In mid-August, Hayley hosted four of her childhood friends for a night on Pictou Island. I brought them across the strait in the Nipsy late in the afternoon after the wind let up for the day.
When we arrived and got everything unpacked at the cottage, I took the four-wheeler back down to the wharf while Hayley and her friends headed for the beach.
Earlier, we’d unloaded at the floating dock before I crossed the wharf to tie up the boat. After securing the lines, I noticed one of Hayley’s friends had spilled a drink on the stern deck.
As I turned on the propane and opened the windows at the cottage, I found myself thinking about it.
Something pink, probably a hard seltzer.
It was a little weird that none of them had mentioned it, but then again I’d been busy with the boat. Maybe someone said something to Hayley.
But had I picked up an empty can? I couldn’t remember.
I flipped over the outdoor table on the cottage’s deck and set up the chairs.
Reddish-pink fluid.
I stuck the umbrella in the patio table and cranked it open.
Bright fluid. Under the motor.
And was I imagining it, or did the steering feel loose when I pulled the Nipsy across the wharf?
Uh oh.
Unfortunately, I was correct. The hydraulic hose had been pulled off its housing on the steering cylinder mounted to the transom. I plucked it from the deck and jammed it back into place.
I fired up the engine and spun the wheel to the right. Definitely loose. I spun it to the left. One full spin, two full spins, three full spins. Fresh pink liquid dripped from the hose coupling. Up at the cottage, I’d grabbed a bottle of transmission fluid I’d used on the Toyota pickup earlier in the summer. If the coupling could be fixed, I’d need to add more liquid. This would do in a pinch.
I was digging through the cabin of the Nipsy looking for a funnel when the Penny & Jodi II sailed into the Pictou Island Wharf.
Captain Barett Marshall was hauling over some solar equipment for the cottage. He was joined on the boat by my mother-in-law, Margo; Hayley’s cousin, Bryan, who was visiting Pictou Island for the first time; Ryan, a fisherman with a cottage on the island; and Matt, one of my fellow deckhands on the Hayley & Noah.
I wiped my hands on my shorts and climbed the ladder to the wharf. The steering hose would have to wait. There was some heavy lifting to do.
Barett had backed in next to the concrete loading dock. Matt hauled the generator out of a nearby shed. We fired up Pictou Island’s newly installed power boom and carefully guided the equipment into the beds of a couple old pickups.
After unloading the gear at the cottage, Barett and I headed back to the Nipsy to take a look at the damage. I showed him the problem. He pulled the hose off, looked at it. Put it back on. We fired up the motor and tested the steering again. I paid close attention to the steps that Barett took to diagnose and try to fix the issue. I was secretly glad that I’d mostly been on the right track.
“You’re probably screwed for tonight,” Barett said.
I’d been suspecting this but would’ve been happy to be wrong.
We didn’t have any hose clamps. Zip ties didn’t work. Maybe the hose was stripped? We cut off the end and attempted to thread a fresh seal. Barett pried the coupling from the steering cylinder and used a pliers and wrench to try to tighten the hose.
Eventually we thought we had it patched up well enough to get home. Bryan, a lifelong sailor, climbed on board with me. Barett would stay close in the Penny & Jodi II.
We eased past a docking sailboat, cleared the Pictou Island Wharf, and slowly made the turn for Caribou, four and a half miles away. Bryan stood on the deck and watched the motor. At first I could steer, sort of, but soon found myself endlessly spinning the wheel in one direction while the boat gently nosed in the other.
I was bobbing there considering the options when Barett pulled up alongside and Matt jumped aboard the Nipsy.
“You drive, we’ll steer,” he said.
Years of team-building activities in higher ed had prepared me for this. Matt and Bryan leaned against the transom, one on each side of the 130-horse Honda. The sun continued to drop on the horizon. The air was thick with metaphor and the tang of hydraulic fluid as I took my hands off the steering wheel and pushed the throttle forward.
Barett eased his boat in front of us and we followed slowly in its wake. Halfway across the strait, Matt and Bryan found the motor was easier to control at higher speed. We passed the Penny & Jodi II and made for Caribou.
Out on the open water, my only job was to keep watch from the helm and pay attention to the throttle. As the sunset deepened, my mind wandered.
It’d been a busy few months since wrapping up my higher ed contract in mid-April. Lobster fishing had been challenging in many ways, but also invigorating.
~ ~ ~
As far as I could recall, Captain Regan MacCarthy only raised his voice once during lobster season.
It was late May. Regan was getting to know the ins and outs of the Hayley & Noah. Matt and I were figuring out how to best work together on the deck.
The last trap of a trawl slid down the launcher and dropped into the sea. Matt and I banded lobster as the line sizzled off the boat behind us. Neither of us noticed when the whine of the rope changed in pitch.
Fortunately, the captain was paying attention.
“Watch out!” Regan yelled.
The intensity of his voice triggered a reflex.
Matt jumped into the wheelhouse. I dove for the deck behind the steel lobster tank. The trailing buoy snapped around the end of the launcher, ricocheted off the sorting table above my head, and flew over the stern.
I popped up. Matt stepped from the cabin, lobster still in hand.
“Thanks, Regs,” he said over his shoulder.
The captain nodded and turned back to the wheel, already looking for our next trawl.
“He used to play goalie,” Matt said to me. “If he gets excited, it’s something to get excited about.”
We went back to banding and sorting lobster. There was nothing else to do.
~ ~ ~
When lobster season’s over and school lets out at the end of June, Nova Scotia is catapulted into summer. July had passed in a blur: Canada Day, the Pictou Lobster Carnival, international visits from my parents and a few friends, and lots of time on Pictou Island. Now it was already halfway through August. Whether on Pictou Island or back on the mainland, I made a habit of driving down to the wharf most days to check on the Nipsy and catch up with whoever happened to be around.
Summer was racing away and I knew that as autumn approached I could no longer ignore the question of what to do next. I’d need to find a job. For perhaps the first time in my life, I didn’t have a plan.
The Nipsy’s VHF radio crackled to life. Barett checking in.
So far so good, but this was the easy part—all we had to do was point the boat in the general direction of the wharf. It seemed like Matt and Bryan were having fun back there.
Chad MacCarthy, Regan’s older brother, radioed in from the Pierre Charles, tucked out of sight behind Caribou Island. He’d break off his sunset cruise and be there quick if we needed him.
We made for the Caribou channel.
“Ferry’s done for the night,” Barett said over the radio.
This was good news. We wouldn’t have to share the narrow passage with the 374-foot MV Confederation as it steamed towards Prince Edward Island. And there’d be fewer spectators if something went wrong.
We powered through the navigational buoys. Forearms shaking, Matt and Bryan held the motor tight and managed to keep us in the channel.
After making the turn around the tip of Munroes Island, we slowed to a crawl. Barett motored past us to tie up. We crept into the wharf and carefully turned 90 degrees to line up with the dock. I nudged the boat ahead, then a west wind kicked up and pushed us off course. With the wharf pilings looming, Matt sprung from the back of the boat, ran up the gunwale and grabbed the bowline. As the boat lurched toward the fishing pier, he jumped to the wharf, stopped the boat, and carefully walked us into the makeshift slip beside the floating dock. Margo and Ryan were there to help with the lines.
I gave Matt a high five. Bryan had a bloody cut on his leg from the solar equipment and a good story to tell about his first visit to Pictou Island. I couldn’t stop smiling. But after a few quick goodnights, everyone drifted off in their own direction.
“This feels anticlimactic,” I said to Margo as we reached the end of the floating dock.
She smiled back and gave me a sympathetic shrug.
On the way to the car, we ran into Chad Smith and Krista Fulton. Neighbours of Margo’s, they’d helped load the solar equipment on a trailer earlier in the day. As we relayed our adventure, Chad laughed and slapped the dashboard.
“Steering went out one time on the Hayley & Noah,” he said. “Nipsy hooked a pipe wrench to the rudder and made me hang off the back of the boat and steer with my feet. Two hours back to the wharf!”
When we were working on the boat on Pictou Island, Barett relayed a similar experience from when he worked for my late father-in-law.
Minor heroics are routine among those who live and work on the water. You just do what you have to do to get home. The fact that nobody gets too worked up is reassuring. Business as usual. Just another story. I was growing to appreciate the sentiment but had a hard time winding down all the same. Adrenaline helps when it comes to getting things done, but the lingering effects can be less than ideal.
Back at the house in Bayview, I was sitting in the screen porch with the dog when my phone dinged with a message from Hayley. She and her friends were out on the deck on Pictou Island. The Perseid meteor shower was at its peak.
I wandered outside and looked up at the big night sky.
It’d been quite a year. I’d come a long way from that good Minnesota soil to the shores of Nova Scotia. I’d learned so much but still felt like a beginner—at commercial fishing, at relationships, at being handy, as a seafarer, in a new phase of life. It didn’t help that the whole world felt unsettled. So much of what I—we—knew to be true a few years ago just wasn’t holding up.
I stared up at the constellations that people have navigated by for generations. A meteor streaked across the sky.
I’m glad we can still see the stars out here.
Some days it feels like if you just believed enough, you could almost reach them.
We were all on the boat with you JJ - I think I even smelled diesel.