Busy Day At The Docks

It was a busy day down at the docks today. If you are fan of fishing boats, this blog entry is for you. A steady stream of boats trickled into the harbor today. The final count as of late afternoon was 5 sea scallopers and one dragger. All were western rigged with the exception of one eastern rigged steel sea scalloper. Here's a listing of their names. Madi J, Ila Brava, Humbak, Vila nova do corvo, Vila nova do corvo 1 and Vila nova do corvo 2. I thought the two scallopers in the above picture were sisters. They both have the same name but if you look closely at their hulls, they are different. The guys on the Vila nova do corvo 2 were busy doing gear work. They were using cutting torches to cut the chain bag off the dredge. Sea scallopers go through a lot of chain bags, sometimes one per month or more especially when they are fishing rocky bottom. In comparison, I change out the chain bags with new ones on my bay scallop dredges every 10 seasons or so. Here's a picture of the crew doing gear work-

And here's a picture of a big dredge partially raised up off the deck ready to be worked on-


The scalloper, Vila Nova do Corvo 2 has a very interesting set up that I have never seen on a scalloper before. She has the standard western rigged wheelhouse up forward. But behind the main wheelhouse was another one. And the winches were positioned up on the roof of the cutting house. Usually the winches are mounted on the main deck. I'm thinking that the little wheelhouse behind the main one is used as a station for running the winches. I wonder if there are redundant steering and throttle controls up there as well. Here's a picture of the set up-


As for the local bay scallop fleet, three guys fished today including a frogman. I was talking to the frogman yesterday and he told me that there is still a huge amount of eel grass covering the scallops in certain areas of the harbor. We haven't had a good gale lasting through at least two low tides to clear this grass off. Hopefully we will get some wind before the season is over so we can get these scallops which are unavailable now.

No work was done for the second day in a row at the new Children's Beach boat ramp. I would have thought that the coffer dam would have been in place by now. I'm not sure what is holding this project up. Work is continuing along at the GHYC job site.

I fear the Straight Wharf pigeon is either deceased or has flown south for the winter. Hopefully the latter. I have not seen him or fed him for a long long time.

Today's High & Low Temps.
(Unavailable. I forgot to reset my thermometer. Sorry)