The Ghost Trap Blog

Arrgh! The Boat's Scuttled..a Total Loss!

4/22/2011

(Photo by: Steven L. Waterman)

My friend Ryan was dealt an incredible blow this week. His iconic boat, The Instigator, ripped from its mooring during the April 17 storm in 50-60 mile winds and "was chewed to death on granite teeth" up on the rocks.

The boat is a total loss. According to Ryan, "No boat that has gone onto those jagged pieces of granite has ever floated again."

This is nor ordinary fishing vessel. It represents his brand "Maine Buggin" and is the face of the Midcoast Lobster Races. True to his optimistic nature, however, he is not upset--and is already in talks with procuring another vessel in North Carolina.

"I'm going to make a positive out of a negative," he said. "That's all you can do."

As per custom, any boat he purchases can never be renamed "Instigator"--it's bad luck.

Story originally reported by Lynda Clancy, Village Soup.

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I Wouldn't Exactly Call A Book Signing on North Haven Work.

8/2/2010

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Waterman's Community Center, North Haven, Maine

K. Stephens

First of all, you have to be ready to depart on a 9:30 am ferry out of Rockland, for a scheduled 1 pm presentation and book signing. And you can't leave until the 3:30 pm boat departs. So here we are on one spectacularly blue sunny Saturday, for basically an 8-hour stretch. So, this is a commitment. We're in this for the long haul today.

Capt. Ryan Post is with me, along with his 13-year-old nephew Drew Philip, who offered to be our book and DVD pack horse and schlep everything onto the ferry. Drew's psyched because we put him in our press release picture and now he's our official groupie. All of Ryan's buddies are currently heading out to OxFest, a day-long festival of bands. He'd been hanging out with Geno, his sternman the night before and I'm probably guessing that he'd rather be on his way to Wiscasset with his friends at the moment than on our way to North Haven to work all day.

"Kind of a bus man's holiday for you," I said, as we stared over the white metal rail of the ferry into the churning deep blue water below. "Here it is your day off and you're back on the water."

"Nah," he scoffed. "There's no place I'd rather be than on the water."

An hour later, coming into the Fox Island Thoroughfare between Vinalhaven and North Haven, it strikes me how many grand houses and mansions are thisclose to the water's edge. Imagine. Spending your summer on this island, the channel right outside your bedroom window. It all seems like out of a sensitive woman's novel, this splendor and gentle living. But, Ryan grew up on an island. You'd better know how to be alone with yourself for long stretches or time without going stir crazy.

Waterman's Community Center welcomes us and we set down all of our gear. After some technical fiddling around with our presentation (great thanks go to Lana and Rachael for their help), we head out for a quick lunch. Soon, it was time for our presentation. The only problem? It's a sunny Saturday on the island. Would you rather be on the beach or in a darkened theater?

Instead of 40-50 people like we expected, about 15 showed up. (Sigh. Welcome to the typical book signing experience. Even Linda Greenlaw, whom I'd seen a week earlier at her book signing had about 20 or so people show up on a sunny day.) Still, as you can see from the quick clip below (Drew needs to be a little more steady on the camera :), we threw out an entertaining presentation about how the fictional subculture in my novel so closely resembles the one in which Ryan works and lives daily, as evidenced in Maine Buggin, his day-in-the-life DVD.

The thing is, it's all about the experience, not how many books/DVDs you sell. That's why writers and lobstermen are so similar--you ain't in this for the money, honey, you do it because it's your life. And honestly, with a couple of ferry cocktails on the way back home with the sun bouncing off the water, the comfortable hum of the ferry engines rumbling, and knowing you put in a good day--could there be anything better?

Not a bad place for lunch, eh?

Home bound on the ferry

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Nothing’s Perfect In Maine, But This Day Was

6/21/2010

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photo: K. Stephens

A Day in the Life of Maine Lobster Boat Racing
K. Stephens

Moments before the annual Rockland lobster races start, people are lined up on the Rockland breakwater waiting for some kind of signal designating the kickoff. All kinds of spectators—parents with babies strapped to their backs, dogs, locals and tourists—wait patiently. This is the first year in several that it has been a bright hot day with perfect visibility. For the moment, their only distraction is several hundred feet away. Parallel to the breakwater, dozens of lobster boats are rafted up together. From the breakwater you can hear the cheers and laughter across the water. This is a flotilla of locals, the tight-knit lobstering community known for working hard and partying harder.

“Wow, how much fun would it be to be hanging out on one of those boats?” a spectator says thoughtfully.

Aboard the Total Eclipse out of Owls Head, ME, this is how much fun it is. It's finally summer here in Maine. It's finally hot out. No one lobsters on a Sunday, that's just the rules—so everyone is making the most out of the day off, chatting and laughing or climbing over the rails to socialize on neighboring boats nestled alongside one another. These are people who have grown up together. Everyone here is someone who lobsters in the area, who has married into it, who works in the community or who has some kind of connection to lobstering. The vibe is Key West friendly. Coolers of every size line the stern. A picnic table and a grill has been set up. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” blasts out of the speakers as girls in bikinis and shorts dance and air guitar. A variety of drinks are in people’s hands: wine, Jell-O shots, Bud Lites, a special cider from South Africa. Clayton’s gripping onto a two-gallon cooler of vodka and grape juice like some one might rip it away from him.

A sharp whistle pierces the air. “Everybody quiet down and turn to Channel 10,” yells Scott Herrick, one of the organizers. The noisy crowd passes the message from boat to boat until everyone settles down. Sandie Galvez, a petite mom of teenagers who could pass for a 25-year-old, gets on the VHF radio and begins singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” A former lounge singer from L.A., her voice comes clearly over the mike as she nails the high notes at the end. This particular song produces goose bumps, especially in this charged atmosphere. At the conclusion of the song, a roar of cheers spills out of the rafted boats.

Now it’s officially party time.

More than 110 lobster boats from all over the state will race at this event. This lobster boat race competition takes place in a variety of locales from Portland to Winter Harbor in the summer, but here in Rockland, considered “The Lobster Capital of The World,” the races are particularly exciting. As the first boats of the lobster races spray rooster tails, there is a deafening engine blast from one of the boats as it takes an effortless lead. The cheers from the rafted lobster boats go up along with hands holding red plastic cups. The racers circle around and cruise on by the flotilla to get their accolades as sea gulls decide at this very moment to suddenly swoop in and do these crazy zig-zig aerials. At once it is a confetti of birds, like a ticker-tape parade.

The grills are cooking full throttle. “Who wants a meat stick?” The cooler lids open and close. A couple of girls dive into the bottle green ocean. Some do front flips off the stern. Clayton is bobbing in the water, his vodka grape juice cooler his only personal flotation device. A couple of boats over, where the kids are a little younger, people get yelled at for letting their Jell-O shot cups litter the water, as someone from the older crew dives in to collect debris. These are people who protect their waters fiercely. “You know better!” someone yells. Then, the mood goes back to playful as another cry rings out: “Survival Suit Contest!” Within moments, five guys are frantically wriggling into full body neon orange immersion suits designed to keep someone warm and protected in the water in case of emergency. To the crowd’s delight, they don their suits in less than 10 seconds and launch themselves over the side of the boat.

Soon, a recognizable boat comes around the bend. With a half dozen people on board, the 40-foot lobster boat The Instigator approaches and everyone knows who Ryan Post is. Largely credited for organizing the earliest lobster boat races, Post is a rising voice in the lobstering community. Given the cheeky nickname “Captain Hollywood” by his friends, he is the creator of the educational lobstering DVD Maine Buggin, and is regularly consulted on public lobstering matters in the news. Right now he’s got radio personalities Tom O. and Mr. Mike from WTOS’s The Morning Mountain Show on board and the crowd whoops it up every time The Instigator passes by. Also on board is a video crew. Word is that the Portland marketing company, Aura360, was on board to get footage to turn into a pilot that it can pitch to television networks. The idea is to produce a television series based on the races similar to the hit show “Deadliest Catch.

In the end, Galen Alley, of Beals Island, has won the race, setting a new speed record. He was clocked at 68.1 m.p.h. in his 30-foot fiberglass boat, Foolish Pleasure, breaking his own record of 64.5 m.p.h., which he set last summer.

“This has been such a beautiful day,” said Stacy Campbell, in her bikini and beat-up straw hat gazing out at the water. “Everybody you’d ever want to spend time with is right here.” There is no such thing as a “Perfect Maine.” But today, living, working and celebrating in a lobster community is about as close as it gets.

To see more pictures of the day, fan "The Ghost Trap" on Facebook and view "Photos"

photo: K. Stephens

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Spring Time: Setting Traps and Making Squat

3/14/2010

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By Ryan Post

Our family has designated April 15 every year as the day we all go to the island and set our traps, 100 at a time. And this isn’t any random, “toss ‘em wherever” method—if anything it’s like the way my aunt orchestrates Christmas—everything is hyper-organized, from how good a shape the traps themselves are in (none can be what we call“stove up”) to the exact length of rope tied to each trap. And the area where each trap will be dropped is already pre-arranged before we even get on the boats. Yep, it’s a little OCD. But it has to be, because if you drop a brand new $65 trap into shallow water in the spring, what’s going to happen is, it is going to continuously get rolled over by the tide. And in a matter of weeks that $65 trap turns into a $5 trap.

Every year, I put out 800 traps, which is the Maine state limit and I’ll steam out 35-45 minutes a day to my designated fishing area and haul about 300 traps per day. Spring is a notoriously tough time to catch anything. It’s a little bit like planting a row of seeds. You don’t go out the next day and expect waist-high flowers. We’re the farmers of the sea and when you work with lobsters you’ve got to know their quirks. They’re real picky and you can’t blame them. They know how to work those traps better then we do. First of all, they burrow down into deep waters in the spring. They don’t like the cold; they don’t like any fresh water runoff coming from the shoreline and they don’t like old salted bait that time of year. You’ve got to coax them with fresh herring or alewives. Beyond that, they won’t start migrating inland to shallower waters until the temperature of the ocean gets up to about 43 degrees or higher.

Still, it’s the chase that makes me go to work even if I’m not making a dime. Last spring I put a couple of 13-hour days in, and went $300 in the hole. Got up the next morning at 3 am—and did it all again. But that’s okay. It’s a great thing we don’t catch all the lobsters that go in our traps—or else there would be none left. That’s the way we do it in Maine. We are the original conservationists when it comes to lobster and we treat it as it should be--a sustainable resource.

And if you want to call me an environmentalist….go ahead!

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It's Not Just My Job, It's My Life

8/24/2009

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By Ryan Post

About four years ago, I was in the British Virgin Islands sailing around on this catamaran and when I went ashore, I found this little tiki bar on the beach—the only bar on the whole island. I sat down, ordered a bushwhacker, which is a combination of four, five or six, alcohols. I didn’t really know what’s in it. It was bushwhacker—it speaks for itself. Next thing I know, this guy comes up to me, very friendly, probably in his mid-50s and he starts talking to me. Now, wherever you travel, there are two questions people will always ask you. The first one is “Where are you from?” So this guy asks me where I’m from and I tell him and he says, “Oh Maine, my wife and I love Maine.” The very next thing people always ask is “What do you do?” So I told him I’m a Maine lobsterman and he instantly sat back, looked at me a little differently, and then signaled to the bartender to buy me another drink. Like I needed another bushwhacker at that point, but whatever. So after this exact same thing happened a few times with people asking me what I do and proceeding to ask me 100 questions and I got to thinking: why not put cameras on my boat and document what my sternman Jon Hill and I do for a whole year --then put it on a DVD?

At around the same time, I happened to be an extra in two scenes in the Oscar-nominated movie, In The Bedroom (I was officially: “guy in a sardine factory” and “guy in bar”). I was also in the film Empire Falls, though they redid the shot. Again, “guy in bar.” I know you’re thinking, what a stretch. So, having been part of this really interesting experience, I was starting to think, “I’ve got to do my own thing—take people’s questions about the lobster industry and put it on film.” Why not? I love explaining to people where I come from, my family and my heritage, where I grew up and what a perfect medium to convey these stories on film. Nothing had ever really never been done like that before—not like a Year of the Life. If you’ve ever seen that program about the Alaskan king crab industry on the Discovery Channel and how hard those guys work--just that footage alone justifies the price people pay for that product. My hope was to do the same with Maine Buggin’ so people could see past the myths and fantasy of lobstering and see how it really works.

I decided to focus on the educational side of lobstering to make it just as accessible to a six-year-old as to a 96-year-old. Right now, I’m already going into the school systems, bringing live lobsters into classrooms and explaining to the kids what the industry is all about. Especially around here, I think the kids really need to know how the industry works. Rockland, Maine is the lobster capital of the world. Period. There are more lobsters caught in Penobscot Bay and the surrounding islands than all of Maine—and the whole U.S. put together. But as lobster fishermen, we’re a dying breed right now, in some very touchy times. There’s a lot of prediction about us all being part-timers in the next few years. And let me tell you, for an industry that has been around for hundreds of years and which accounts for 80% of the U.S. catch, this is beyond a crisis—we’re in a free fall. It’s like Detroit’s automakers—if they didn’t get a bailout, Michigan and the whole U.S. economy was predicted to collapse. Well, it’s the same with us, only we don’t get a bailout. If the lobster industry crashes, then Maine’s economy is right directly behind it. I’m talking the restaurants, the tourist industry, the bait dealers, the trap builders, the marine stores, the sales of trucks and boats. I mentioned my family’s island in the last blog. This is where it gets hugely personal for me. My family’s island is now at stake. It is a humongous amount of work and responsibility to maintain a private island when you have 8 or 10 houses on the island and all the docks. Without lobstering we won’t have that island—it is run and maintained by the lobster industry. Even if I had to file for bankruptcy, but that wouldn’t even hurt the most. It would be letting down my great, great, grandfather, and everyone down the line, all the people who kept this island in the family through hard times. You’d never know how much of a failure it would be for my family if we had to let go of that island. It would be catastrophic. It would truly be the downfall of everything we stand for. My ancient relatives would turn in their graves-it goes that deep.

So. If you get a kid in junior high to believe how high the stakes are for us right now, perhaps that kid will go on to be lobbying for us in the future. We need lobbyists, because we are on the bottom of the totem pole. Fishermen and lobstermen just want to get up in the morning and put in an extremely hard working day (whether it’s 12 or 18 hours) and they want to come back at the end of the day, sell their product, fuel and bait their boat up and they want to go home. We need people not involved in the industry, but who understand what it is to lobby for it.

As you can see, lobstering is not a job, it’s a lifestyle. The difference between having a job is you can put into a 13-hour day and you’re guaranteed to make money. You put in a 13-hour-day lobstering say in the spring and you can go $300 in the hole. And then you get up the next morning at 3:00 in the morning and do it again. Whether you make money or not you have to go fishing. It’s a business that can be great one year and you’re losing your house the next. It’s a sacrifice that not everybody can make.

So stay tuned for The Maine Buggin' DVD next month. It’s set up in 8 or 9 chapters to show what all the ins and outs of our daily life on and off my boat, the 40-foot Instigator. I’m going to continue writing a blog for each chapter so you can get to know me, my sternman, and the people of Maine. The good times and bad and all the times all between. I promise you I will lead you into a world you’ve never seen.

And if you ever see me around and want to ask me a ton of questions—go ahead. The bartender knows to make mine a bushwhacker.

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The Truth About Trap Wars: Between Fact and Fiction

8/24/2009

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By Ryan Post

In the news lately, people have been getting the impression that all lobstermen are a bunch of pirates running around with Jolly Roger flags swinging swords and shooting guns. . . and though some do fit that category, it’s not the case for most of us. Trap wars have been going on for generations, but some major things have happened this summer with a shooting, boats being sunk—lots of traps being cut all up and down the coast, including mine. In this industry, you walk a fine line—if you put your tail between your legs when someone cuts your traps—you’re done. But if you go off and be a pirate and cut someone else’s traps—you’re also done. All that has been going on up and down the coast is that we’re not getting enough money for our product. Tensions are high and people are really struggling right now. At it stands, even I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the winter. What's happening is lobstermen are not very happy with their economic situation and some think the grass is greener on the other side—or the fishing is better over in someone else’s territory as the case may be—and they don’t always obey the invisible territory lines. When people are really struggling, losing their boats, behind on their mortgage payments, that’s when you see bad behavior. I don’t condone the piracy and I don’t cut traps. Our family has never gone down that road. I don’t do it because I don’t want people cutting mine (even though they still do). If you get caught whacking those traps off, you could lose your license for two or three years. And people who retaliate are usually the ones who get caught. Still, I get why people on the outside are fascinated by this—it’s not like the politics they deal with in their office, but it’s not a Hollywood movie, it’s real to us. And when lobstermen are getting a fair boat price, that’s when you will see things settle down and find peacetime on the water.

My friend K. Stephens just released her first novel, The Ghost Trap, the story of Jamie Eugley, a young lobsterman struggling with the grinding responsibilities of a head-injured fiancée and mounting trap wars in the midcoast. The Ghost Trap seems to be art imitating life with the timing of trap wars this summer. What’s honest about some of these scenes is that you may think you know who cut traps (which almost always starts the wars), but you don’t really know for sure. And isn’t that the truth about how trap wars sometimes start…and end? I loved this book when I read it. It really hit home and relates to a lot of how I grew up on an island. Jamie is born and raised around a lobstering community in a small town in Maine and has loyalty and dedication to the industry, with a lot of drama around trap wars as well as a romance that is doomed. When I read it, it didn’t almost seem like fiction, but like I was reading pages from my life and how I grew up.

This character doesn’t lie down and let people run over him and his family, but at the same time, he’s hard working, well spoken and not the one to start conflict –and that’s what I relate to. People have the misconception lobstermen aren’t educated or intelligent, but it’s just the opposite. You have to have intelligence, navigational skills, be able to operate a boat, have common sense and an unbelievable work ethic to survive in this business. When you’re on a boat, anything can happen at any time. There are no tow trucks that come out and jump-start you. You need to adapt, overcome, find solutions to fix the problem and that comes down to time on the water, a lot of experience and again, common sense. Put me in most situations on the water or off, I’d rather have a lobster fisherman with me than someone who has a mega IQ but who has no common sense and couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.

With The Ghost Trap and my educational DVD, Maine Buggin, K. and I will be going around to bookstores and events all over Maine this fall. We’re going to take an ordinary book signing and turn it up a notch by bringing some real excitement to the lobstering industry. Splicing excerpts of her novel that relate to chapters of my DVD, we plan to bring energy, passion and the educational perspective to how lobster traps work, how invisible territory lines are drawn, and why trap wars usually happen outside of the news. I don’t think anyone’s ever done this before where a novel and an educational DVD dovetail so well. (Join this Facebook Fan Page to learn more.)

I wrote this column because all people are hearing in the news about lobstermen are the negatives and they need to be reminded of the positives, such as the fact that we are the original environmentalists, conservationists and stewards of our sustainable industry because of the methods we’ve used over generations of our fishery. There is a lot of good in what the majority of us do. So, look for K. and me this fall—ask us any questions. Our first official appearance will be during Windjammer Weekend, Saturday September 5 at Sherman’s Bookstore in Camden from 1-3 pm. If it’s a nice day, you’ll see us out on the sidewalk. Come on by.

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Arrgh! The Boat's Scuttled..a Total Loss!

I Wouldn't Exactly Call A Book Signing on North Haven Work.

Nothing’s Perfect In Maine, But This Day Was

A Day in the Life of Maine Lobster Boat Racing
K. Stephens

Spring Time: Setting Traps and Making Squat

It's Not Just My Job, It's My Life

The Truth About Trap Wars: Between Fact and Fiction

Author

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Arrgh! The Boat's Scuttled..a Total Loss!

I Wouldn't Exactly Call A Book Signing on North Haven Work.

Nothing’s Perfect In Maine, But This Day Was

A Day in the Life of Maine Lobster Boat RacingK. Stephens

Spring Time: Setting Traps and Making Squat

It's Not Just My Job, It's My Life

The Truth About Trap Wars: Between Fact and Fiction

Author

Archives

Categories

A Day in the Life of Maine Lobster Boat Racing
K. Stephens