Busy Little Harbor

The hatch above my bed starts to lighten at around 5 AM. For most of my time on Carrie Rose, the hatch was opaque due to years of sun exposure and harsh cleaning. This year over the winter, it was reconditioned due to a leak that I had effectively but grossly fixed with black duct tape.

So now, when I look up I can see the state of the sky. Most often this summer it has shown an amorphic white due to fog and low clouds, and so it was that morning. There was also a crocodile skin pattern of water droplets left by the rain from the night before.

I quietly slid out of bed not to wake Charlotte and climbed into the pilothouse. Grey with low clouds and mist, not really rain and not really fog. Here in Maine, it rains but the droplets are so fine that they defy gravity and stay suspended in the air. It is not so much that the rain falls on me but that I walk through it.

The first task was to warm up the boat. To do this I venture out on the stern and open the rear storage/propane locker. Many years ago I gave up on the electrical solenoid system for managing propane and replaced it with a series of valves connected to a regulator. It requires diligence but the simplicity more than makes up for the extra effort.

That done I made a cup of tea and stood looking out the front window towards the shore. The lobster boats were beginning to move about. They crossed in front and to the side. They backed off the harbor’s wharf, and spun off their mooring and floats, while their rough workboats scurried back and forth. There is always the soft rumble of diesel engines idling when lobster boats are about. They run from the moment the captain get on their boat until they leave for the day.

As I pondered this the Cranberry Island ferry and mail boat both arrived, loaded their passengers and gear, and left. Little and Great Cranberry Islands sit about two miles south of Mount Desert Island and these two small boats supply most of their needs. The islands endure most of the Atlantic’s swell and storms making Northeast Harbor a comfortable refuge.

Now boaters from other parts of this long and narrow harbor start to make their way in to the overflowing dinghy dock. The first of them had anxious dogs mounted nose first straining for the odor of land and not stinky fish. The next wave of boats pass with various parcels and bags headed for the harbor’s showers and the town’s only grocery store.

The dinghy dock is a conglomeration of small boats of every description. They swing in the current and wind. And this being a premiere boating location, plus the epicenter of traditional craft, the dock, though mainly inhabited by rubber monstrosities, has many examples of finely crafted wooden boats and their fiberglass equivalents.

The approach to a dock like this can be daunting. The boats form a bulwark, there seems to be no place to tie up. As the amorphous mass comes into more detail, we search for any weak spot in the wall of pontoons and outboard motor propellers. When a weakness is seen we head for it and usually, some head butting is required. Boats are swung left and right as our dinghy’s nose nudges in. Once tied up, de-dinghy-ing is another story for another entry.

The boat’s salon is warm now, so I go to the stern to turn off the propane, and there noticed Poseidon. I have seen her before. She is a beautifully muscular example of a lobster boat, a little on the large size but perfectly proportioned. I need to provide some details about lobstering for the rest of the story to make sense.

Lobsters must be a hardy lot for all the manipulation they are put through. To begin with they are trapped in metal cages where they can spend many days before being harvested. To do that they are pulled up from as far as 300 feet, and if they are the proper size and gender thrown into a tank of circulating seawater with their other brethren.

Once the boat returns to the harbor, they are sorted and packed into ubiquitous grey plastic crates that weigh one hundred pounds. The stern men will, after attaching them to a common line, unceremoniously throw the crates into the water. I have seen these crates float for days besides the lobster boat’s mooring. They constitute the lobstermen’s bounty.

This is where Poseidon comes into the picture. As far as I have observed this system is unique to Northeast Harbor but I could be uninformed. As I said it is a large open ended boat with a captain and two stern men. With its center mounted crane it travels from mooring to mooring fishing out each lobstermen’s crates.

They are loaded on the after portion of the boat like piling up bags of cement on the bed of a pickup truck. It has an unique sprinkler system that keeps the lobsters watered. There are so many crates that the boat seem perilously low in the water and unusually sluggish to maneuver. Full of crates, it makes its way to the wharf where the crates are lifted off and into a waiting refrigerated truck.

It is the end of August and I have overheard the summer people asking each other when they are leaving. Soon recreational Maine will give way to wintering Maine, and the busy little harbor will be left to its business without interference.

The cold will bring a respite, if not from the weather than from the tourist. This busy little harbor will be left to pursue its real purpose, supplying the world the hard shelled creatures that make Maine viable. And so, a day goes by in this busy little harbor on this busy little island.

Northeast Harbor, Mt. Desert Island, Maine