This story originally appeared in the Fishermen’s Voice in 2005. Captain Perry Wrinkle took a leave of absence from writing a while back. He still hauls every day and we assume is collecting tales from that which we hope he will tell us about.

Fogust

by Captain Perry Wrinkle

Many years ago when I was a young boy, I spent the summers lobster fishing in an old Peapod boat with a small outboard motor on it. I fished about fifty traps around the sound and could make enough money out of them to buy my school clothes and sometimes a bicycle or something else that I wanted.

It seemed there was a lot of fog during July and a lot more in August. I was always fascinated by it. Never bothered a lot. I always seemed to know where I was. I didn’t even have a compass on the old Peapod.

Twenty-five years later I had a fiberglass boat with a diesel engine and a good compass and fathometer. I was off Mount Desert Rock one day trawl fishing and the fog came in. I ran the course from the rock to my last trawl buoy about three times before I realized it was running under by the tide. I had to wait about an hour for the tide to slack and I finally found the buoy and hauled the trawl aboard.

Due to the delay it was nearly dark when I left the rock for the twenty-five mile run to home. I had been running about an hour when I checked my watch and realized at my present course and speed, I was going to arrive in the path of the Canadian Ferry boat, the “Bluenose,” about the same time that it would be there.

I called him on the radio and asked if he had picked me up on his radar. He answered negative. That made me feel good! I didn’t have a radar and I was not positive if I was inside his path or outside. The tide was ebb and I figured I should still be a little outside of him but I reversed my course and opened the throttle for about half a mile.

I then shut the engine down and asked him to blow his horn. Jeez, it sounded like it was coming right at us. I looked at my sternman and his eyes looked like two golf balls in the light of the compass.

He sounded the horn again and this time I could hear his diesels coming. I started mine and was ready to head south some more when he came on the radio and said he had picked me up on his radar and that I was two miles west of him. He said that if I would hold my present position, he would pass one quarter mile inside of me and we would be clear of each other in a few minutes. I stood by with the engine idling for what seemed like hours, but it probably was about three or four minutes. I heard his horn blast again and I know my hair stood up. All of a sudden, I could see lights coming out of the fog and it looked like a whole damn city coming right at me. I yanked my boat into gear, opened the throttle and headed to the south.

In a couple of minutes he was out of sight to the north of me. I’m sure he was right and he had room to pass clear of me but the fog has a way of distorting everything and that monster coming out of the fog was a sight to see!

I fish around “The Cat” now and it goes three times as fast as the old “Bluenose.” I have a radar to tell me where he is and a plotter to tell me where I am. Everything is more reliable now and I should be at ease in the fog but every time I hear that damn horn sound off and those monster diesels roaring, I think what little hair I have left still stands up. I have grown to hate the fog.

Sunny days and good fishing,
Cap’t. Perry Wrinkle