out to haul

Summer found our kids baiting pockets, banding lobsters and pulling profits from the sea on their grandfather's lobster boat once again.

This year the kids fished some of the time on a new boat, Making Memories,  their grandparents purchased just for hauling their traps. Everyone should be lucky enough to have grandparents like these. 

And a cousin like this...who comes along to work just because it is fun for him. 

Ella has 50 traps again this year and Maya has 10 as permitted by their student fishing licenses. Each year they fish, we log their apprentice hours and when they are older they will be eligible for a commercial fishing license which, in the state of Maine, can take years to obtain. 

Maya loves bait pockets. It is stinky, slimy work and she relishes it. 

Challenges of lobster fishing:

Occupying yourself during the down time when you have been given strict instructions not to get your bait juice drenched hands all over everything. 



Sea sickness:

Cooper took a breather, got away from the bait, chewed on some Town House crackers  and was good to go again. 

Not getting sea gull poop on your head:

Hosing off the boat your cousin.

And the cardinal rule: don't get your feet near the rope! (Ella is showing proper technique here.)

Don't worry, they don't work so hard that there isn't time for goofing off.

When one kid sits in the lobster crate, they all want to.

It's simply stunning out there.

This summer we were driving along a breathtaking part of the rocky coast of Maine, a place people come from all over the world to see, and I said to the girls, "Look up! Look at this!" To which Ella shrugged and said, "I know. But to me it is just like every day."

I wonder if hope they will someday know how lucky they are.

   

The first summer Sandi and I were together, we went on the lobster boat to work with her dad. The smell of the bait, the circling boat swirling itself among its own diesel fumes while it rocks side to side in the swells, working with my head down, all resulted in me heaving over the side. They had to bring me home and go back out. I'm sure I made a stellar first impression to this gritty, hard-working family. Now I take all precautions, stay in the chilly ocean air in the sun and take pictures. Plus, I never step on the boat without an emergency sleeve of crackers.

Maine...the way life should be. Whoever coined that motto nailed it.