Icon

by Capt. Perry Wrinkle

According to the dictionary an icon is an image or representation. I had an occasion to speak to a live one just the other day. At the ripe old age of 28, (give or take 40 or 50 years), Benny Beal is still a high liner in the quahog business.

He has done it all and is still doing it. I remember when I came home from the service and started lobster fishing, Don Backman would tell me how many lobsters Ben was catching. I asked him, “How come you and I don’t fish out there?” He would cock his head and smile at me with a big grin on his face for about a minute, then he’d reply, “Blessed Lord, dear, if you were ever out there you wouldn’t even dare to look overboard.”

That was back before the computer or the GPS or the rest of our modern marvels. In those days if you could not chart a course or read a chart or run the course and time you were not going to make it in the fishing business. The charts were not all that reliable and the weather reports even less. By the time they gave a storm front moving into the area, you were taking whitewater over the wheel house. In those days, “men were men and women were glad of. ”

If you had a 30-foot by 8-foot wide boat, it was considered a monster and probably to big to fish out of. Back in the old days of lobster boat racing Benny was the man to beat. He said he never raced for second place and he sure has the winning trophies to prove it. Those were the days when everyone took boat racing seriously.

I was fishing with Otto Backman in his boat, Sue Pam. A few days before the Winter Harbor races he says to me, “Boy, if we were to take the engine out of my wife’s car and switch it with the boat engine, we could gain up about 50 horsepower.”

We did exactly that, then we added a high-rise manifold with two 4-barrel carbs. We made a lot more smoke and noise, but didn’t gain much speed. Otto took his wife shopping the day after the races and he said her car shook so bad it would make whitecaps in a cup of coffee. She was not very happy and he ended up trading cars on the way home.

Those were the days of boat racing. Big gas engines souped up to the max. When they left the starting line the noise would frighten a dead man. The Young brothers with the Sopwith Camel, Holland with the Red Baron, A.J. Enterprises with the Terminator, all gas guzzlers and capable of 50 plus miles an hour. Beautiful to watch.

But 2011 may be a bad year for the lobster boat racing season, due to $4 lobsters, $4 fuel, high bait costs and the equipment going out of sight. I asked Benny Beal if he was going to race this year? He started to laugh and then he said, “You can never tell.”

Good Fishing,
Capt. Perry Wrinkle