• Email this page
• Print this page
• del.icio.us
• digg
• yahoo!
• Comments
• Feed

The Windjammer Cruise and the Lobster Bake

Ben McCanna

(page 1 of 2)

Today, we’ll be having a lobster bake.

Often, windjammer crews will load lobsters aboard their vessels before they leave homeport: The bugs will sit on deck in a covered aluminum basin until its time to cook them. It’s crucial to keep the lobsters alive during transport — a dead lobster quickly develops toxins that ruin the meat — so a hose is employed to disgorge a continuous stream of oxygenated saltwater into the lobster basin, thus displacing the stale water, which spills over the basin’s lip and trickles through the scuppers back to sea.

Some captains refer to this basin as “the ICU,” which is ironic because this same basin is often repurposed into a cooking pot.

Before the lobsters are placed in this pot, however, they must first be enticed into another.

Lobster pots, or traps, are rectangular boxes made from steel wire. (The wooden traps that still appear in Maine’s antique shops and still-life paintings are no longer used; plastic-coated steel-wire traps have proved to be far more impervious to the ravages of saltwater and storms.) Lobstermen stack these traps aboard their boats and drop them overboard in the fishing territories they’d inherited from their ancestors. A long line of rope — called pot warp — is floated from each trap by a buoy, and each buoy bears the distinctive painted colors that denote its owner — almost like a coat of arms. Each trap contains a bait bag stuffed with a rotting wad of chopped fish that smells a lot like week-old dog crap that’s been whacked by a mower blade. Lobsters apparently find this smell irresistible and they wander into the pot through a knitted funnel. When they reach the end of the funnel, the lobsters drop into the pot’s “bedroom,” or “parlor,” and become trapped inside. Then, a few days after setting the traps, the lobsterman returns, hauls the trap to the surface with a motorized winch, and inspects the inmates.

To protect the fishery from over-harvesting, the State of Maine enforces both minimum- and — surprisingly — maximum-size restrictions. As such, each lobsterman carries a bronze measurement gauge. If the length of a lobster’s carapace measures less than 3¼ inches or more than 5, the lobster is tossed overboard. Also, harvesting egg-bearing females is prohibited. If a lobsterman catches a “berried” female, he’s required to cut a V-shaped notch in her tail before releasing her. And, if a lobsterman catches a V-notched lobster, he’s required to release her back to the briny deep—whether or not she’s currently carrying eggs. The lobsters that remain are plopped into a livewell and driven to the fishermen co-ops that lie within nearly every harbor along the coast of Maine.

On longer windjammer trips, like this one, it’s more prudent for captains to buy lobsters directly from lobstermen or the co-ops during the trip than haul them around from day to day. (Why expend precious battery power for the ICU unless absolutely necessary?)

In the morning we leave the shores of Brooklin, Maine, and sail toward Mount Desert Island in search of lobsters.

The advection fog that plagued us on Day 1 is back in full force, so, when we reach Bass Harbor in late afternoon, we can’t see a thing.

The crew places an empty lobster basin in a rowboat and lowers the boat to the water. The French is still under sail, and the rowboat’s fenders gently thump against the hull of the larger vessel as we cut through the chop. Jenny Wells and Cully Dorer climb into the smaller boat, cast off the lines, and quickly disappear into the mist as they row toward the fog-shrouded shore.

It seems a risky task. An inexperienced boater could get turned around in this fog, lose all sense of direction, and perhaps row circles for hours without ever finding land. But, as Captain Garth points out, there’s at least one directional clue available to his crew. Today the wind is blowing steadily out of the south; as long as Jenny and Cully keep their starboard beam to the wind, they’ll maintain a trustworthy easterly course to land.

A half hour later, we spot Jenny and Cully rowing back to us with their haul. For their return trip, they followed the sound of the French’s foghorn and called the captain on a portable VHF radio to coordinate their approach. Captain Garth slows his vessel by heaving to (a process of backing the headsails so they counteract the pull of the main- and foresail and keep the boat “in irons”), Cully passes the bow line up to Hilary, and the crew re-boards the French.

Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 in Permalink