The Ghost Trap - Inside The Lobstering Life

Lobster hostilities lead to boat sinkings in Maine

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:00:18 -0800

Robert F. Bukaty | AP

Article courtesy of The Bangor Daily News

FRIENDSHIP, Maine — The sinking of two lobster boats is rekindling memories of hostilities among lobstermen two years ago that led to a near-fatal shooting, boats being sunk and a barrage of lobster trap vandalism along Maine’s lobster-rich coast.

Someone this week sabotaged two lobster boats, allowing them to drift free and flood with water before washing ashore in this postcard-pretty harbor. The dispute has shone a light on the unwritten rules of the sea, where fishermen often take matters into their own hands to settle grudges.

Lobstermen for generations have cut trap lines and shouted threats to settle differences over who can set their traps where. In more extreme instances, they’ve been known to ram boats and fire warning shots into the air.

The vandalism crossed the line late Monday night, when the 28-foot Lobstah Taxi and the 35-foot Fantaseas were sunk. Only a portion of the larger boat’s cabin was above water when it was found Tuesday morning on an island outside the harbor. The smaller boat was found on a mainland beach, but escaped serious damage.

Investigators don’t know if the attacks were the result of a personal vendetta or a territorial feud. At the least, they’ve brought unwanted attention to this fishing community 75 miles northeast of Portland.

“It’s sad, awful sad,” said lobsterman Doug Simmons, 60, as he worked on his gear Thursday in preparation for setting his traps in the coming weeks. “It’s cost people a lot of money.”

The boats were owned by Gary Jones and his 15-year-old son, Logan, who live in the neighboring town of Cushing, said Marine Patrol Sgt. Rene Cloutier, who is investigating with the Knox County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Coast Guard.

“There’s nothing that says this is a territorial thing,” Cloutier said. “It could be, but nothing points that way now.”

Gary Jones has been on the receiving end of vandalism before. In 2010, another Cushing lobsterman was charged with cutting 22 of his lobster buoys. At the time, Jones said trap and gear vandalism had cost him nearly $10,000 over three years.

Gary Jones’ wife, Tina Jones, said she and her husband aren’t commenting on this week’s incident, adding that her husband and son are hardworking fishermen.

“People are looking at us and thinking if that happened to us we must be bad-assed people,” she said.

This week’s boat sinkings are bringing back memories of 2010, when hostilities especially were in high gear.

On remote Matinicus Island, 20 miles offshore, a lobsterman fired a handgun at two fellow lobstermen, hitting one in the neck in a near-fatal dispute over lobster traps. A jury later found Vance Bunker not guilty of elevated aggravated assault.

Two weeks after the shooting, someone sank two lobster boats and damaged a third in Owls Head, another midcoast fishing harbor. Throughout the summer, police investigated a rash of complaints about lobster trap lines being cut, resulting in lost lobster gear.

Last year was relatively calm, but the sinkings in Friendship are raising questions about whether this coming summer will be heated.

For now, there aren’t any indicators that tensions are ready to erupt, “knock on wood,” said Marine Patrol Maj. Alan Talbot.

“Hopefully it’s just a random thing,” he said. “But who knows what’s to come.”

Gary Jones’ boat was taken to a boatyard in Owls Head for repairs. His son’s boat sits on boat jacks at Lash Boatyard in Friendship.

Lobstermen in town are a reticent bunch, but they’ll tell you they think the perpetrator was from somewhere other than Friendship. The Joneses are from Cushing and don’t even fish the waters off Friendship, they say.

“You might be able to say this was a Friendship thing if he fished here — but he don’t,” said lobsterman Kendall Delano as he sanded his trap buoys in a waterfront building.

Wesley Lash, who works for his father at the boatyard, said the sinkings don’t reflect well on this sleepy town, which has about 1,200 residents, just a single store and not even a traffic light.

“It gives Friendship a bad name,” he said. “People’ll say, ‘Friendship, that doesn’t sound like a friendly place.’”

Lash’s father, also named Wesley, said there have been feuds as long as there’s been a lobster industry.

“You go from Portsmouth [N.H.] to Eastport and it’s the same thing,” he said.

Still, Friendship gets its share of feuding.

Simmons remembers years ago when somebody slammed a crowbar through the hull of another boat, causing it to sink. This past winter, somebody fired a shot from a high-powered rifle into the hull of a lobster boat, Cloutier said. The shooting is under investigation.

“It happened late at night, nobody saw anything and Friendship is a pretty tight-lipped community,” he said.

How To Make An Un-Stompable Trap

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:53:17 -0800

Friendship Trap's display booth

Well you know, to write the novel, I had to learn not only how lobster traps work but also what it would take to really thrash the sh** out of one--say in some dubious middle of the night situation. Disclaimer: I didn't actually go out in the middle of the night and thrash the sh** out of one.

Here at the 38th Annual Maine Fisherman's Forum, I wandered over to the Friendship Trap Co. booth to ask about the steel runners they had on display and how they worked with wire traps. Here, for the layman lobster aficianado, is how it works.

To sink a galvanized wire trap so that it stays on the bottom of the ocean, you need weight, but not so much weight that you throw out your poor, friggin achin' back just to lift a trap onto the rail.

When you're in your 40s and 50s

What you're looking at here are LiteLoad Runners, steel runners that attach to the bottom of the trap with a heavier density in the water. In the photo, they are showing how much these runners weigh once submerged. If you want to see how it really works along with a big burly lobsterman, check out the video here.

But basically, these LiteLoads will save your back and guys who've been lobster fishing all their lives and have a little extra to spend are likely choose these rather than the next two options.

Lightest on land; heaviest in water

When you're in your 30s.

As you can see this is a wire trap with concrete runners bolted right onto the bottom. Apparently PVC and concrete bolt-on runners are the medium range of weight. Let's say you've been lobstering since you were 12 and you might have tweaked your back on a couple of good keg stands or falling off a dock, but you haven't mangled yourself yet. There's still some usefulness to you and your wallet to go this route.

When you're in your 20s and teens.

This here, as you can see is about as old-school as you can get. Wire trap. A place for a brick. Add brick. The lobstermen of yore used to weigh their wooden oak traps down with bricks because obviously with wood, you need something to keep them from floating. But today, I'm told (and please comment if I've left anything out or said it wrong) that this is about as budget as you can get. Great for kids up and coming because they have backs like Superman.

So what's the best for an unstompable trap?

Here the nice gentleman from Friendship Trap Co. actually has a display that shows when he's standing on the bottom of a trap reinforced with bolt-on concrete, there's no give or sag when he steps upon it. He steps over to the next trap (to his left in the pic), only clad in oak runners and bam, it goes down like wilted lettuce. So, that's what I found out. If you don't want your traps to get the sh** thrashed out of them, outfit 'em in concrete.

God I love it when Eva gets cranky

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:19:45 -0800

I'm re-posting this column by one of my fave Maine islanders, Eva Murray, who basically delivers a spin on a column I about a year ago "Top Ten Dumbest Questions Tourists Ask." This is Eva at her best, giving it to ya straight. Re-posted from Village Soup.

Eva Murray lives on Matinicus Island.

There is no boat

Someone you know needs this. Send it to them, please. I know who I’ve got in mind. It won’t do any good, most likely, because it’s very hard to get people to give up their preconceived mistaken ideas, but it might make us both feel better:

1. Stop saying “the boat.” There is no boat. At least, not like what you’re thinking. Sometimes there is a boat.

2. When there is a boat, there is no “morning boat,” like every morning at 9 a.m. or anything regular like that. There is no daily ferry. There is no island mail boat. There is no zip-back-and-forth-anytime-you-want water taxi. The state vehicle ferry comes roughly 30 times a year but the schedule for 2012 looks like this: Friday, Jan. 13, leaving Rockland at 8:15 a.m.; Monday, Feb. 13, at 9:45 a.m.; Friday, March 23, at 8 a.m.

Are you starting to get the picture? Three trips in April, three in May, four in June. People keep telling me the ferry serves Matinicus every two weeks. I don’t know where they get that. I explain how it works and once in a while they even argue with me, which seems nothing short of bizarre.

By the way, the passenger boat, which is not the same thing as what we call “the ferry,” keeps a completely different schedule, also irregular and based on the tides, and is seasonal only. This time of year, when even once-monthly state ferries can and should get canceled due to nasty weather there is, for all intents and purposes, no boat.

3. You might assure me that, “Surely one of the fishermen will take you across whenever you need to go” but you have dreamed that up in your head (or are reminiscing about the 1960s).

4. They might give us an extra ferry trip if there are several trucks waiting to get across, such as to deliver firewood, lumber or propane, but a few walk-ons who wish a cheaper passage than the air service can provide will not cause the Maine State Ferry Service to muster the four-man crew, thrash all heck out of its equipment, and spend a fortune on diesel fuel. Sorry. It costs a lot to get here. It costs a lot to leave. Such is island life.

5. For some, this is still not sinking in. I swear somebody is going to call me up this week and ask, “What time’s the morning boat?” That’s because people think what happens on one island represents all of them, and most other islands do have daily boat service. Each of the inhabited islands has entirely different transportation mechanisms. Somehow I doubt you believe me.

6. Why is it too expensive for you to come here, but you seem to think it no big deal for me to come to you? The cost is the same in either direction.

7. If you call the flying service and plan an island flight too far in advance, it probably won’t be “flyable” when you mean to go. If you don’t call and make a reservation at all, they’ll probably be busy with other flights when you show up. Call the day before and then keep checking in if the weather is questionable. Fog, snow, rain, icing conditions, high winds, or too much mud means “it is not flyable.” Write that down. Your boss will probably not understand, but that is not your fault. Bring your toothbrush (because, you know, there is no boat).

8. If it is almost flyable, your best bet is to hang around. Don’t leave town. Don’t go farther away than the Owls Head General Store. While you’re there, get a pizza. Remember, you can’t get pizza on this island. If you’re at the store anyway, grab some extra milk. Always wise.

9. If you are on the wharf or at the airstrip, you are a freight handler. A longshoreman. A baggage carrier. If you can’t help because you are infirm or managing a baby or an animal, that’s one thing, but if you stand right smack in the middle of things obliviously primping your carefully arranged hair while others unload your boxes from the vessel or aircraft, and you are perfectly able-bodied, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

10. Most of the obvious things you think we should do, we think we should do too, but we can’t afford. Put up wind turbines for the power company? Open a store/restaurant/public fuel dock? Take down all the dead spruce trees? Make the roads so you can roller skate on them? If you think any of this is merely a matter of will, you haven’t done the math. If any of this is within your personal budget, come on ahead. If you think we just hadn’t noticed how our lives could be made better because we are simply Neanderthals, you’re an idiot.

11. But, of course, we are Neanderthals. Just read the papers.

12. Nobody runs this place. There is a sort of town council of the semi-willing, which sometimes functions and sometimes doesn’t, and there are generally a few guys refining those indirect and subtle Machiavellian reality-TV-style schoolyard political machinations in their efforts to try and run the harbor. I try not to pay too much attention. The old ladies used to run the place, but we are now completely out of old ladies.

13. I truly do not know how many people live here. Nobody does. More and more of the guys catch their lobsters and leave. Sometimes that isn’t even their fault.

14. A few bog wraiths drift around, driving at unsafe speeds and snarling at those of us who really live here. They like to think they’re tough. Sometimes those idiots presume to stomp around on the wharf, and bark orders or issue pathetic threats to people unloading freight, as if we who carry on our year-round daily lives here are somehow in their way. Shut up, you thugs, and either help or move over. You have absolutely no authority to patronize the rest of us. I don’t give a rat’s posterior who you shovel bait for.

15. I hear they named a hockey team somewhere around here the Sternmen. Go Sternmen.

16. All that most of us care about is that somebody teach school, pump oil, keep the electricity and the telephones going, get the mail out, sell bait and buy lobsters, and repair stuff (sumps pumps, largely, and a few washing machines). The paperwork has been growing exponentially, though. Agents of various facets of the nameless bureaucracy seem to think that it matters that somebody fill out forms in a timely manner detailing how many nuclear power plants and ski areas we have, or whether the boundaries of our peculiarly insular municipality have expanded, or whether we plow the sidewalks, or whether such-and-such a house has hardwood flooring, or what percentage of our demographic lives in parks or under bridges, or how many nuts and bolts the power company keeps in inventory. I kid you not.

17. We don’t have any bridges.

18. Or sidewalks. Or a morning boat.

Lookin' GOOD Rockland Lobster Trap Tree!

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:58:05 -0800

Thanks to Bob Trapani of the American Lighthouse Foundation for this great pic of the Trap Tree, just lit this week. I still ours is the best :)

Who Has The Best Lobster Trap Tree?

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 06:24:01 -0800

photo: Kadence (Click to see origin)

Tomorrow night at 6 pm, my neighboring city of Rockland (known as the Lobster Capital of the World) will light up a special kind of Christmas tree.

It is constructed from approximately 152 wire lobster traps, supplied by Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston, Maine. It is 30-feet tall and is topped with a five-foot fiberglass lobster known as "Rocky" and lit from the inside with 24 green 75W halogen lights that provide so much light that it can be seen clearly from Vinalhaven Island, eight miles across Penobscot Bay.

If you happen to be in Midcoast Maine prior to the holidays, don't miss it. It's kind of like our version of the World's Largest Ball of Twine.

Though some may beg to differ this isn't the best lobster trap tree in the world, I still say Rockland's is magnificent. Gloucester, MA started the trap tree tradition first in 1998; Rockland followed five years later. And last year, Beals, Maine claimed they were the best the best with their 50-foot tree.

What's your vote? And be nice.

The point is, the trap tree draws attention to the hard-working folks in our lobster industry and raises money for a good cause. Each year raffle tickets are sold for $50 each for a chance to win all the traps used to build the tree. Every year, a lobsterman wins the traps and uses them for the following season.

Go Rockland! See ya at the tree lighting.

Now You Don't Have To Be A Local To Get On A Lobsterboat

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:59:15 -0800

Capt. Gary Libby overlooking Marshall Point Lighthouse

photos and story by K. Stephens

In Maine, if you’re doing what you really you want for a living, you usually have about four part-time jobs. That’s how Captain Gary Libby makes his living in Port Clyde. When the weather is good, he’ll work seven days a week doing a little commercial fishing here, a little lobstering there, and when there’s time, he’ll run casual tours off his lobster boat, MisKim.

Until recently, if you ever wanted to know the ins and outs of lobster fishing, you had to rely on books, documentary DVDs or YouTube clips. Smart people do not approach working lobstermen in the harbor and ask them brilliant questions like “How come those lobsters in your trap are green?” There are better ways to find that out.

Port Clyde Lobster Tours originated out of the public’s need to get up close and personal on a lobster boat. Kim Libby, office manager for Port Clyde Lobster Tours, said: “I worked at the postal service in Port Clyde for several years and got asked the same question time and time again: ‘Is there any way a person could go out on a lobster boat and see how it was done?’ Back then, there really wasn’t. So, a few years ago, my husband saw the writing on the wall and got his lobster license back. He’s also a commercial ground fisherman. Once he got his lobster boat in operation again, we decided to put this tour together and started getting a lot of calls.

“You can expect a real live lobsterman who works 400 traps at any given time when he’s not fishing or doing tours. He’s got his Grundens on, and is usually looking pretty unkempt with fish goo up to his elbows. He always takes Red, our dog along. The dog’s part of the deal.”

Just then, Red climbed up into the canvas chair, the only other spot a person can sit on the boat. He’s a sweetheart of a dog, but it’s clear that this is his spot on the boat and he ain’t moving. Since the tour can only fit about four people comfortably, it’s easier to stand.

The boat itself is refreshingly grungy, as is Captain Libby. This is no sanitized schooner tour with life vests, cushy blankets and barrels of soft drinks. Grime splatters the windows and the mung flies off the warp as it coils onto the boat deck. Next to the canvas chair is a live well, which is a built-in saltwater tank to hold the lobsters he catches.

“If you don’t have a live well on your boat, ya got dead lobsters,” Libby said.

Just next to that is a tubful of bait — pogies, the term for menhaden, that have been sitting there salted for the last few days.

Captain Gary Libby is as nice a guy you could ever get for a guide, said his wife, who understands how curious people are about the profession, yet intimidated to approach a working lobsterman.

“He just a really laid-back, laconic guy,” she said. “If he were any more laconic he’d be dead. But his approach is really easy going; he doesn’t mind answering any questions at all.”

That said, one of their favorite questions from tourists is: “Why do all the boats point the same way?” Hint: Google this before you ask it.

The two-hour tour starts in Port Clyde as MisKim putters around the harbor. Captain Libby will tell you anything you want to know about lobstering as he hoists his traps up on a winch, opens them up, takes out the lobsters and demonstrates how to measure them with a brass gauge.

He likes to let his trap sit — or “soak” for at least four nights before he checks them again. Out of his wire traps, he pulls out large whelks, Jonah crabs, and a bunch of undersized lobsters, called shorts, before tossing them all back into the sea. After we’ve pulled up about six traps with only a few soft shell lobsters in each, Captain Libby does some calculations. Bait costs $120 a barrel and that covers roughly 100 traps. So he needs to catch at least a one-pound lobster in each trap to break even on his bait costs, but that’s not counting gas.

Ideally, catching five or six lobsters in each trap would make a profit. Captain Libby doesn’t like to waste anything. You get the sense when he’s hauling traps on these tours, it’s not just for the tourists’ benefit; he’d actually like to make his bait back while simultaneously educating his guests. As her husband of 17 years talks and tends to his traps, Kim Libby rubbed Red’s head and said, “All we have to do is bottle that accent of his and we’ll have it made.”

As Captain Libby motors between islands tending traps, you will get to observe seabirds, seals sunning themselves on rocks and the occasional porpoise. You will also have the opportunity to see take pictures of the Marshall Point Lighthouse most known for its cameo in the movie “Forrest Gump.” Winding through Huppers Island and Raspberry Island, you will understand what fishermen in Maine have known for centuries; there is nothing more beautiful than being on the ocean on a sparkling, sunny day.

At the conclusion of each tour, each customer receives a live lobster to take home. (Check out their website to see how you can remotely “own” a lobster trap and all of its sustainable lobster to be shipped to your home.)

For more information about Port Clyde Lobster Tours, visit portclydelobsteradventures.com/index.htm; call 593.6808 or email Kim@portclydelobstertours.com.

That's Well by Eva Murray

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 05:14:53 -0800

Earlier this month, I described what it was like to to spend a day on an 140-year-old schooner as it raced against another old girl. I'm reposting this excellent article by Maine writer Eva Murray, author of Well Out To Sea, as she describes with much more detail the exhilarating ride we all took. In short: it was a blast!

Earlier this month I was fortunate to be invited along for an extraordinary boat ride. On a warm sunny day in mid-June the two oldest working schooners in Maine, and in America, undertook a friendly race from Camden to Rockland in honor of their 140th birthdays. The historic schooners Stephen Taber, based in Rockland, and Lewis R. French, of Camden had planned a birthday party.

A bunch of us piled into a shuttle van to Camden, including a few guys who work for the City of Rockland and a couple of friendly regular tourists who’ve sailed on the two vessels before. The wife of the captain of the French was providing some of the history of the schooners, how in their day they hauled “everything…Christmas trees, sardines, bricks, lime....”

As we boarded the Taber from the yawl boat that carried us from the Camden dock, Captain Ken Barnes, previous master of the Taber, stood on the deck and played his bagpipes. Soon, coffee and cake appeared from the galley.

Aboard were most of the living former captains of the Taber, including Orville Young, Jim Sharp of the Sail Power and Steam Museum in Rockland, Ken and Ellen Barnes, owners of the Captain Lindsey House Inn also in Rockland, and presumed future captain Oscar, age two, who is messing with the parallel rules. His grandmother Ellen shows him the chart.

I am close enough to overhear much of the talk on the marine radio between the captains of the two contestants. “I guess I’d better call Garth and ask him where the starting line is.”

Captain Noah keys the mike: “Hey…so what’s the starting line?” Oscar toddles up to him and asks, “Are we going to race?” On the VHF: “This is the Stephen Taber to the Racing Schooner Lewis R. French…” Both captains have their little boys aboard. Oscar announces to everybody that this is a fast boat.

A bit more of a work-boat person myself, I feel a tad self-conscious mixing with this sailboat crowd. I don’t speak the language, wear the usual clothing or know how to work the gear. I will endeavor to stay out of the way. As the last boat load of guests is finally aboard the schooner and Captain Noah Barnes gives us the safety lecture, he tells us point blank, “You are all, as a rule, in the way. That’s OK.”

“By the way,” he adds, “I might be firing a cannon from time to time…probably at the Lewis R. French….”

He pointed out the hot Charlie Noble smokestack sticking out of the deck, the chimney of the wood stove upon which our lunch will be cooked.

“That’s hot! That will burn a hole in your $300 pata-gucci fleece shell in two seconds.”

He showed his guests where the life vests are stowed.

“When should we put them on?” somebody asked. “If you see me putting one on,” replied the captain. Later in the trip, a photographer wants to climb out on the bowsprit for a picture. “Should I put on a life jacket?” he wonders. “Uh…yeah.”

At the helm, Noah Barnes and Jim Sharp and a couple of regulars joked about the several City of Rockland officials aboard. Some wag made observations on ancient maritime tradition: “They’re ours. We can do what we want with them until we set them off on shore.”

A woman quietly said something about, “There’s probably a plank aboard here somewhere.” A voice behind me suggested they might renegotiate their parking place.

Lunchtime was, of course, at the roughest point in the trip. Cook Anna, former owner Captain Ellen, and messmate Hanlon passed us all big cups of hot fish chowder. They offered delicious “Newfie rolls,” which tasted to me like Anadama bread, but I guess you can’t get away with such a thing with a cook named Anna. A man who had sailed on the Taber before mused, “I don’t know how you do it in a kitchen that small,” indicating the galley. Ellen Barnes just grins. She “wrote the book” on that!

There are lots of other historic schooners around; we see the Olad, of course, which is at the starting mark, and the Surprise, the Angelique, and later the Bowditch. I learned what the expression “head us off at the bow” really meant when the Lewis R. French did just that to the Taber. Aboard the French, a big-muscled crewman in a Dixie-cup sailor’s hat and jumper does his best Popeye routine.

The wind came up just in time for the serious part of the race, to the extent any of it is serious. Small boats circled us, heavy laden with photographers. Should anybody be curious, there are probably 100,000 images of these two handsome vessels to be had somewhere. Aboard the Taber, the Code Enforcement Officer for the City of Rockland had a clever rig he’d built with two digital cameras mounted to a small board, a switch to hit both simultaneously, and a spirit level. “3-D photography,” he smiled. I think he’s the one who wanted to climb out on the bowsprit.

We heard the call of “Ready about!” whenever the captain needs his crew’s attention. Gregory, Celia, and the other crew stopped answering passenger questions and turned to listen. When they had done what was needed – they hauled, hoisted, fastened or adjusted rigging, sails or anything else – to the extent the captain requires, he called, “That’s well!”

I have never heard that expression anywhere else. I like it.

People from New York point and explain lobster buoys to each other. Crew member Celia advised Rockland mayor Brian Harden to duck clear of a swinging boom. Noah said, “It would be embarrassing if we killed to mayor.” Harden sat with Captain Sharp and Representative Ed Mazurek. We all ate chocolate peanut-butter bars although the last few got sprinkled with salt spray (which does not hurt them one bit).The passenger list today is a bit heavy with writers, including K.Stephens, author of "The Ghost Trap," somebody doing a story for Classic Boat Magazine and another from Good Old Days Magazine. I am grateful that I am not a reporter, and not obliged to interview anybody on this beautiful day. With all this press aboard, the background and more facts about these two schooners and this race will not be hard to find.

After the Taber beat the French to the Rockland breakwater, out around the buoy, where I was pleased to hear the tones of two bells, and back into the harbor she slowly inched up to the wharf at the Pearl Restaurant. Nathan Lipfert, senior curator of the Maine Maritime Museum, spoke, as did Captain Sharp and others at a small awards ceremony, where the Maine Maritime Museum presented Captain Garth Wells of the Lewis R. French with the “Irish Pennant” award for “coming in second in a two-boat race”). There was a large cake, which I heard was baked by both cooks in the galley of the Lewis R French. Lipfert took us back to 1871, the year when the French and the Taber were launched: “There was a big fire in Chicago. Lewis Carroll published ‘Through the Looking Glass.’ The first shipment of bananas arrived in Boston from Kingston, Jamaica. The whole New Bedford whaling fleet was trapped in the Arctic ice. Stanley found Livingstone; ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume.’”

Both schooners are National Historic Landmarks (I think, ‘landmark?’ A heck of a title for a boat). As Captain Ellen Barnes makes clear, “These boats have to be loved and held close, because they are treasures.”

That’s well.

This story originally appeared in The Herald Gazette on 6/29/2011

2011 Rockland Lobster Boat Races: A Floating Block Party

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:07:07 -0800

The Go Go Lobster Girls

Blessed again this year with great weather and excellent spirits (both the human kind and the kind that fits in a cooler), the flotilla had the best seat in the house to watch the Lobster Boat Races in Rockland on Father's Day, June 19. This floating block party was all about friends getting together, water balloon fights, dancing and grilling out.

We only had two mishaps this year. It was so choppy on the water that the flotilla of lobster boats began to squeeze too tightly against one another and in trying to physically push them apart at one point, two of the windows got smashed on the total Total Eclipse.

As many followers of this blog know, Ryan Post's iconic lobster boat, The Instigator perished in a freak spring storm, tossed up on the rocks. His new boat, Tall Tails, replaced The Instigator as the starting boat this year. And the second "incident" was the water balloon fight. Okay, so some of us threw water balloons at Tall Tails as it passed by, but that DID NOT give them the right to swing by again and douse us head to toe with the boat's hose. Damn you Ryan!

Tall Tails before "the incident."

Ever see a schooner showdown in Maine?

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 07:18:54 -0800

View from The Taber looking out at our "rival" The Lewis R. French as the cannon signaled the start of the race.

As many of the readers of my novel know, schooners play a big part in the setting of The Ghost Trap and I've been lucky to know more than a few captains of windjammers in midcoast Maine. Luckier still, yesterday I'd been invited to hop aboard The Stephen Taber for a first-ever schooner showdown between The Taber and The Lewis R. French, two of America's oldest working wooden schooners, both which happen to be 140 years old.

The rivalry between both tall ships was purely friendly--each captain only wanted bragging rights. They were gunning as hard as they could against the brisk wind that cropped up at the start of the race as The French took the lead. Both ships took decidedly different courses, tacking in southerly wind, as the crew of The Taber constantly adjusted the foresails and searched for the best wind advantage--all the while chef Anna was cooking us a homemade fish chowder lunch with Newfie rolls, a mixed green salad topped with strawberries and peanut butter bars. (I was amazed they found the time to do this for the 25 or so passengers all aboard). After roughly four hours under a beautifully sunny sky, The Stephen Taber crossed the finish line first at The Rockland Breakwater as Capt. Ken Barnes broke out the bagpipes and serenaded the lighthouse.

Honestly, I always tell people who come to Maine: You haven't experienced anything until you've been on a day sail on a schooner--or better yet, on a longer trip when you can sleep in a cramped cabin. This was such a remarkable way to spend a summer day.

Homemade coffeecake, coffee and tea as we get going

A sunny view of the rigging

Passing the Rockland Breakwater as the finish line, Capt. Barnes (Sr.) breaks out the bagpipes

GT Gets Four Shots of Espresso!

Thu, 12 May 2011 08:58:40 -0800

Reviewed by Booked In Chico -a blog about books and bookish events that happen in the Northstate of California. Written by a Master's student in Literature who graduates May 2011. Also enjoy her cliché memoir rants about grad school! Follow on Twitter @BookedinChico

I would first like to thank both Lori of TNBBC and LeapFrog PressThe Ghost Trap. Lori posted via Twitter a giveaway for Stephens' book, and I thought I should try to win a copy. I was finishing my thesis and was in a crisis mode as to what I would do with my life after my MA in English Literature. I, then, started to put together a book blog to keep me going through the remaining hardships of writing a thesis. So here I am, about to review my first book for my blog.

K . Stephens’s The Ghost Trap places the reader immediately on a lobster boat in a bay of Maine’s coast. The novel takes us through the journey of a lobsterman, Jamie Eugley, which encapsulates the trial and tribulations—both of his job and of his life. Soon the reader realizes that there is a trap war between Jamie and other lobstermen. From the trap war to low numbers of lobsters, Jamie must balance it all. Alliances form out on the freezing and rocky water of Maine: the moral and family man Jamie and longtime friend Thongchai versus the immoral and scamming Fogerty family. The trap wars, however, are just one of his many issues, because at home he must affectionately support his live-in girlfriend, Anja, who is recovering from a massive brain injury. We meet Anja three years after her accident, where she is progressing but still in great need of assistance. Anja needs constant supervision and Post-its, which becomes rather draining on both Jamie and his supportive mother, Donna. Stephens wonderfully depicts Jamie’s real-life tensions, which encourage the reader to keep turning the pages. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Ghost Trap, and, at times, I couldn’t put it down. Jamie’s complicated life made me want to both judge and sympathize with him, which is an incredible feat for an author to accomplish. Some of Jamie’s decisions, such as his newly formed friendship with seasonal pirate entertainer, Happy, made me extremely angry. I, literally, wanted to jump into the story and shake Jamie; his friendship irked me much like Max and Pammy in the United States of TaraSeason Three. Why would you form that kind of a relationship now after all of this time? But I kept with Jamie because he handles so much between Anja’s needs and his financial hardships. I had to ask myself what would I do? This helped me to sympathize with Jamie’s character. Stephens forces her readers to examine the whole picture as she complicates initial judgments. In the end, I absolutely loved Jamie’s character; once I read the final chapter, I couldn’t help but feel for him and Anja.

The Ghost Trap is the first book that has ever made me tear up—not because of it being sappy but its closeness to reality. Stephens writes fiction that goes beyond the pages and ventures into exploring life’s ailments with both passion and reality. And thus, I recommend this book to everyone with one minor warning—that missing shot of espresso. Stephens, for the most part, uses her style and tone to extend the images she describes using physical and visceral language; however, there are moments sprinkled throughout where Stephens’s lyrical language detracts from the novel. These moments forced me out of the novel to decipher the meaning—not out of confusion but out of visual space. I mean that some of the visceral description talking about a character’s hands will quickly jump to the character’s eyebrows where the language becomes much more lyrical. These quick movements from one space to another are at times jarring for the reader. Though lyrical language is usually praised by peers, in say a creative writing class; a novel that maintains a particular language throughout makes it much more compelling and engaging to read. That being said, I give K. Stephens’ The Ghost Trap 4 shots of espresso. The Ghost Trap is a rather promising Red Eye novel!