time during and along the hauling of the string.
I don’t wear a wristwatch, never have. The time of day is insignificant (except for 10:00 A.M., when we’re fishing among the fleet and radio checks become necessary). I don’t often ask watch wearers for the time. I ask, “How many floats to the next beeper?” “How many fish did we have that section?” “How much did that fish weigh?” The answers to these and other similar questions are factored into the fluid equation of how things are going. If we catch three fish in the first section, I multiply that by ten and figure we’ll have thirty for the day. If we catch nothing on the first section and four fish on the second, I figure either we’ll average two fish per section or we’ll have eight on the third and sixteen on the fourth. Of course, if the third section has nothing to show, I have to recalculate down to more realistic numbers. There is absolutely no fancy math in my method of marking or predicting. Yet it’s as accurate as any other formula would be. Although there is no way of knowing until the last hook comes aboard how successful the set was, that has never stopped me from averaging, multiplying, and speculating. The 3-D glasses are worn from the first hook to the very last, up to the tippity-top of every hope and down to the pit of every disappointment. The only certainty is that there is no certainty. I learned that the hard way, and it’s the only thing I really know about fishing.
For the next six or seven weeks, we would be living in the Grand Banks bubble, which has its own bizarre relation to time. Most of my nineteen-year offshore career had been spent in that bubble, and I now realized that the ignorance and protection afforded by the total envelopment in a world apart was a lifestyle that I had chosen, too, by residing on the tiny, remote Isle au Haut. The island bubble is every bit as impenetrable from the outside as is the fishing bubble. Little news filters through from the world outside. The only news that’s considered worthy is that generated from within. When I was at sea, I wouldn’t be touching base with the island and they wouldn’t waste their time wondering what was happening here. Time of day and day of week were of no consequence out here in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. What mattered were how many gallons of fuel remained in our tanks and how old the bottom of the trip, or first fish caught, was. Days were not scheduled around mealtimes. Meals were taken when there was opportunity, regardless of the hour, the number of hours since the last meal, or gnawing hunger. Lunch was not included in the Grand Banks vocabulary. A candy bar or a bag of chips could be gobbled during haulback while you were searching for the end of gear that had been severed by a ship, chewed by a shark, or stretched beyond breaking strength by the tide, making part-offs disconcertingly welcome late in the afternoon.
Life in the Grand Banks bubble did not require a calendar. Here there exist none of the constant shoreside reminders of holiday gifts to buy, appointments to schedule, or medications to ask your doctor about. There was no sudden shock of realization that you had forgotten to pick the dog up from the vet, water the plants, or get the car serviced. There was no church service, no minute of silence, no day of rest. Although men of the sea are prayerful at times, worshipping of gods is antisocial, personal, and soundless, done in absence of the nudge from Sunday. During this trip a presidential election would take place, and we wouldn’t vote, and the results hardly caused a ripple—literally—in our waters. People could die, be buried and eulogized, without our ever hearing that they’d been sick. During the course of some careers on the Grand Banks, babies of friends and family had been conceived, been born, and graduated from high school, and nary a gift was ever sent. This was the epitome of existing in the moment, I thought, the here and now. We would live, breathe, eat, and sleep swordfishing. Being nonparticipants in the larger world is twofold. Fishermen are absent from that world much of the time, and even when present, they don’t seem to care.
Within fifteen floats I was completely comfortable in the physical dimensions of driving and hauling as a southpaw. The orange floats suspending the line at five fathoms below the surface and marking the gear came alongside faster and faster. I pulled snaps and steered float to float like someone playing a game of connect the dots. Although we weren’t catching anything, I would describe my mood as one of total bliss. I like hauling gear, because I do it well. Setting the gear out is the most important part of my job. It’s where the financial payoff is. But hauling the gear is what keeps me coming back. Of course, hauling gear is more exciting when fish are being caught. But I enjoy the process. Like shooting a single birdie in many eighteen-hole rounds of golf, the feeling I get during haulback erases whatever badness has preceded. Hauling longline gear is fun—plain and simple. I would prefer to haul forty miles of blank sword gear than to pull traps full to the doors with lobsters. That’s not to say I don’t care about money. I do. I love money. In fact, I need money just like everyone else. And when I’m making money fishing for sword on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, there’s nothing better. Don’t we all dream of making money doing what we love? How many of us actually get to try? Although it’s fatiguing, especially in heavy weather, I have never regarded hauling longline gear as work. Hauling gear is really driving the boat, rather than riding aboard it with the autopilot engaged. Now, as I was turning the rudder to starboard to follow the gear around a corner, the deck moved under my feet at my command. Leaning into the port rail with my left hip, my legs pushed the Seahawk away and around the bend back to port. I’ve never been on a surfboard, but I suspect that it’s the same sensation in a miniature version.
Machado graced us with his sleepy-eyed presence shortly after we began the second section. “Bring ’em on, Linny,” he said, smiling. “I’m ready!” He spit on a sharpening stone and ran a knife in and out of the goo until it was honed to his specifications. Things were going smoothly. The crew hustled to coil leaders and wind ball drops onto their small spool. Except for there being no fish yet, this was as happy as I could be. I now knew that we could run to the east and fall into a position among the fleet. All we had to do was wind up the rest of the gear. We would be done when the sun reached its peak, and headed to where the big fish live. I had never before been skunked, and I knew that today would not be a first in that department. We still had many miles to haul, and the set had looked too good to come back empty.
“Fish on!” I yelled as the line tightened and the angle out of the water increased. I stopped the drum from turning, threw the boat out of gear and then into reverse, stopping our forward motion so that the taut leader was completely vertical and directly beside me. The heavy snap created a sharp V in the main line that moved along the line as the snap slipped with the fish tugging down and away. “It’s green. Get gaffs,” I said, referring to the fact that the fish was indeed lively and would need to be gaffed when I managed to finesse it up close enough to the surface.
“What is it?” Hiltz asked as he stood poised with a ten-foot gaff pole, ready to strike.
“Swordfish,” I said confidently. And I knew it was, even though I hadn’t seen what was now tugging the line deeper. I just knew from experience how a swordfish acts on longline gear. The fish was taking the line deep. A shark would run line on the surface, and a tuna either would be pulling much harder or circling or would have sunk a bunch of gear. The difference is difficult to articulate. But once you’ve felt a few fish, there’s no mistaking a sword for anything else. Sharks and tuna just feel and act completely different. I opened the valve to turn the spool slowly and soon had the snap out of the water again and within my reach. Arch reached for the snap. “Leave it on the line. If the fish takes off, we won’t lose it or pull the hook.” I wanted badly to haul the
fish myself. But with Archie being the age he was, and with the experience he had “wiring” fish, I just couldn’t brush him aside the way I always had younger crew in the past. Arch squeezed the leader with one hand, then the other. He pulled with his back, gaining a few feet of the monofilament aboard with each bend and twist at his waist. The slack mono fell at his feet. He stopped pulling when the fish decided to dive, and allowed the slack to run through his hands and back into the water. When the fish stopped, Arch began again. I took the opportunity to instruct Hiltz in what Arch was doing right, knowing that Hiltz would be wiring live fish at some point. “All you can pull with one hand. And never take a wrap. Let the slack fall onto the deck. But don’t ever move your feet.”
Like two players in a game of tug-of-war, Arch and the fish went back and forth with the leader for some time. When the leader began swimming in circles rather than diving straight down, I knew that Arch had the upper hand. In the fifth death circle, I saw a flash of color that sent my heart into overdrive. “Nice fish! Next circle, when it comes out from under the boat, it should be close enough to gaff. Make sure you get it in the head,” I instructed both Tim and Dave, who now waited anxiously on either side of Archie. The fish came out from beneath the hull. Two gaffs were sunk expertly into its head simultaneously. The men led the fish aft a few feet to the door and pulled it onto the deck. Silver, pink, and blue, the fish’s sides glistened in the sun. Its back was royal blue, darkening to nearly black in the dorsal fin. The fish flopped a couple of times the way fish do, and then lay motionless. The grape-Popsicle purple pigment ran out of its bill with the last pump of its gill plate. I restrained my emotional high, knowing that we had many miles of possible lows to navigate. But in my mind’s eye, I pumped a fist.