Part 1
Vineyarder huh?....Lobster Rolls 👍
I lived on island (Edgartown) as a boy but when I grew older I came to like Nantucket better, (we love Wauwinet) less commercial, still way pricey.
I’ll take a few minutes to tell you a story about selling lobster rolls off the boat in Nantucket.
It will take some back ground to tell it well so bear with me....
I was an offshore commercial fisherman for many, many years.
Years ago it was not all that an uncommon thing to see big fishing boats rafted up outside the palisade in Nantucket, especially during big winter
Nor’easters or maybe they’re just in for a night of fun and fighting at the Chicken Box. Put a hundred drunk fishermen on island, well, the island
knows we are there for sure....🤣
Hiding in Nantucket from a ripping gale was so much better than laying too, or even worse, jogging out heavy weather.
Banging your head into 25-30 footers for a day or three, not much fun. (Fun-fact: a true nor’easters wind never lasts less than 3 days!)
Anyway, back in 1978 maybe 79,80, not sure, I was working the engine and deck of a 98 foot double drum stern trawler named the Captain Mano. It was
the dog days of August and I had signed on at the custom house in New Bedford as captain even though I didn’t skipper the boat. You had to be a US
citizen to hold the papers so a few Portuguese boats would use me to do this when the skipper took a month or so off to vacation back home in the
Azores.
I promise I’ll get to the point, “lobster rolls” patience....
The government had begun to put quotas on what we could catch. (this is important because it explains why we ended up spending a few days in Nantucket
at trips end).
We were only allowed to take 8,500 pounds of Yellowtail Flounder for any “one trip”. No big deal....
On the other-hand we were allowed to take 20,000 pounds of Cod, Haddock or Pollock in any “one calendar week”, silly government boys.
So, we’d throw the lines on Saturday, the end of one “calendar“ week. The next seven days would be week #2 and making port for the following
Monday morning auction would be week #3.....😎
Now we could land 60,000 rather than 20,000 pounds of each of those 3 ground-fish. Fisherman are not stupid people unlike, well, you get it I’m
sure. 😁
The rest was pretty much catch what you can....
After steaming 8-12 hours or so, (tides decided steam times) and as the sun was rising, we set out the net just East, Sou’east of the Great Round
Shoals fairway buoy located a bit North of Great Point Nantucket using a net called a Rock Hopper Otter Trawl, in an area well known for Summer
Cod.
It was now going to be a non-stop, around the clock operation of handling the gear for we six men aboard.
I was up top, just aft of the wheelhouse squaring things away when the Sun came into full view as it perched on the waters surface for a moment. What
a gorgeous morning!
The sea was like a pane of glass with a slight swell coming in (somewhere, far offshore it was blowing hard for such an Easterly swell here in
August).
For no reason, while standing there looking East I just sang out the tune of “oh a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got this
beautiful feeling, everything's going my way”.
Sounds corny, I know, but that’s the facts.
Here’s where it got weird, about ten minutes later I was back on deck getting ready to throw an eye splice into a new heaving line for the bag end
when the skipper came running on deck yelling, fish, fish, fish, haul back!!!
Sure enough, we were on the Cod. The net was so full we had to haul the bag end over the side rail three times to dump it and empty the net enough so
the bag could finally fit up the stern ramp under the net drum.
Net empty, we set it back and got to work. Over the next 48 hours or so the net kept coming back stuffed near to the wings, not sure how many tows we
made. You don’t know what back pain or a tired body is until you’ve spent a full day bent over the checkers ripping and gutting Cod, WOW!
I said it got weird and it did. The Cod finally dried up and we steamed up to the Nor’east parts for Haddock while still clearing the deck that had
been so full for a time the fish were literally spilling over the rail when she rolled to starboard on that light swell. It was crazy!
We finally got finished, had a feed and set the net out again and five of us turned in. It was not to be, not 15 minutes after my head hit the pillow
unconscious the skipper is yelling, fish, fish again, haul back. 😳🤪
Now we were on the Haddock. Rinse, repeat, over and over. In four days we put over 85,000 pounds of fish in the hold.
Everywhere we went it was the same thing, FISH, it was nuts, absolutely nuts! We were zombies on automatic. Never before or since have I worked so
hard, for so long!
Looking back, I don’t know how we did it, I really don’t.
I think it was was five days before any of us got any real sleep. We’d worked for Pollock and the 8,500 pounds of Yellowtail as well as Greysole
Flounder when the skipper finally shut her down so we could recover.
It gets foggy here, the days blur but I know it was decided to steam to Corsair Canyon to tow for lobsters because the hold was rapidly nearing full
and we were in danger of running out of ice but still had days to stay because of quotas. 30 tons of ice we’d gone through.
We now had an estimated 165,000 pounds on board, much more and she’d puke.
It wasn’t over.....damn.
We set out again along the canyons and not only were we getting 10-12 baskets of large losbsters for a 3 hour tow but 15 or more baskets of doormat
sized Blackback flounder as well.
What made things worse was now the “huge barnacle” (some, 5 times the size of a hersey’s kiss chocolate) covered boulders down there were
tearing the belly out of the net each tow so we had to set one net off one drum and while two guys dealt with banding the lobsters, sorting the
flounder etc., two others spread the ripped up net for overhaul. Set one net then the other, rinse, repeat for the next 36 or so hours.
We were not only near out of ice but we were also running out of gear to repair the nets. Dozens of rolls of twine, a dozen new bellies, (our fingers
and hands ached from handling the needle and pulling the net taught so we could sew new sections in correctly. We were running out of hardware to
rebuild the sweeps as well.
Finally the skipper called it.
We gathered in the galley because the ongoing issue was we had too many days left before we could come back to offload what we had on board because of
quota restrictions.
It was the cook who suggested hiding in Nantucket and the skipper immediately said, “let’s go”.
We took turns at wheel watch for the 10 hour steam to the island and we all got to finally get some true sleep. Oh yeah, FOOD TOO!!!!!
Nantucket, at last.....”Lobster Rolls”, soon, promise!
When a 100 foot dragger ties up at the end of the pier outside the protective palisade of the marina, it is truly an island spectacle!
Word goes out and it seems the whole island shows up. Hundreds of people swarm the docks, laughing, pointing, cameras taking pictures by the
thousands, guys aggravated because the ladies are like, oh, check these guys out. 😂
The crowds wandered off after some hours and we all just crashed again, I mean crashed. Next morning I had the 6-9 am watch.
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edit on 08-19-2021 by PiratesCut because: stuff