Joining the club

Our lobster pots have been sitting out in Cape Cod Bay for weeks now, rendered inaccessible by the weather. Well, not for that first week; that’s when we they were rendered inaccessibly by trailer trouble. But for the three weeks after that a relentless north wind and daily small craft advisories have kept us from venturing out beyond Barnstable Harbor.

We tried, once. We thought we’d have a window of opportunity, and we launched the boat at Millway. We motored out through the harbor and rounded the point into the bay. As soon as we got out of the channel, the chop was too much.

Too much for me, that is. Kevin probably would have braved it had he been with someone braver. Luckily, my husband is philosophical about my fair-weather boating fortitude, and he’s always willing to turn back the moment my knuckles turn white.

Back we went, into the shelter of the harbor. There, it was beautiful. The water was smooth, the day was sunny, the temperature was unseasonably warm. We tootled around the flats, with their islands of eel grass, idly casting for stripers. There didn’t seem to be any sign of them, though – not a splash, not a bite – so we anchored in what we thought was a likely spot and waited for the tide to bring the fish to us.

There wasn’t another boat in the harbor, there weren’t any fish to be caught, the sun was warming us, and pretty soon we found ourselves engaging in some very unseamanlike behavior.

Is there a nautical equivalent of the Mile-High Club? The Sea-Level Club, perhaps?

Oh come on, we’ve all done it.

Anyway, we were right at what I’d call a critical juncture when we both heard the noise. The splash. The kind a fish makes. And then another.

What does it say about us that we stopped, disengaged, and reached for the rods?

Either the thrill is gone, or we’ve become fishermen.

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