Of the many names I’ve been called in my life – Uncle Fred has stuck with almost everyone! When I began dating my wife, she was divorced with 2 very young children. My teenage nieces often babysat the 2 little ones. My nieces called me Uncle Fred – the kids picked it up. Since then my wife’s 3 brothers and their wives have joined the group, along with their combined 11 children – and then their 33 grandchildren – and now their 9 great-grandchildren. My friends felt outnumbered, so they joined in. The kids still call me Uncle Fred – as well as DAD! – and so do their friends and in-laws. There’s little chance I’ll forget that name – but I thought I’d better write these stories down while I can still remember!

Sunday, November 24, 2013

LOBSTER TRAPS AND PINK BOATS!



I would work on my boat all winter and have it ready to be painted in the spring.  One year, the boat was ready but could not be painted until the temperature was about 55 degrees, so I was looking for a project.  On the other side of the parking lot, where my boat was up on blocks, there was a warehouse.  The business inside  made wooden blocks with the alphabet on them and toys for young children.  They made them out of a high grade oak. They had large planks delivered and then cut them down to the size they needed.  Their dumpster was full of strips of oak.  I put a whole pile of these strips in my truck and took them to the firehouse. I had built a shop in the basement of the firehouse so I could keep busy in between runs. The strips were going to become a lobster trap.  

Just outside the harbor where I was docked in Connecticut was a huge area full of rocks and an island called Rock Island just before getting into the deeper water of Long Island Sound.  I would often see lobstermen pulling up traps full of lobsters.  I decided to make one large trap instead of 3 or 4 regular size ones.  With one trap I didn’t need a license.  I built this really large trap and put 2 cement blocks in it.  

In the spring, my wife and I were going out on the boat for a week.  Our plan was to stop at Rock Island, pick up some rocks that we may need to sink the trap and throw it overboard.  When we returned from our vacation, we planned to pull the trap and hopefully take home a bunch of lobsters.  

Well, we put the trap in the water near Rock Island - but it wouldn’t sink.  We added more rocks - still wouldn’t sink.  We carefully tied the boat onto the island and filled up the back of the boat with even more rocks.  We went out to the trap and added more -- still it wouldn’t sink.  At its heaviest, it would only sink about an inch below the water. As luck would have it, the Coast Guard came by and told us we couldn’t leave the trap where it was.  It was a menace to navigation.  We spent the next hour and a half unloading the rocks and the cement blocks into the water.  We pulled the trap into the boat, my wife put a beach towel over it and declared it a coffee table for the trip. 

The first part of the week we went fishing, dug clams, and picked mussels off the large rocks in Eton’s Neck, Long Island.  We now had all the food we needed and lots of wine with us.  We decided to go to a yacht club on the Connecticut side of Long Island sound, take hot showers (which our boat lacked), and go out to a nice dinner.  The club’s restaurant was booked solid so we decided to eat on the boat.  Since we had electricity on the slip, we hooked up a small TV and put it on the lobster trap-now-table.  I started up a grill that hung outside the transom.  We grilled fish, steamed mussels, and opened raw clams while drinking wine and watching TV.  A large group of people, all dressed up and going to dinner at the club, had just come off a huge 60’ yacht.  As they passed our boat, one woman said to us “Some people really know how to live.”   I’m sure we had just as good a time, if not better, than they did! 

When we returned from our mini-vacation to our boat slip in Connecticut, my friend Mike was working on his boat.  Mike and I carried the trap on shore and placed it back on the dumpster.  

Mike’s boat was a little larger than mine and was moored close to our boat.  It was a great location but it was getting expensive to keep our boats there.  I told him that I had found a yacht club on City Island that was a lot cheaper and closer to home.  Mike was interested so we both applied.  After we were accepted into the club, we were told that we had to apply to the Coast Guard for a permit to moor our boats in the harbor.  They had a map and showed us where we could place our mooring anchor.  The anchor that was required weighed 300 lbs. and was shaped like a mushroom. Two past members of the club sold us their anchors.  We also needed 25’ of 2” heavy chain and 30’ of light chain.  Someone told us we could buy this chain in a warehouse near Fulton Fish Market.  They installed elevators and the chain they had was from old elevators.  By the time we had our anchor installed using the club’s tender boat, 

it was now late fall.  We needed to get our boats down to City Island from Connecticut and out of the water for winter storage.  The night before we were going to move our boats, it snowed.  My wife drove us to Cos Cob, CT.  Our boats were the only ones still in the water and covered with snow.  We brushed off the snow and started down Long Island Sound to City Island.  The trip took 2 ½ hours.  The sun eventually came out and it turned out to be a beautiful day.  Mike decided half way there to put the boat’s top down.  Later that day, after our boats had been hauled onto land, he went to put the top back up.  Seems it had been a little too cold when he dropped the top and his plastic rear window had cracked in half.  

We spent all winter sanding our boats, especially the bottom.  Even though we used anti-fouling paint, barnacles still grew on the bottom.  In the spring, we painted the first coat of bottom paint, which was dark red.  After it dried, we marked off the water line and painted the hull white.  Mike didn’t want to buy a new roller for the white paint – he just cleaned off the red bottom paint and rolled the hull.  It turned out pink.  95% of the boats in the club were white so Mike’s pink boat really stood out.  He liked it!  After it was launched and hooked to his mooring, it became quite a tourist attraction.  All summer, people went out of their way to sail past the 27’ PINK boat!   

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