By John Lee

Grand canyons

shelter deck across her rails.“When it blows, you know it,” says Da-

vid Dellinger, the 23-year-old mate from Kingstown, R.I., who’s been with Ducha-rme for three years. “She’s a wet boat, but a good sea boat.”

Dellinger’s father runs an offshore lobster boat, also out of Newport. Ever since he was 14, Dellinger’s been lobster-ing, most of it offshore. He bypassed high school to begin the trade, and one day would like to own his own boat.

Ducharme sets his trawls (also called strings or sets) of pots near the southwest part of Georges Bank in a small area of the outer continental shelf, specifically Lydo-nia, Gilbert and Oceanographer canyons. He has been fishing these three canyons for 20 years. He doesn’t leave them and go somewhere else. Instead, he holds his ground and waits for the run. As with the inshore lobster fishery, territory lines are unspoken but understood.

“These sets are too valuable to leave,” he says.

The canyons are shaped like hooked fingers, and the canyon walls slope down like the side of a mountain. Ducharme

sets along the contour lines, between 70 and 200 fathoms. When he sets his gear he keeps an eye on the fish finder and on the loran, trying to keep his mile-long trawl within the narrow plateau of ter-raced bottom.

He turns the Freedom hard to port, hard to starboard, setting with precision. Ducharme fishes 44 pots to a trawl. At one end is a buoy and at the other end is a buoy and a high flyer. The high flyer has a radar reflector so it can be found at night.

The basic idea aboard the Freedom is to haul and bait all the trawls in three days and then head home. Dock-to-dock trip length is about five days.

In Lydonia Canyon on the first day, de-spite perfect weather, the crew running

through gear in t-shirts, Ducharme isn’t thrilled about what he is seeing — empty pots where they should be loaded. Last year at this time they were landing nearly 20,000 pounds of bugs a trip. Ducharme and the crew rely on the fall and early winter run of lobsters.

“The lobsters should be here by now,” Ducharme says. “They should’ve dropped

The Freedom fishes the offshore lobster fishery on Georges Bank in the fall and early winter with 1,700 traps.

Cover story

On the way out to the fishing grounds in early November, the Freedom rolls. The day before we leave, Hurricane

Noel has torn across Georges Bank, mov-ing quickly — it blows out fast, consumed by cold water. Behind Noel a swell moves like mirrored hills, up and down, in an off-shore hypnosis.

The visibility stretches to the curves of the earth. In the wheelhouse, Marc Duc-harme, fast nearing 50, plays his electric guitar. He plays it from Newport, R.I., all the way to Nantucket Lightship.

“I should’ve been in a band,” says Duc-harme as he rips a blues chord.

Ducharme, of Portsmouth, R.I., has been the Freedom’s only captain. The boat was built in the 1980s. She’s a steel 72-footer with a deep draft and a low pro-file. She has no outriggers or stabilizers, no

The Freedom pursues lobsters in the deep water below Georges Bank

down from Georges and be here. But they’re not.”

Every time an empty pot lands on the rail, Ducharme has a comment. His com-ments aren’t directed at anyone in par-ticular: “Look boys another empty!” “Hey we caught a rock! Better band it!” After awhile, Dellinger rolls his eyes and says, “He gets better as the trip goes on. The first day is always tough to get through. Not just for him, for all of us.”

The second day, we move down to Gil-bert — a steam of roughly 20 miles — and haul, stack, and set. The lobstering is still slow. Lots of lobsters with eggs keep get-ting thrown overboard, and Ducharme has comments about the percentages of eggers to keepers. But the lobsters we are keeping are large, no gauge required.

Even when lobstering is slow the mo-tions are fixed: You haul and set. Haul and set. All day and into the night. Nineteen hours on your feet with nothing but the whine of rope going through the pot hauler — or the sound of pots being slid across the deck, the sound of voices, the sound of the engine.

“No matter what, you still have to go through all the motions,” says Warren Peckham, at 34 the second oldest man on board. He’s tall and lean and lives in War-wick, R.I.

All of the Freedom crew members live in Rhode Island. Peckham and Dellinger have worked many boats together and have years of experience. On the Freedom, Peckham and Dellinger alternate running the hauler, which is normally the captain’s job. Ducharme likes to lift and stack the 75-pound pots.

“Marc stacks pots because Marc’s in love,” Dellinger says. “It keeps him in shape. Found himself an artist — he may be in over his head on this one. She went to RISD,” the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, pronounced rizdee.

Ducharme would disagree. “I can talk with anyone: art, business, the world. We should all be learning Chinese right now.”

Justin Costa, also of Portsmouth, is the youngest on board at 19. Costa’s father is an expert rod-and-reel fisherman, and is good friends with Ducharme — who also is crazy about recreational fishing, and builds and sells his own wooden striped bass lures, called scuds. Costa spends his free time spear fishing.

On one bicep he has a squid tattoo, on the other the No. 2 hooter buoy, marking not only Costa’s arm but the seaward en-trance of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay. He is also the newest to lobstering.

“I’ve lost 20 pounds since I started here five months ago,” he says. “I eat more and lose weight.”

Costa bands lobsters and puts them in the tank. As he puts them in the tank, he counts them. This gives Ducharme an idea of how much they have on board. It also

gives Ducharme an idea of how the trawl is doing against last trip. He wants to see an increase in numbers, which indicates the run has begun.

Costa also makes sure the bait (skate) is ready to go, always. A mistake here will surely draw a tough-love comment from Ducharme. But Costa keeps the bait — and its strong ammonia stink — in order.

JULY 2008 • NATIONAL FISHERMAN 25For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com

The Freedom’s captain, Marc Ducharme, 49, plays his Fender Stratocaster on the

way to and from the lobster grounds. Joh

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26 NATIONAL FISHERMAN • JULY 2008 For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com

finishes each row, he ties them down with a line. They get the entire trawl on deck and tied down. Now Ducharme has to turn the boat around and set back in.

Ducharme goes into the wheelhouse and on the radar within two miles is a very large target, a steamer inbound for Boston. Being in a gale with no visibility with a target nearby the size of an island doesn’t comfort Ducharme any. He swears at the wind and the waves. He swears at the steamer. Then he picks what he thinks is a lull in the waves and begins to turn the boat around.

“Hang on boys, we’re going to be in the trough here!” Ducharme shouts.

The Freedom takes a nasty roll and something slams against the galley floor.

“The stress of this job will kill you,” Ducharme says.

Once we get turned around he tells them, “All set. Let ’er go.” Peckham, standing aft, drops the buoy off the stern then comes forward and sits behind the wheelhouse.

In better weather a crewman helps the pots off the stern, guiding them so they don’t tangle up. But in bad weather it’s too dangerous, and the pots go off under their own direction. Ducharme watches them go. All goes well until one pot catches the gangion of another pot, which catches

Cover story

He also learns fast the lobsterman’s knots: splicing, tying gangions and tying bridles. On this trip, all the deckhands do their share of knot work.

Hurricane Noel hasn’t gone by without trouble. Storm waves pummel the buoys and high flyers and pull on the buoy lines. These buoy lines are more than 1,400 feet long, and when 30-foot waves tug on them, pots tumble and trawl ends get spun up. To help with this problem, Ducharme uses big anchors — 400-pound chain links — on each end of his trawls. He uses the anchors

year round — fair weather or foul.The anchors are unwieldy and danger-

ous on deck. Costa, Peckham, and Del-linger are good at using the Freedom’s roll to get the anchors from the hauler block onto deck and then aft to the transom.

“If it weren’t for these big anchors,” Ducharme says, “many of these trawls would have taken us hours to untangle — the ends would look like spaghetti.”

Even with the anchors, the crew has their work of splicing and tying bridles; some trawls take over an hour to sort out.

On the morning of the second day the clouds come thick and the wind

picks up. The gale is out of the south, coming in off the Gulf Stream. At least it is warm. We make it through the eight trawls at Gilbert and then steam toward Oceanographer. The weather makes us creep along with green water coming over the bow.

“Weather is everything,” says Ducha-rme. “This kind of weather will slow the operation to a crawl.”

By the time we reach Oceanographer, it’s late in the day, the visibility poor, the wind 40 knots — borderline for hauling. Ducharme has some difficulty locating the high flyer on the radar. “They don’t show up well when a sea is running.” Af-ter awhile, the crew at the rail searching, they see it. “Off to starboard,” calls out Dellinger.

Ducharme turns the boat slightly to get the bow near the buoy. Then Peckham throws the grapnel. Halfway through the trawl, a squall hits. The wind goes over 50, and rain comes in sideways. We all know this will be the day’s last. Dellinger says, “You always have to at least try one. Just to see how it goes.”

Ducharme is antsy, wound up like a spring. He doesn’t like the weather. Peck-ham stacks the pots two-high, and after he

The 72-foot Freedom steams out of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay the day after Hurricane Noel tore across Georges Bank.

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JULY 2008 • NATIONAL FISHERMAN 27For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com

Buyer’s Guide July 2008

OFFSHORE LOBSTERING: THE FaCTSNumber of participants: 140 Area 3 permit holdersSize of boats: 55 to 90 feetFishing area: Baltimore canyon to the Hague LineDepths: 25 to 200 fathomsGear: Pots are either 50" or 40" x 26" x 16". Many have double parlors and are made of wire. Rope for gangions, bridles, and ground line; buoys and high flyers complete the gear.

Capital investment: Boats are gener-ally worth $300,000 and up. A single trawl, together with pots and lines and buoys is around $6,000. Bait costs about $60,000 to $80,000 a year.annual landings: Seven management areas cover both inshore and offshore waters, from Maine to North Carolina. In 2006 lobstermen landed about 93 million pounds. Maine’s in-shore fishery accounted for almost 80 percent

of the total landings. Rhode Island landed about 3.7 million pounds.Season: Year roundPermits: Individual historical allocation: Every permit holder qualifies for between 800 and 2,400 traps.Regulations: Trap limits and a 3 1/2-inch gaugeEx-vessel value: $4 to $8 per poundMarket: Global

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28 NATIONAL FISHERMAN • JULY 2008 For updated news, visit www.nationalfisherman.com

the gangion of a third — off the transom slides a mess of pots. Ducharme says with a shrug, “Nothing you can do about it but watch them go.”

When the pots are off, Ducharme re-cords the end’s position and we lay the boat up — closing the wheelhouse door and settling in for a night of weather. Hot

dogs with lettuce pose as dinner. An epi-sode of “Prison Break” is cued up on the DVD player.

Ducharme sits in the wheelhouse, the guitar in its case. He talks on the radio with the Miss Julie, an offshore lobster boat out of Sandwich, Mass. They talk about how the breeze is going to blow out by morn-

Cover story

ing. And it does.At dawn the

wind comes out of the west and the air temperature drops 30 degrees. We don our win-ter hats and thick-er sweatshirts. The crew finishes haul-ing through the gear, working fast to make up time lost to weather.

D u c h a r m e works the hauler at full speed. Peckham, Dellinger, and Costa work quickly, “like a well oiled ma-chine,” says Peckham, smiling. And then Peckham shouts, “Last pot coming up.”

Ducharme turns the boat around and gets ready to set back in. “Time to go home,” he shouts out the companion-way. He unbuckles the guitar case and pulls out his Fender Stratocaster. Then he plays through the amplifier at considerable volume — who knows what the seabirds

Justin Costa, at 19 the youngest crewman on the Freedom, bands and counts the incoming catch before putting them in the tank, while deckhand Warren Peckham runs the pot hauler.

Capt. Marc Ducharme prefers stacking the 75-pound pots to the typical captain’s job of running the hauler. He sets roughly 44 pots per string.

think. Below deck, in the lobster tank, are 7,000 pounds of lobsters. The trip after this one, they land 11,000 pounds. Then 15,000. Ducharme has good numbers right through January. His faith in the Georges Bank fishing grounds is proving well founded.

John Lee has worked on draggers, lobster boats and gillnetters. Now he lives in Wakefield, R.I., where he writes and fishes when he can.

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