Lillie and Ben come visit!

Tuesday the 24th was our second day out. It was a much better day than our first day. Uncle Art thought that we wouldn't get as much lobster as we did on Monday, but we actually got more. We ended up with 813 pounds, with only 160 traps hauled! Thats 5 pounds per trap which is very good. We got in around 3:30 PM. 

After we got home, all 3 of us went to get 20 more bales of hay. 

Wednesday was a shorter day, but still very foggy. We set 10 traps and hauled around 100. We weren't getting a lot of lobsters and ended up with around 300 pounds. We got in around 12:30 PM. I started to write my introduction for my Extended Essay when I got home.

That night I talked to Lillie who was with one of my best friends Ben and they were traveling with her parents through Maine. She said they were coming to Rockland tomorrow and Aunt Pennie said we could have them over for dinner. I said we could visit some other things in rockland also so we made a plan for Thursday to meet and then have a large lobster feast! Thursday I would have off of work since we hauled all of our traps we had out Monday - Wednesday. 

Thursday morning I was able to sleep in until 7 AM. I woke up and worked a bit more on my introduction for my EE, then Aunt Pennie and I went to Walmart. We got some more food, some cheese crackers, cheetos, bananas and stuff to make guacamole for Thursday nights feast with Lillie, her parents and Ben Gair.


Turns out that Lillie's dog's eyes were red and puffy so her dad had to stay at their cabin and it would just be Lillie, her mom and Ben coming. They got to the house around 3:30 PM. We showed them the house, yard and the chickens, and LuLu of course.



 It was a pretty nice day out, and we all got in the car and drove to Owls Head Lighthouse. It had closed at 4 PM but we still were able to walk around it. 

 


There was a small rocky beach that we went to right next to where we parked our car to visit the lighthouse. We made some cairns:



We next drove to Main street in Rockland to walk around. We walked up and down Main street and went in a few stores. We went in a candy store that I had been in many times before when I've been down to Main street. It was around 5:20 PM so we went back to our car so we would have enough time to walk the breakwater. 



Ben, Lillie and I walked all the way down it and back, it is 7/8ths of a mile long. It was very windy on the walk but it was fun. We thought we would be back to the house by 6:30 PM, but we got back to the car around 6:30 PM and got home around 6:45 to have our lobster feast! We were having the lobsters that Uncle Art and I had caught on Wednesday. Along with the lobster we had some salad and guacamole that I had made earlier. I never had liked lobster in the past but I ate it this time and it was very good, Ben and I had 3 lobsters each. Uncle Art taught them how to eat them.



Around 8:30 PM, after we had finished dinner and our dessert they started to drive back to their cabin because it was about 2.5 hours away by car. It was fun to have them up for a day off that I had. 

Friday, I had another day off and around 1 PM I went to Aunt Pennie's friend, Catherine's house to practice the piano. She had a grand piano and let me practice there for about 3 hours. I practiced the Arabesque, and I also began to try to relearn a piece I played a long time ago. It is also a Debussy piece called Reverie. Her piano was very nice. 

For Dinner that night Aunt Pennie's friends Alex and Laura had come from Georgia and we all went out to eat in Rockland. We ate at a place called Rock Harbor Pub and Brewery. They had a lot of good things on the menu that I wanted such as nachos, but I ended up choosing a chicken wrap. It was fried chicken inside a wrap with a really good sauce. It was very delicious and it came with these fries that were perfectly done, and perfectly salted also.



Saturday, Uncle Art and I were back to hauling. We had a not long day. In the morning it was bright and not a lot of fog. Most of the day on the water was perfect because it was bright and there was barely any fog, but near the end of the day the fog somehow came back and we could barely see around us. Luckily we finished around Noonish. We weren't catching many lobsters, we only got about 330 Lbs. 

July 24 - 28, 2018

Setting all the Traps / First hauling day!

Thursday and Friday Uncle Art and I continued to set traps. Both days we did a couple boat loads full of traps. We can fit about 40-50 traps on the back of the boat each time we go out to set them. Once we have enough room, we prepare 2 traps at a time so we can set them quicker. I've been able to sleep in until around 7 AM recently since we are only setting traps. 

Saturday the 21st, we only took one boat load of 48 traps out to set. It was a really nice day today, very sunny and no fog out on the water. Later in the day after I got back, Aunt Pennie and I went to Walmart. I wanted to see if I could have my pictures from my disposable camera developed there. They did develop them and all I had to do was write my name and address on an envelope and put my camera in there and into a box. It takes about a week for them to get developed.  

We got some more things to make sandwiches and just more food in general. Also, we got more bottles of water because I have been drinking all of it quickly. A bit after we returned from the store, all 3 of us went up to Aunt Pennies friends house to get some hay bales from her barn that she wanted to get rid of. We loaded them onto the back of Uncle Arts trailer that he uses to transport traps to the Wharf. We fit about 36 bales on the back of it then drove back to the house. We then transported the bales of hay over to an area where Aunt Pennie was making some places to compost. 



I also checked out her new greenhouse she had made in the past year. 



For dinner Saturday night, Uncle Art got some steaks for us to eat. They were gigantic!



With the steak we had some biscuits, small baked potatoes and peas!

Sunday I got up at around 6:30 and Aunt Pennie made pancakes for Uncle Art and I for breakfast. They were so delicious and had blueberries that she had picked also. I had 3 pancakes. Uncle Art and I were just setting another boatload of traps Sunday, and Monday is when we would start to haul the traps and start to get the lobster! Sunday was a bit of a cloudy day, and we wanted to beat the rain that was suppose to come later that day. This is what it looked like at the wharf. 

 Right after we finished our day and got back, it started to rain a little bit so we got back just in time. Later in the day Aunt Pennie and I went to ocean state job lot to go shopping. On the drive back home, we saw a turkey in the road:

You can barely see it in this picture in the bushes

For dinner that night I was not that hungry but I did have a slice of pizza.
Monday the 23rd was our first day of actually hauling traps. I woke up around 4:45 AM and Uncle Art and I headed down to the wharf. It was very foggy in the morning, and was basically foggy all day. 



It was suppose to rain, but it never did. Later in the day the sun managed to sneak through the fog so I had to wear some sunscreen, but the back of my neck still managed to get sunburned a bit. It was a bit of a bad day because we were not getting many lobsters, but we ended up with 514 pounds in the end. There were a lot of places where we just weren't catching any lobsters. We probably hauled around 150 traps. At least we got 514 pounds though. 

In the middle of the day we got halted for a bit when a medal part in the back of the boat started to come off. The rope from each trap that we set back was tearing it off slowly and Uncle Art realized it so we had to take it off so it didn't rip off from the back of the boat. It took us about 20 minutes to solve that problem. The rest of the day we were going through traps very quickly. We used up a lot of herring because of how many traps we hauled. We got back to the wharf around 2:30 PM. It was a bit of a longer day but it was a good beginning day. The fog had left by the time we got back. 

July 19 - 23, 2018

July 16, Back to Maine!

Monday July 16, I flew from Dublin to JFK, then from JFK to Rockland, Maine. My Mom got me first class tickets from Dublin to JFK which was really awesome. I had a very nice meal.

I had a chicken dish for my main course but forgot to take a picture of it. I slept 1 hour on the 7 hour plane ride at the end. I watched a movie called American Made with Tom Cruise, it was really good. My Mom and I were on the same flight to JFK but once we got there we split up since she was going back to GR and I was going to Maine. I took my next flight which was about 1 hour to get to Maine, and Aunt Pennie had just arrived and was waiting for me. I got my checked bags very quickly, and then we began our drive home. We took a different route then normal, but we had no traffic so it was all good. 

Aunt Pennie had told me that Uncle Art was out on his boat when a plug came out of the bottom and started squirting water everywhere so he had to bring it ashore to try to fix it. Tuesday, he would have to bring it back into the water and then we would go out to set the traps he had. 

Tuesday morning, I got to sleep in until 7 AM. A little later Uncle Art came back and picked me up so we could go out and set 50 traps. He had loaded them on the boat earlier so we were all set to go out. From around 7:30-10:30 AM we set about 40 traps, the tide stopped us from setting the last 10. It was pretty foggy that day which was nice so I didn't have to wear any sunscreen.



I saw Terry's dogs when I walked up the stairs from the boat. They are very cute dogs:

For Lunch Aunt Pennie got some frozen pizza and I made it in the oven. It was very good, Uncle Art had a slice also. I actually ended up finishing the entire pizza which I thought wouldn't happen since I wasn't that hungry. I did some SAT prep on Khan Academy for the one I am taking in about 1 month. 

For Dinner, we drove down to near the library for Taco Tuesday at the Lion Shack. The Salty Owl which is a restaurant in the airport supplied tacos for the Lion Shack, and they were very delicious. I got a pulled pork taco and a chicken taco and some corn with butter. I also got a mexicane cola.



Wednesday morning, I woke up around 7 AM and Uncle art and I today were just going out to set more traps. We worked for about 3 hours until 11 AM. We were able to get 2 full boat loads of traps out and into the water which was I think about 80 traps. It was very sunny Wednesday so I had to wear sunscreen but it was a beautiful day on the water.






We got home around 11:30 AM, and I had a sandwich for Lunch. Around 1:30 PM Aunt Pennie and I made some guacamole. We used cilantro, onions, avocados and tomatoes with salt and lime juice. It turned out pretty good and Uncle Art and I could have some with our ribs for dinner.


July 16 - July 18, 2018