Home Finally! (few more blogs to come)

This is going to be my last blog. I finally got home tomorrow. Yesterday, there were 2 planes that we took to get home. One was 2 hours, and the other one was about a half an hour. When i got home, it was about 2 P.M. and all my friends were at my house waiting for me. Caleb, Ben, and Max, and Calebs brother Asa, were there and they all gave me a big hug. Then, we all went swimming in my pool for about an hour and a half. It was really fun! We played tag in the pool. They had to leave at 3:30 P.M. but then, i got to go to my dads house to pick up a package.

I went to pick up my Xbox one from my dads house. It had just been delivered today. I bought it with some of the money that i made from lobstering. I was so excited when i opened it! Everything seemed more advanced. The Xbox one was way bigger, and was more square, which looks awesome! It can play blue ray discs, and it came with all of the halo games. The controller was way better, because the bottom of it didn't have the battery pack sticking out of it, and every-thing was more precise and put together. The controller itself was made with a sturdy, softer material, so it wasn't just smooth, it had a kind of soft, grainy feel to it which would be nice for playing games for longer periods of time. I let my Xbox one download the halo games, then i went to practice some piano!

-September 2, Wednesday

Guest blogger soon, and a separate blog on the observation tower! 

Day in Portland! (fly home tomorrow)

Today, i got to spend the whole day in Portland! Yesterday i said i was in Rockland, but no its Portland. In the morning, i got up at 7 A.M. and then we went to breakfast. We went to breakfast at a place called local sprouts.  It was a really cool restaurant that had a lot of vegan and gluten free stuff. There were some really unique items on the menu. I got a pancake with butter and Maine maple syrup, and 2 pieces of toast with butter. My mom got the breakfast burrito, which was really good. Levi got french toast!

Inside, they had seating, they had a couch, and a high table with high stools, and we sat on a platform with 3 chairs, and the table looked like an old door turned into a table, and it was really cool! The pancake was really good, and we all finished our food. Then, we went to a bookstore, and i got a journal, and Levi got 2 mad lib books. My mom tried to find a book that she wanted to read on the plane ride home tomorrow, but they were all out. We then went to an ice-cream place called Gelato Fiasco. I got toasted coconut, and mango. It was very yummy!

We went next to an observatory. It looked like a lighthouse made out of wood, and the whole thing was made out of wood. It got thinner the taller it got, and it was pretty tall. There were a lot of rocks holding it down so that the wind couldn't knock over the observatory. As we walked up the observatory, the rooms kept getting smaller and smaller, until we got to the top of it, and you could see about 30 miles! It was awesome! We had a guide who told us how it was used for raising flags every-time a ship came in, and people would know the flag and which ship was in.

We came back to the hotel room, and we were going to go to the Green Elephant for dinner.

-August 31, Monday

Last Day! (Saturday) In Rockland

Today, was my last day on the boat! We went out off shore, so that we could haul some more double traps. We hauled about 35 double traps. The rest of the traps were single traps. It takes about 25 minutes to get out to that area of the water, so i was able to fill a lot of bait bags on the way out. We found some more fish in the traps today. Uncle Art had about 6 traps on the back of his boat today to set. They were all going to be set as double traps, so he has to tie them both together. One trap has the long rope that is connected to the buoy, and the other trap, has a small white rope that is connected to the other main trap, and that is how they are hauled as doubles.

The day did not start out good, because when Uncle Art went to set the first pair, he forgot to tie the other trap to the main trap, so that one trap went all the way down to the bottom of the ocean and we could never get it. He was pretty mad. We also had a ton of sea-weed grass stuff on all of the double traps when we hauled them. The single traps do not get the sea-grass on them but the double traps do, because they are connected, and usually the second trap off of the double traps gets all of the sea-grass. The reason is because, when the double traps are hauled, the second trap is dragged along the bottom of the ocean floor until it can be pulled up, so it collects a lot of sea-grass. Sometimes we cant even see the trap there is so much of it on there.

We were not getting a lot of lobsters from any of the traps, but once in a while we would get some. At the end of the day, we only caught about 300 Lbs of lobsters. It was my last day, and i got to go home, and make a sandwich to take on the road, because we were driving to Rockland to spend 3 nights in a hotel until we went home. We were going to stop in wiscasset, so that me and my brother could go to a place called "Monkey C Monkey DO" it had like zip-lines, and outdoor lazertag. We would be there while my mom, Uncle Art, Aunt Pennie, and Oma went out to eat dinner. Me and Levi had a lot of fun there, and we loved outdoor lazer tag. Then, we did the twin zipline for the rest of the time. We got ice-cream at the end of the day, then my mom and Oma came to pick us up. We said goodbye to Uncle Art, and Aunt Pennie before we left.

We then drove about 50 minutes to get to the hotel in Rockland where we would be spending 3 nights there until we leave Tuesday Morning. There  will be a guest blogger sometime in the next few days!!!1

-August 30, Sunday

Day Off! (Last Day Tomorrow!)

Yesterday, I was out on the boat, and it was not foggy for once in the morning. Uncle Art said that it was going to be a fairly short day, and that we would be done at about Noon, or 1 P.M. We were hauling only single traps today, and we were not getting that many lobsters during the beginning of the day. The only thing that saved us was the traps that we hauled at the end, that were put near the rocks where the big lobsters live. We caught a TON of great lobsters there, and at the end of the day, we had about 411 LBS. It was sunny the whole day, and there was no fog anywhere! It was really nice to work on the boat that day.

Yesterday night, i spent the night at Aunt Pennies house, and then i came to my moms house this morning so that we could have a pancake breakfast. I had 2 big pancakes, and a few silver dollar pancakes. I always put peanut-butter on my pancakes, and then syrup, and it tastes really good! During the day, we played some card games, and a game kind of like charades.  I read some of my book, The Scarlet Letter, for school, and it is actually a good book and i like to read it!

We went to the park, and me and Levi played on the orange spinning circle toy. It was really fun, until i got some skin ripped off of my hand from holding onto the metal to tightly or something. I don't know if it will still hurt tomorrow when it is my last day to haul, but it is feeling ok right now when i am typing. I do not have any pictures to post today because i have none left, but i have been playing a game on my ipod a lot because a new update just came out!

-August 28, Friday

Short Day! (got a big lobster)

Today, was a pretty short day, and we hauled only singles. We were getting about an average of 1-3 lobsters per trap near the beginning of the day, so we were doing the traps really fast. It was rainy this morning. It stopped raining after about 30 minutes on the boat, and it was really foggy, and the fog never went away for the whole day.


Today, Uncle Art would push back a trap to me if we had 2 traps really close together, so that i could to that trap, and he could get the 2nd trap that was really close together, so that we could go quicker. We found a Codfish in one of our traps today. They have like a single whisker on the bottom of their chin, and they are really slippery, and hard to get out of the lobster traps.

Codfish in the trap!

In one of our traps, we got a really big female lobster. It was a really big one also, and it didn't have shell disease, just like all of the other big female lobsters had that we found. I held it in my hands and it was huge! I had to hold a claw in each hand!

BIG LOBSTER!!

Easy Day!(took my mom and oma on the boat)

Today, we were going to only be doing single traps. I love single traps because i have a system for getting everything done every trap.  I do the traps bait first, then I band the lobsters, last I fill the bait bag from the last trap and put a rock fish on it. It is a really efficient process so that it gets done as fast as possible. It was foggy early in the morning, but as the day went on, it got really nice, and sunny!

We were going to take my mom, my Oma, and my brother Levi, on the lobster boat later today, so that they could see me haul 10 traps. Levi wanted to band the lobsters and "send them to jail" as he calls it as he sends them down the shoot to the lobster box. We were finished with our original traps at about 12:30 P.M. but then we hauled some traps that only had 4 nights on them because we had more time because we were going to pick up them at 2 P.M. to go on the boat. Those traps were filled with lobster and he is glad that we hauled them.

We had some traps up near a really small island, and Uncle Art said it was up in the rocks where the big lobsters lived. He said that the big lobsters like to live up in the rocks near the island because they are separated from the smaller lobsters. He had some traps there, and it was only like 10-20 Feet deep. We hauled them, and we got really good sized lobsters from those traps. We got about 3 really good sized lobsters that were really big and to big to keep.

My Uncle Arts mom named Lucy, has a lobster on the wall and it is 20 LBS. It is mounted on her wall and i got a picture of it!

HUGE 20 LB LOBSTER!

-August 25, Tuesday

Double Traps Day! (got a HUGE lobster!)

Today, we were going to go off shore to haul the double traps that we have about 3 miles away from shore. Since it takes about 25-30 minutes to get there, i have tome to fill a lot of bait bags so that i can have extra if i need them. I had cereal again for breakfast today. It was the cinnamon one. We got out on the boat, and we did some double traps first, but it was really foggy at the time. After we did some double traps, Uncle Art decided that we would just do single traps until the fog cleared up. He has about 30 single traps out there, and the rest are double traps. The traps need to be double traps so that when the whales are migrating, they don't get choked with the ropes, because the double trap makes it so the whales can get by.


Throughout the day, it was foggy one second, and then i turn around from filling up a few bait bags, and you can see 3 miles and all directions. Then, 3 traps later, you cant see your next buoy. It was crazy! It was like fog waves were just rolling over us and it was foggy, then not foggy every 30 minutes. In one of the double traps, we found a HUE lobster, and Uncle Art got a picture of me with it! He said that if i got clawed by that one, it could REALLY hurt me!

Huge lobster!

We found some more fish inside of our traps. There was a fish that was in our trap, and Uncle Art said that he would fill up with air in his stomach. He was like a puffer fish, but only his stomach inflated not his whole body.

We thought that we would be out on the boat until 3 P.M. but we got done at about 1:30 P.M. Uncle Art said that i was doing a really good job working. I want to come back next year!


-August 24, Monday