Page 26. MAINE COASTAL NEWS April 2018 B D  C I Continued from Page 21.


down to Ward Seafood, where the Dyers were unloading. “Did Henney just beat you?” he asked. “Yes sir, he just went by me just as fast as I was going,” Bob answered. “Ahh, something’s wrong in the wood-


pile,” Fowler said. He went out on the dock, looked down at the stern of the boat, and the water was touching the name. “We had almost 6,000 of ground fi sh


in it. Plus six trawls. Trawls weigh up over 100 pounds apiece. And we had six of them in the bow, inside, to get em out of the way, because we had so many ground fi sh in her. [Fowler] come back, and he just looked at me, and he laughed and he walked right off . Cause I mean, she wouldn’t go 10 knots loaded like that.”


After having the boat a few years, Bob


put a big Buick in. “I didn’t have the money to work with so I took my exhaust pipes and run ‘em up over both sides... It wasn’t a Buick Special. It wasn’t a Roadmaster or the Super, it was one of the smallest Buick engines they made. And I put that in her, and 2:1 gear.” Bob’s father was sure that they had ruined her. “We won’t be able to go trawling,” he said, “the engine’s gonna burn way too much gas.” They had been burning 17 gallons of


gas with the 6-cylinder when going to the Cape. “By-m-by come time to go trawling and I says, ‘Come on let’s bait up.’ When we went to Cape, we went about 20 minutes till we was out to the whistler, but, then we had to slow down, because you had to run a 20 minute time limit... So we run her what we thought was going 10, 12, 14, along in there you know, and we made the edge of bottom. We set our trawls, we come in, we burnt 13 gallons of gas. My father couldn’t believe it.”


One night around that time, Joe’s wife


was very ill and needed to get to the hospital. Merganser didn’t have lights, so the Coast Guard told Joe, “We’ll have a strobe laying right at Diamond Island and wait for you. We’ll be ready for you.” Joe told Bob, “I see his lights fl ashing


so I knew he was there, one of them dou- ble diesel Coast Guard boats. I went right up right close by him... and wove to him so that they’d know this is the boat.” The Coast Guard boat wasn’t able to keep up, they chased Merganser into the state pier. While Joe was getting his wife off the boat, the Coast Guard was looking at Mergan- ser’s engine in amazement. “They couldn’t believe, they couldn’t even stay nowhere at all near when Merganser went by. She was going 30.” In the 1950s, Merganser also came


through Hurricane Carol right on her moor- ing, which was a heavy duty chain hooked to a big granite. The Betty D was secured with two anchors but dragged the anchors into a seine, which kept her from going ashore. Bob said, “I went up, towed the Betty D out of the mud. That boat was so high that I put the line on the bed. Course I had that Buick in [Merganser]. I’d open that engine wide open, and that Betty D lay right down just like that, and I’d leave her right wide open, and then after a while old Betty D would slide her keel right out from under her all of a sudden. And then I’d do it again, and that’s how I got her out from that seine. She come forward after awhile, and I towed her off .” Merganser’s starter had gotten wet and needed to be replaced, but other than that she was fi ne. When Merganser was about 8 years old,


they added a small cabin, oak, plywood, and pine with sliding windows. “Every spring we’d be up on the edge of the bottom, 20


minutes outside the whistler, haddock fi sh- ing.”


One day they got caught in a nor'easter.


“My uncle Carroll cut his trawl and left it, and followed a dragger; and my cousin Joe, he cut his trawls, left the trawl out there and he followed that same dragger. We hauled all of ours… We was loaded with groundfi sh, now. We had a good big trip of haddock aboard. And my brother was so scared, he set out on the fi sh and wanted to pitch ‘em overboard. And I said no, you ain’t gonna pitch our fi sh overboard, we need the mon- ey.”


Bob decided to go in back of Richmond


Island, telling his brother, “I don’t think we can get out around the Cape, with no radar, nothing to work with, just a compass. I don’t know where I am, you know, for sure.” All of a sudden a wave took out the mid-


dle window. “Now that was rough, when it done that. The old Merganser. And after that wave took that middle window out, I could hear the Cape. And I said to brother, ‘I’m going out around the Cape and I’m going in town. Now I know where I am.’” They idled along, “pounded her in and


went on through,” and tied up to the dock. First thing, Bob called his father: “When my father found out it was me, I could hear that sigh of relief knowing that we weren’t off there. ‘Cause that wasn’t no day to be out there. We got caught, I didn’t realize it was coming that quick, see, when we went off it. But anyway we made it in, the old Merganser brought us right in.” The other fi sherman around the water-


front came down to the dock to talk with Bob and his brother. “See my middle window?” Bob said.


“Well where? You know the glass was ripped right off , that wave took her right out! That’s what saved our life, right there. ‘Cause once that come out, I could hear the end of the Cape. Then I could stay aberth away from it. After we got to the Cape I was all set, I could fi nd the whistle.” At 15 years old, all of a sudden Mergan-


ser started to leak badly, and Bob couldn't pinpoint the source. There was no water coming from the stern, the leak was right up in the engine forward. One day he told Joe, "I'm gonna ground her out, and then you got to help me try to fi nd that leak. Boy she's leaking bad.” Bob grounded her out, laying her on a square wooden trap so she wouldn't lay right down on her bilge. “When the tide went, and me and my younger brother and Joe were sitting there looking at the boat, you know, talking away.” Joe said, “What's that?” He took out his jackknife, and when he stuck it in the spot, the putty popped right out, and the water squirted right out. He had happened to see a wet place. Joe said, “Ah, I can fi x that.” He got


some caulking and little caulking iron, he drove the caulking back in and puttied it. “That boat never leaked another drop. Right up till I got rid of her. “You could put her on the mooring, as


long as it didn’t rain… she'd never have no water in her. I tell you that boat was well built. I kept the stuffi ng box packed good, and the stern stuffi ng box over the rudder, I kept that tight. And you could load that boat right up with lobster traps and leave her all night long on the mooring, and she wouldn't have no water in her the next morning. So you see that boat was built good.” “That boat worked for me until she was


20 years old… We spent a lot of time on the old Merganser, I’m gonna tell you what. 20 years of it, I lived in her, actually. But, if I woulda known today back then, I wouldn’ta let that boat go for nothing. But I didn’t know I could rebuild her. See I didn’t think I was smart enough. Cause there’s no Dyers in the


family that’s boatbuilders.” “When I sold Merganser, three quarters


of the timbers in her stern were broke… Her washboards were getting awful bad where we’d worked her so heavy you know...Cause that boat got used. I mean, we used her a lot. But I didn’t think I was smart enough to rebuild her. ” Bob sold Merganser to Carroll Lowell, who restored her in 1969. Several owners later, Merganser is still cruising the waters of Casco Bay, now as a pleasure craft. She did end up a little bit shorter. “They


shortened her about 6 or 8 inches, you know,” Bob says. When they were sardining the wood on the stern got chafed. Also, Bob’s father ran her ashore by Eagle Island and took a piece out of the stem right on the very bottom, which Bob repaired. When Carroll put another stem in her, he had to cut back a little bit, to get good wood to put the screws back in the plank. Carroll also took the stern out and cut part of the planking on the stern, then put the stern framing back. “So that she ain’t quite as long now as she was when we fi rst got her.”


TUGBOAT 65-67


In 1965-67, Bob worked on a tugboat in


town, “the old Jacob Bernstein outfi t. I went engineer for 3 solid years. I drove one night a week, four nights a month. I pumped black oil around the clock. For three solid years.” One year the company bought a 115-ft steel tugboat with no engine. Jake told Bob, “You got to go to New


York City.”


Bob said, “I have?” “Yuh.” he says. “You and your brother


and your cousin. And the captain. Go and take Fannie J [97 foot long, with 2 GMs]. You're going to New York to get the engine.” The engine was a 2500 hp, 7 cylinder


(fi reback ball?), it weighed 58 tons, and they put it on a wooden barge. “We were there about four days. But what I didn't know is, while we were there, the captain gathered up 4 or 5 quarts of booze.” They were told, “Don't go out the East


River with the tide going - you’ll get run over by your own barge.” However, the captain was getting drunk... enough booze to keep him knocked out until they got home. So then captain told them, “Alright, let's


go.”


Bob said, “Al, they told you not to go out the East River with the tide running.” “Let's go,” the drunk captain said again. “Well now of course he was captain,


right?” said Bob. “He had the papers. So my cousin looked at me and my brother, and he said, ‘What we gonna do?’” Bob told him, “You're gonna take the


axe, and you're gonna set on the stern of the tugboat, and when you see that barge com- ing, you holler. Let me know what's going on, and I'll wind her right sideways and you cut that rope clear of the boat. So that barge can keep right on a-going.” “I opened up right to 1900,” Bob said,


“got that engine right humming wide open. And by God that boat had power enough in them two engines to steer that barge down through that tide.” All the Fannie J had that would work


was a compass and a car radio. “I set 52 hours on the stool. Brought her into Portland harbor.” When they come through Cape Cod canal, luckily they hit tide. A little boat came alongside and said, “You must be the captain.” Bob told him, “If I ain't, we ain’t going


nowhere, because the captain's drunk, can't even sign his name.” The offi cial said, “You sign yours and I'll take it from there.” So Bob did. When they got into Portland harbor, Bob planned to tie the barge on the can buoy.


“We ain’t going up under that bridge after dark with that barge,” he told the others. “See, you had to go in there sideways


under that bar and twist her. If you didn't you'd run into the rails of the bridge. And I wasn't used to that, see. I knew how to do it, I'd seen ‘em do it, but I never done it myself so I was a little leery.” But about that time the captain came out. He said, “Where are we?” “Portland Harbor,” Bob told him.


The captain had sobered up by then, so he brought them under the bridge and to the wharf.


“Then I went and I told Jake he owed


me all that time. And if he could've made a hole in the roof, he would've. But he paid it, all that time I set at that wheel,” Bob said. “And I always thought that Al had to pay him back some of that time.” Soon after, Milton Cobb approached


Bob about a job tending the roads in Cum- berland. Bob took the job so that he would get Social Security. He worked there for about 20 years, while still fi shing evenings and weekends. The week after Bob retired from working for the town, his friend who owned Chebeague Island Boat Yard became ill. “So I went to work for them and stayed for 13 years until I retired from there.” BOAT BUILDING - 1975


After Bob sold Merganser, he had a


1937 Chris-Craft speedboat. “I put a 327 Chevy V8 in her, she'd go 60 miles an hour. I could leave the stone pier, open her up, throw her down, in one minute I'd be to the Cousins Island fl oat. Boy that was going!” He used that boat from 1969-75, but she was a very wet boat. “Every time I used it I got wet. The wettest thing...if you're going along normal you get drowned.” In 1974, Bob decided to build a new


boat for himself. “A buddy of mine retired out of the Coast Guard, he was chief engi- neer, and he was a cabinet maker. He was a beautiful cabinet maker. And I looked at him, I says, ‘You ain’t scared of a skill saw, are ya?’ and he says no. I says ‘Good. You're gonna do me some sawing.’ I was scared right to death, I seen ‘em kick back and fl y right out of his hands. He was a big man, too... He helped me a lot doing the chainsaw work.”


Bob summoned all his memory about


Merganser and tried to make the new boat similar. “I built mine without any molds. I built it just by eyesight... I remember every- thing on the Merganser, the wheel and the deck and all this stuff , and I kinda molded it all into my brain, and that's how I cut mine out. So that she'd swing a 22" wheel... I'd like to have somebody over to look at it, and just see how close I come to the hull. ” He called her the Maybe - “Maybe she’ll


fl oat and maybe she won’t.” She was 32 feet long. Another diff erence was that where Merganser was built of white oak, the Maybe was gray oak. “I used to love to tease Carroll [Lowell].


When the Merganser was built, she was built of white oak. Didn’t believe in nothing but white oak. I told ‘em, you’re on the wrong road. Course I wasn’t no carpenter, I didn’t know nothing about boats, but I’d tell em they was on the wrong road. “So when I sold Merganser, three


quarters of them timbers in her stern were broke. About 6 or 8 up on each side, broke off ... They done a lot of work on her, had to replace the white oak.” In 1974 Bob went to Maschinos and bought a lot of gray oak. Carroll asked Bob, ‘What are you gonna


do?’ him.


“‘I’m gonna build me a boat,” Bob told “You don’t want to build a boat out of


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