The power of prayer and the Midnight Sun

The crew of the Gloucester dragger Midnight Sun — Capt. Tom Testaverde, his son Tom Jr., his brother Joe Testaverde, and Bobby Gross — suffered a month of anxiety after losing their net during a fishing trip at Wilkinson's Basin 60 miles northeast of Gloucester on April 6.

The power of prayer came into play in the happy outcome weeks later.

At 2 a.m. that day, "the wind gusted to 40 mph out of the east; the tide was running. The ocean was sloppy," recalled Capt. Testaverde.

His family's pretty blue and white 86-foot stern trawler was then towing over $20,000 worth of fishing gear — a set of steel trawl doors, cables and a rock hopper net with a 98-foot sweep — on the basin's muddy, sandy and rocky bottoms over 500 feet down for groundfish at about 3 knots.

"We were also edging here and there (towing along the edges)," said Joe, who was on watch at the time within the comfort of the cheery wheelhouse. The rubber rock hoppers allow fishing on hard bottom where fish like pollock and redfish often congregate.

As Joe Testaverde began turning the Midnight Sun that early morning, the net snagged something "... that slowed the boat down a little (to 2.3 knots), but it never stopped the boat," said Testaverde.

Strangely enough, the vessel's powerful color sounding machine didn't pick up any bottom obstruction.

Joe Testaverde knew something was wrong as soon as he straightened out the Midnight Sun, and its towing speed sped to 4.5 knots without further throttling up the over 500-horsepower main engine.

The crew soon hauled back the fishing gear.

"The starboard side (of the fishing gear) had just the door. Its five-eighths hammerlock (hardware that connects one of the net's ground cables to that door) let go," Testaverde explained.

The men next winched tight the portside door, which was under a tremendous strain, but fortunately still connected to that side of the net, to its respective towing block on the stern gantry.

But that last door/net connection soon broke, leaving the fishermen only the doors and no $15,000 worth of net and ground and scissor cables behind them. A towing wire runs from each trawl winch on deck, through a towing block and down to a door, which also weighs down and spreads apart the funnel-shaped net while under tow. Each side of the net's opening, or mouth, is further attached via scissor and ground cables to their respective door.

A stunned Capt. Testaverde recorded the navigational bearings so he and his men would have a location to grapple the lost gear with their 7-foot-long, 250-pound steel hook.

"I have fished in this area before and never had a problem. My gut feeling believes there was something there," said the skipper.

The crew immediately began grappling for the equipment by towing back and forth over the bottom. "We tried there over 24 hours in the area where we thought we lost the net and got nothing," said the captain's brother.

The men worked the general location the subsequent trip with an alternate net fitted with a chain sweep. This time, "The starboard door hooked into the back part of the lost trawl (the extension and cod end). Then we tried grappling there a few more hours and got nothing again," he recalled. The crew snagged another part of the lost net a second time later on and got more twine back. Each time, the crew picked out a basket of big redfish that had gotten meshed in the salvaged netting.

"All of the expensive stuff ¬— the front part of the net and the new cables — were still missing," said the captain.

The remaining lost gear played on the fishermen's minds; they were determined to get that back. During the Midnight Sun's mandatory 20-day block out of groundfishing in May, the crew returned to Wilkinson's Basin with no nets and just the doors strung together by a 20-fathom-long cable with the hook attached mid-point to do just that. Peter Marston, an electronics specialist at Seatronics in Gloucester, also told the captain how to retrace the very tow that the gear got lost on his plotter.

Upon returning to the scene, the crew once again noticed a spot that lit up on their color machine, probably because of a school of redfish that took up refuge at the artificial reef the net had created.

"We towed it (the door/grapple hook rig) around and snagged something on the first swipe. The hook slipped off whatever it was," said the captain. He turned the boat around for another pass with his son alongside of him.

"What are you mumbling?" the son then asked his father.

"I'm praying to St. Anthony," answered the captain. This time, the hook grabbed something hung down solid. The captain backed the Midnight Sun directly over it, and suddenly the hang down let go, and up came the doors and grapple.

"There on the grapple was one twist of one of the ground cables. We put that in a net reel and up came the rest of the lost gear stretched out nicely. We had it all," said Joe Testaverde.

"I'm glad we got the end (of a ground cable). We just reeled it up," Gross stated.

The captain added, "The power of prayer worked."

The men are still not sure what the hang down was.

"There was no evidence of a wreck like rust or old wood in the lost net," said the captain's brother. They planned to put the fishing gear back together for a spare. The fishermen had already purchased a replacement rock hopper net shortly after the loss.

"We ate T-bone steak on the way home (from Wilkinson's Basin)," said Joe Testaverde. "I told the gang, if we get the lost gear back, we'll eat steak and celebrate. Otherwise, the steaks are going back in the freezer until we go fishing."

Peter K. Prybot writes weekly about the fishing industry.

Local News

Search Results

Related Photos

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us