Ebb & Flow
Charlie Raymond, owner of the 77-foot offshore Gloucester lobster boat Michael & Kristen, received an alarming late-night ship-to-shore phone call during the peak of the Feb. 25 easterly from another lobster boat out of New Hampshire, the Michelle Jean.
It was riding out the huge storm eight miles away from Raymond's Michael & Kristen, which was 114 miles east of Gloucester at the time.
"Ron blew out a couple of windows," the Michelle Jean's captain, Marc Boulay out of Gloucester, relayed to Raymond over his long-distance satellite phone. "Everyone is OK. There are a lot of freaky seas around tonight,"
Boulay slime-eeled out of Gloucester around 2000, and was nicknamed "Captain Eel" here then for his success in that fishery.
Left with just a functioning short-distance VHF radio, the Michael & Kristen could only communicate with nearby vessels. Luckily, Raymond had emergency Plan Bs stored aboard, and his boat's crew — Capt. Ron Davis from Rochester, N.H., Sal Parisi, Nick Frontiero and James Luoni, all of Gloucester, and Dave Morey from Tenant's Harbor, Maine — knew how to use them.
"I had my regular guys that trip. They all have lots of experience," said Davis, 44.
By 9 that fateful night of an already six-day-long fishing trip, the Michael & Kristen had finished going through its lobster gear set in the outer Gulf of Maine and along the continental slope once and "... was jogging into it (the waves) to the north (to get to where it would begin re-hauling the traps).," Davis said.
"There was no working after dark that day," he recounted. "The smallest waves were 16 feet high and building. The whole top of the ocean was breaking, and it was a blizzard outside. We had to wait until daylight to start our re-haul (of the lobster gear).
Davis, who has 25 years of offshore lobstering experience, has had his share of riding out many big storms, even hurricanes, on the job.
The storm waves in "the Gulf of Maine are usually spread out (long period), unlike along the continental slope, but not that night," Davis said. The abnormally high astronomical tides going into the waves only steepened them and shortened their periods (the time between waves peaks).
"The whole weather forecast had been wrong that day, and (the National Weather Service) kept giving the same forecast," he said. "They were giving just 30, 40 mph winds out of the northeast."
The 85-foot dragger Harmony, which offloads in Gloucester, recorded 60 to 80 mph winds that night while riding out that storm in the outer Gulf of Maine.
At 9:45 p.m., Luoni and Frontiero switched watches while Davis slept in his stateroom, located on the portside of the wheelhouse about 12 feet behind the extra-strong tempered-glass front windows.
Seconds later, as the vessel jogged slowly into the wind and waves on autopilot, and its spotlight beamed ahead into the inky sky and blinding snow, Frontiero was returning to the helm after leaving it briefly to go to the bathroom when a big wave pummeled the Michael & Kristen head on.
Davis soon found himself awakened and "... totally drenched."
"There was glass in my bunk," he said. "I had so much water in my room that I thought at first the port window in my stateroom must have gotten knocked out."
Once he realized otherwise, Davis ".. was up and out of my bunk and behind the wheel in two seconds."
"That sea just blew over and through us," he said. "The boat might have been still diving (on one wave) and the bow wasn't ready for the next one. The Michael & Kristen usually rides nicely with the bow into it."
Once the crew had gathered in the wheelhouse, they realized the wave had punched out the two center wheelhouse windows, flooded the wheelhouse with hundreds of gallons of 39-degree Fahrenheit sea water, destroyed most of the electronics and the vessel's steering, and ripped all of the computer monitors off the dashboard.
Fortunately, the wave left them with a functioning GPS, a radar, a trusty compass and the VHF radio — which Davis used to call Boulay.
The five men calmly and effectively went into rebound mode as the Michael & Kristen idled along with the wind and waves to her stern.
"Our top priorities were to get the windows boarded up and the vessel de-watered, shut off all unnecessary circuit breakers (to prevent any short circuits), and then get the vessel steering," said Davis.
Luckily, Raymond had equipped the vessel with easy-to-install emergency plywood windows and a manually-operated tiller arm to remedy the steering problem. Davis also later uncovered a spare satellite phone that had been tucked away in storage, and he was able to communicate directly with his boss.
Finally, by 4:30 a.m., the crew got the Michael & Kristen ship-shape enough to head to Gloucester under its own power.
"It took us around 20 hours to get home. We were never in a life-threatening situation," Davis stressed.
After nearly two weeks of dockside recuperation — with Peter Marston from Seatronics replacing the destroyed electronics and Joe Saputo and Ed Hinckley from Seaside Glass installing new tempered glass windows — the Michael & Kristen and crew returned to work.
"This was just a freak situation. I'm not going to let it bother me," said Davis. "You only hope it won't happen again. A lot of other boat instances happened that week of wind and screaming tides."
For Charlie Raymond, one thing in particular will stick in his mind about this incident:
"I've had the boat 29 years," he says, "and this is the first time I've ever had the windows punched out."
Gloucester lobsterman Peter K. Prybot writes regularly for the Times on the fishing industry and other issues.
