Every Scallopers Nightmare

There was a bit of drama down at the waterfront early this morning. A boat a diver had been using for scalloping all season sank on her mooring at some point during last nights wind and rain storm. The boat was recently re-powered with a brand new 150 horsepower four stroke motor. Upon hearing of the scallopers dilemma, several fellow scallopers gave up a few hours of their morning and pitched in to help salvage the boat. They were able to pull it up to the beach with a long rope and a pick-up truck. Once on the beach, the owner was able to bail her out and put her on a trailer. When a boat sinks, it is not as bad as you think. If the owner gets the waterlogged engine to a good mechanic as soon as possible after recovery from the water, the motor will be running within a few hours. I know a scalloper who went down to his boat one morning to find it upside down underwater. He hauled her out, flushed the motor and got it running again in time to fish that day and get his five bushel limit of scallops.

I have not heard any news about the whale carcass I saw off 'Sconset yesterday. I went to Surfside late this afternoon and did not see anything. I would think with all this south wind it would've washed up someplace by now.

The usual four or five suspects went out scalloping today. The fog was very thick out there for most of the day. Most guys have GPS chart plotters installed on their scallop boats now. This was never heard of five years ago. It's nice to know exactly where you are on the harbor on days like today. I remember years ago before I had a chart plotter on my boat, I would fish an area in the fog using a buoy and a compass. The idea was to use the buoy as a starting point and a range. You would tow away from the buoy into the fog on a certain compass heading and after a certain amount of time, you would turn around and head back to the buoy in the opposite direction from which you had started. If you did everything right, you would end up right back at the buoy. Well, It sounds easy enough but I usually could never find my buoy after the first tow. When the fog would finally lift, I was quite a ways from my buoy.

I have never seen it this warm during this time of the year here on Nantucket. It almost made it to 60 degrees today!

Someone told me yesterday that the price the scallopers are getting went up to $17 per pound. I have not substantiated this rumor yet. I'll check into it.