NEW UPDATE!! (MOVING?)

Hey everyone!! Its the end of January 2016, and I thought i would do a quick update on my blog. I am going back to work on the lobster boat in August of 2016 again and i will continue to blog. I will use the same website as last time.

http://lobstermanjackson.blogspot.com/

That is the link to the blog site! I am also moving to Ireland for 2 years starting in late August and i will be coming back to Grand Rapids for senior year! While i am in ireland, i will start a new YouTube channel, and have a blog to go along with it! I will have more details on that later! Bye!

The Mama's point of view (guest blogger)

I've been going to Maine since I was in high school.  I remember so well, the homemade bridesmaid dress that I wore to Pennie and Art's wedding and refusing to eat the lobster at the reception.  I've grown a bit since then, not wearing many homemade gowns anymore, and now eating much of what Art catches!  Maine to me is pure and authentic, I feel a sense of peace and calm like no where else in the world.  I have loved it more every year as the time has passed. Never did I imagine having boys that would one day stern the boat for Uncle Art, but here we are, life does surprise you sometimes.



Since we have been summering a bit in Maine for the past few years, and Jackson is now 14, it was time to take it up a notch, and boy did we!  One of my favorite days was going out and watching J haul.  I mean he has always been an impressive kid; smart as a whip, piano player extraordinaire, and a rival at negotiating!  But I was unsure of how he would be at straight up hard labor.  I had my concerns going into this, but they were unfounded and I couldn't be more proud.  J got up daily, very early, fought the fog, learned to band lobsters quickly, and put together a system to get bait bags done efficiently enough to keep up with Captain Art.  This is no small task; Art is a very hard worker, very serious on the boat, and an excellent role model.  I've always known it takes a village to raise kids, and I am so lucky to have Pennie and Art in mine.  While Art taught Jackson the "art" (pun intended) of lobstering, Pennie housed, fed and put up with an x-box in her living room for 5 weeks (something I couldn't bear to do!).  While I worked, Oma walked daily, and Levi kept us all on our toes.  But Jackson continued to work every day that Art went out and became a pretty fast helper on the boat.

To say the summer was a success is an understatement!  Jackson now has more money in the bank for the car that he is saving up for when he can drive.  I am moved to tears with the pride I feel for this kid - what an inspiration for Levi to look up to.  He even kept up this blog.  I'm amazed, humbled, and more grateful to our Maine family than I can express.  I know that Opa is beaming with pride, watching and aiding his grandson from above (and probably calling him Little Joe Jackson).  We all can't wait until next summer when we get to go out again and live in Maine for part of the summer. Who knows, there might even be a cottage in our future, on the Atlantic, maybe only a kayak ride away from Pen and Art.



You did good Jackson, really good!!!

Thanks Art! What an oppor-tunity you have given to Jackson!

....start practicing Scooter!

      
      

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!!