Lifesaving Lessons Read online

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  It wasn’t until midwinter that I also fell into a slight funk and once again pondered whether I was on the right path. Most people my age were settled and staid, and change was the last thing on their minds. Although it may seem strange to some that I would question my what and why while gaining on the half-century mark, it may in part be a tendency that goes along with being single and childless. Think about it: I had nobody else to consider. I had too much time to dwell on myself. Teenagers do not corner that market! With Mariah long out of sight and mind, the role model was put to bed, and I was able to fully indulge in selfishness without worrying who might be influenced by my negativity. I remember well my low point.

  One midwinter morning, on the shore not far from my parents’ house, I found myself in quite a predicament. The float on which I had stored all my herring gear had broken free of its mooring in a storm and had been left high and dry on the rocks. Crawling on hands and knees under the float over the seaweed-covered ledges, I crouched to avoid the beam I’d found earlier. I slowly made my way to the last elliptical piece of daylight that streamed through the gap between two of the newly secured pieces of Styrofoam I had pilfered from a float even more derelict than the one I was now under and trying so hard to resurrect. Come to think of it, I had more or less borrowed without permission this entire raft onto which my herring crew and I had hastily bailed nearly four hundred fathoms of seine gear last fall. I had been in a hurry to wrap up the business of catching herring for lobster bait (or not catching, as it turned out) to jump aboard a sword boat and head east for a quick trip. I’d declared the abandoned float on the beach next to the town landing “mine,” launched it, piled it full of twine, and secured it to a summer person’s mooring. Now I was paying for my haste. And now it was February. The float full of my investment had chaffed its bridle and swum with wind and current under the cover of darkness right out of the thoroughfare and onto the rocky shore below the Dices’ summer cottage where the tide had left it high and dry four nights ago.

  Barnacles had taken their toll on my hands. Thin, crooked lines of blood were much like reflections of the crow’s-feet at the corners of my eyes that were most noticeable at 5:30 that morning when I’d rushed by the bathroom mirror in a yank to reach the shore while the tide was out. My hands were too cold to feel the sting. I imagine I looked somewhat seallike, slithering on the slippery ledges out from beneath the float on my belly. The tiniest snowflakes drifted in on the northwest breeze, adding a note of chill to the already frigid scene. A distinct, white stripe of frozen salt water ringed the shore at the high-water mark, and lily pad ice dallied on the surface of the cove north of us. The “us” I refer to wasn’t the group I would have expected. My herring crew, or Omega Four, as we had named ourselves last spring when we were all so proud and excited to launch the new business, were now as scattered as the fish had been all season. Dave Hiltz and Bill Clark and his son Nate were nowhere to be found. The “us” present here now and assisting with labor and advice in this potential disaster consisted of perhaps the most unlikely group of guys to band together, even in the face of adversity. But that’s the island way. Bad things happen. The results are sometimes good. Good and bad actions and what lies in their wake do a dance of fleeting and lingering here on the island. Grudges are held dear and hatchets are seldom buried. That said, there’s an overlying sentiment of “love the one you’re with.”

  And those whom I was with right now included Howard Blatchford, fellow island fisherman, and Simon and his son Todd, who had come from their permanent homes in Vermont for a winter weekend of torching burn piles they had stacked up in the drier, unsafe burning months. Simon is the guy with whom I had been in a more or less romantic relationship over the last eight years. Little did father and son (retired orthopedic surgeon and brand-new dermatologist) know that they would end up helping me with the disaster that had been left by a particularly high tide. Whether Simon and Todd had come to offer assistance out of loyalty or pity, I wasn’t sure. My uncertainty about my future with Simon was on my mind, but my current time of need was hardly the moment to sever my relationship with him, I reasoned with myself.

  Howard extended a calloused hand to help me to my feet. I stretched out straight, both hands on my lower back, and groaned a little. “I don’t know what more we can do. That’s all the Styrofoam,” I said to the three men who shifted uneasily on weed-covered rocks and looked as cold as I felt. “I’ll wait for the tide to come in and see if she floats.”

  “It went ashore on a nine-point-six tide, and this afternoon is just a nine-footer,” Howard said softly, almost apologetically, as if he were embarrassed to have to tell me what the tide was doing. “Friday morning, eight-thirty. We’ll have eleven feet. The moon, well, you know.” He diverted his eyes to the toes of his boots as his voice trailed off. The fact that he had a graying, kinked ponytail protruding from beneath his wool watch cap bothered me. I don’t know why.

  “I hope it doesn’t take until Friday. I’m worried sick that this rickety, old float will break apart and leave the Dices with a lawn ornament,” I said, nearly praying and not mentioning my financial investment that would be a total loss if the raft collapsed or was beaten to pieces in the surf should a storm come along. I also had in mind the monumental sweat equity of the other 75 percent of Omega Four when I decided to remain on the beach and keep a fretful watch while the three men who had been here to help left to do other things, promising to return at high tide. Simon and Todd’s presence, and help, made me feel even gloomier as it amplified the fact that I had no such relationship of my own, and that I had been in this seemingly go-nowhere romance forever, and now felt that I was using Simon. I had, I reasoned, agreed to feed the men all weekend. But somehow “Will work for food” not being on the doctors’ agendas made me feel a little sleazy. As already stated, my disposition was unusually down, allowing me to wallow in selfish thoughts of how desperate my situation was both personally and professionally in the immediate predicament in spite of the fact that if I had examined my life at all, I would have noticed that I had little to complain about. So I would focus on how the float teetering on the brink of disaster might be a microcosm for my life in general. When friends had voiced similar complaints, I hadn’t had much patience and always advised that they change something. “You are solely responsible for your own happiness” was something I needn’t hear now in echo.

  Two trucks started on the hill behind me—Simon and Todd in one, and Howard in the other. I never turned to wave good-bye or to thank them, but instead stood staring at the incoming tide as it teasingly lapped the lower corner of the stranded float. As soon as the noise of the trucks had dissipated to a distance that I knew would prohibit the men from seeing me, I made my way to a perfect and natural seat in the ledges and sat sheltered from the nipping breeze. Soon the sun poked through the clouds still spitting light snow and lent enough warmth to penetrate the layers of oilskins, sweater, and wool shirt I had carefully chosen this morning knowing that I had a long day ahead of me. Waiting for the tide to rise or fall, which is something islanders spend a lot of time doing, is much like watching the proverbial pot that never boils. But today I didn’t mind this seemingly do-nothing time as I managed to convince myself that I was actually engaged in the activity of figuring things out. Not that I expected any real revelations in the next two hours. But the truth was, I hadn’t taken much time to just sit and think lately—about the stuck float and about a lot of other things in my life that seemed to be stuck, too.

  My first thoughts were about the actual situation at hand. What if Howard was right, and the tide wouldn’t rise to a height that would float my gear off these ledges until Friday? This was only Sunday. What were the chances of the float’s holding together through five more days and nights of rising and falling and surging up and down, on and off this unforgiving, rocky shore? The ledges in this particular area were steep and jagged. The float had landed on a sharp, peaked ledge that was now gnaw
ing through a major cross member that if broken would be the end of any hope of recovering my seine gear. When the raft half floated, it looked good. When it was hard aground, it appeared to be bent in the middle and threatening to snap in two. A tiny voice deep in my mind whispered, “That might be a blessing in disguise.” Stifling the voice, I went back to figuring a way out of this, short of giving up and letting nature run its course, which is how my gear ended up here in the first place. Or, at least, that was the story I was buying as opposed to the conspiracy theory that rumbled through the island’s rumor mill. Winter is rough out here, I knew. But who would be bored or hateful enough to sabotage me?

  Even at high tide there wasn’t enough depth of water to pull a boat alongside the offshore edge of the float in an attempt to rescue the netting or twine from it. The twine itself—I couldn’t venture a guess at how much it weighed. Four hundred fathoms long, ten fathoms deep, with a leaded line on the bottom edge and corks to float the top edge, allowing the net to hang vertically in the water like a fence—just the twenty-four thousand square feet of webbing was enough to squat the float low into the water prior to hitting the beach. Half of my gear was configured into a purse seine, which has big brass rings along the bottom through which a rope or purse line runs that can be cinched to gather the bottom of the net together to capture whatever fish are encircled. The purse also sports extra-heavy mesh on the bunting end to reinforce the twine when a great weight of fish is lifted through the water. It was quite a mountain of gear, for sure. And right now the inexperienced eye might describe it as a mess. But it was actually quite organized with the end of the top piece of twine clearly marked for ease of loading into dories (double-ended, nonpowered boats designed to carry fishing gear). If the float broke apart, there would be no ease of anything. I hoped the extra Styrofoam flotation we had just spent hours securing under and all around the bottom lip of the deck would add enough buoyancy to the raft to allow it to be pulled off the rocks. At this point, scuttling the whole works would be more of an embarrassment than any significant loss. But I had to admit that this herring adventure, not unlike many of my bright, salty ideas, had been a bust. Just because you call yourself a fisherman doesn’t mean you catch fish. Not a natural at anything, like everything else in my experience, I had a fairly flat learning curve for herring seining.

  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.