This generally seems like sound advice.
Any shrimp boat, or any investment opportunity offered by a guy with a white towel around his neck.
He was in his 50’s when I knew him and he was the only grown man I knew in Houston in the 80’s who regularly wore shorts on normal workdays. (As I type I am a man in his 50’s sitting here wearing shorts…) The shoes he invariably wore were a sort of slip-on sneaker. Had he been more rad maybe he would’ve gone with Vans. I think his were Keds. Blue slip-on Keds, shorts, towels and a white van. I hope he stayed the hell away from school zones.
Regardless of if by court order or just advice.
Seems like so many characters that would hang around Conn Brown Harbor in Aransas Pass. Sadly, few, if any, shrimp boats run out of that harbor anymore and the characters of that place and time won’t be replicated. My own shrimpin’ career came to an abrupt halt because we were shipwrecked on the jetty coming in during a storm. Someday I might write a longer post about that night…
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It is not difficult to discern that most people who make their living on or in the ocean are insane.
I like a nice day on the water as much as anyone, but to do that every day in and day out, you have to be seriously unhinged.
A good friend of mine told me those words after he quit dentistry.
I don’t want to be peering into people’s mouths all day any more than I want to get bounced around on the high seas in a sudden storm.
Peering. He said peering, Limey.
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Especially in a 72’ wooden hull boat that bobs like a freaking cork. The boats I worked on in the Merchants were more than twice as long and steel hulled. They could smash through the wave face rather than climb all the way up and fall all the way down (sometimes literally so that your feet left the deck) like the wooden hulled shrimper.
I used to go with this lunatic named Chad out of Haulover more or less weekly. We’d go on these semi-legal overnight runs to fish for a commercial outlet, usually fishing banks right off of the Great Isaac Cay. We’d come back with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of fish, and I’d get to keep whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t yellowtail snapper, which I don’t really care about in the first place. I saw enough storms come up out of nowhere in the summer to where I always knew where that lighthouse was in case I found myself needing to start swimming for it.
The mouth on a Hammerhead is pretty small. That’s what I’d tell myself.
Last I heard, Chad was in prison.
There’s something about working on the water that brings out the “eccentric” element.
My boat was a Gulf boat meaning we rarely fished in sight of the shore. Only during a few weeks in early summer when the white shrimp and “hoppers” ran in the shallows near the beaches. The Gulf has an enormous continental shelf, which means the water is relatively shallow a long way from shore. It’s what makes it a great place for shrimp in the first place. We would usually trawl in 30 the 60 fathoms about 100 or so miles from shore near bottom formations with names like “The Claypile”. During winter, we might fish deeper waters off Louisiana.
How long might you be out on average? How many nights? How much fuel can a boat like that hold, anyway?
If we all pitched in money to get an OWA fan cutout in the diamond club, what person or fictitious character would best represent this place?
It was seasonal, but my particular boat could stay out just over 30 days. We were one of the last “ice boats” meaning we loaded the hold with shaved ice before we left. The careful mixing and storage of the shrimp in the bins with the ice is the most important job of the Rig Man. A screw up could cost tens of thousands of dollars damage. Freezer boats would flash-freeze the shrimp in a super-cooled brine tank and seal them in bags and store them in a freezer. Some freezer boats could stay out 45 days or more.
The fuel carrying capacity of shrimp trawlers is huge. The engine is running almost all of the time. I don’t remember the capacity but we had two tanks on each port and starboard side. Our problem was fresh water capacity. This particular boat wasn’t designed with very much and we had to institute pretty strict rationing from the beginning of each trip. That meant showers every third day, strict dish-washing procedures, and “hanging it over the rail” if it wasn’t too rough.
There was a lot of “horse trading” offshore among the platforms, supply boats, barges and fishing boats. We had shrimp to trade, so we did pretty well. Sometimes we would trade for steaks, or vegetables, or perhaps reading material. Once, we traded a “standby boat” (the dregs of the offshore set) shrimp for water. The water was tainted with diesel and almost undrinkable. We were hoping the trade would extend the trip, instead it shortened it.
Who was it that did the insane strike celebration one night back there?
I can’t remember the name right now (maybe gleach can), but he was a Baylor guy, and that is the only allowable choice for this honor.
His handle was “yboddeus”. I can’t remember his real name.
Ybbodeous or something like that.
Bob Neal
Limey, Gleach, Ybodeous, and was the other guy, Taurus Bulba?
Bob Fletcher was Taurus. Frat brother of Neal at Baylor.