A Fascination With Water and Boats

by Sandra Dinsmore

Drouin’s Wesmac 46-foot Superwide at the float in Cutler Harbor. Drouin had only seen Cutler in August; he had no idea what winter was like. “On top of the tides, winter weather is fierce down this way compared to Casco Bay.” Sandra Dinsmore photo

Cutler fisherman John Drouin, 51, started life as a city kid from the northwest end of Hartford, Connecticut. He moved to Cutler at 13. His stepfather, who had come from Cutler, had fished until a 1953 hurricane wiped him out and led him to move to Connecticut. Each August from 1975 on, Drouin and his parents spent their summer vacation at Cutler, visiting relatives. Then in 1978, his stepfather changed careers and Drouin’s life by buying a convenience store there and moving his family to Cutler.

The next spring Drouin, then 14, set traps for the first time and said he hasn’t missed a season since. His parents had expected him to take over the store, but he recalled, “I’d sit in there—it’s in proximity to the harbor—and I’d look out the window and watch boats. When the fishermen were taking their traps up, I’d come down and help. I just always had a fascination with water and boats.” This city kid said, “I didn’t care what I did, I just wanted to go fishing.”

Today, 37 years and eight surgeries later, Drouin wonders what he would have done if he hadn’t become a fisherman. Fishing is hard in itself. Those super heavy Fundy tides make fishing super hard for downeast fishermen, in addition to which they have to deal with the weather. As Drouin said, “On top of the tides, winter weather is fierce down this way compared to Casco Bay.” He explained, “As storms move up the coast, they deepen and develop more once they get into the Gulf of Maine. A storm with 20 knots of wind for Casco Bay will mean wind of 30 knots or more for downeast Maine.”

Drouin heard stories of people in the 1950s trying to get from Cutler to the high school in East Machias to watch a basketball game. “The roads weren’t plowed,” he said. “They were shoveled by hand. It was definitely a hard life.” He noted that this hard downeast life led many, including his stepfather, to move away and do something other than fish for a living.

But the intrepid young 14-year-old started fishing out of a 14-foot aluminum Lund boat, lugging 60 wooden traps given to him by local fishermen, weighted with ballast rocks because of those wicked Fundy tides, and other gear up and down the beach. His stepfather, who had 75 traps, went with him the first few times, but later in the summer bought an 18-foot Eastporter and continued on in that, leaving Drouin to fish from the 14-footer. Drouin summed it up saying, “A lot of work and a tiny little boat.” (37 years later, the Drouins’ two sons, Tyler, 21, and Jordan, 20, now use that 14-footer to get out to their fishing boat. John and Janine Drouin have a blended family of five children, the youngest of whom is 19.)

John Drouin in his Wesmac 46 Superwide. Drouin took his first ride on a Wesmac on a cold February day. “There was some wind that day,” he recalled, “and the ride impressed me so much that from that day I was hooked on the Wesmac hull.” Sandra Dinsmore photo

A year later, Drouin bought an 18-foot Eastporter he saw sitting out behind a Cutler barn. The planks seemed solid, he said, but the ribs were in poor shape. “It leaked like a sieve,” Drouin recalled, saying, “My father helped me install new ribs in pretty much the entire boat.” Despite all that work, the boat always leaked.

He fished in that “kind of rotten” boat until 1982, when he graduated from high school. That year his stepfather purchased a 32-foot wooden Novi boat from Campobello and let Drouin use it for a year. But two years later, in 1984, because he could see that Drouin was looking at other boats and because he wanted to fish himself, Drouin’s stepfather took the Novi 32 back.

As it happened, Drouin soon found a 27-foot wooden boat for sale in Cutler. He fished that 27-footer for four years, worked on other boats, and dragged for scallops in winter.

Ten years after he started fishing in that little 14-foot aluminum boat, Drouin went up to Nova Scotia and had his first new boat built: a 36-foot D.H. Hunter, from Tatamagouche. He made clear the purchase of each of his boats has been a very important business decision and there’s always been a solid reason for the purchase. The 36-foot Hunter, he said, gave him the ability to drag scallops and quahogs, which was necessary to do at that time because of the way the fishing seasons were set. He liked the lobstering, didn’t like dragging, and consequently gave up his scalloping license, which he now regrets.

He fished in the Hunter for five years, and then in 1994 he ordered his first Wayne Beal, a 36-footer with 320 horsepower, which he called “strictly a lobster boat. Scallop season had changed,” he explained, “and I could fish later for lobsters and not worry about my traps being damaged by the scallopers.”

Five years later, in 1999, Drouin recalled coming into the wharf to lower traps from the dock, where his wife, Janine, was, down to his 36-foot boat, where he was. He said, “I looked up and said, ‘I need a bigger boat.’ She said, ‘Well, then, get one.’”

In order to be able to fish more of his gear offshore, Drouin ordered a 40-foot Wayne Beal with 500 horsepower, which he launched in the spring of 2000. “The boat had a trawl table to fish my trawls from,” he said, “but I didn’t like that set-up.”

Two years later, he said, “When it came to being not happy with the 40-foot boat, Janine said, ‘Get another one.’” (Of Janine’s encouraging him to get new boats, Drouin said, “My wife is a peach. She is kind enough to understand that my profession is a difficult one and that having good and safe equipment is what brings me home each day I go out.”)

He had always admired the lines of the Wesmac hull, which drew him to look at Wesmacs, though he knew that because Steve Wessel used the best quality equipment and did top quality work, they were more expensive than some other hulls. He went to Harpswell in 2001 and took a ride on a Wesmac on a cold February day. “There was some wind that day,” Drouin recalled, “and the ride impressed me so much that from that day I was hooked on the Wesmac hull.”

So in 2002, because of its quality and because a 42-footer would allow him to fish farther outside, Drouin bought his first Wesmac, one with a 580 horsepower engine and his first open stern boat. It pleased him and his wife so much, he said, “We got hooked on going to the lobster boat races and racing.”

To be continued.