Ah, Hermine

by Eva Murray

The storm had meandered across the Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico as an entity called “Nine” for days and days, and for what seemed an eternity the weather geeks kept repeating, “We think this storm will eventually be named Hermine.” At long last she was, indeed, and is Hermine – the pronunciation of which they did not always agree upon – she proceeded to stave up parts of northern Florida, put the lights out in Georgia, and harass the Carolina coast. The folks in New York and New Jersey were imagining the worst because Hermine wiggled and wobbled all over the place, heading east, turning back west, and for a while a direct hit on a major city was a distinct possibility. Then, rather like a puppy who scrambles around in circles a few times before settling in for a nap, she plunked herself down on the other side of Cape Cod and didn’t do much of anything except cause us heartburn. The meteorologists promised she was “well out to sea.” That expression sounded vaguely familiar to me.

Nobody was at all certain that the ferry would run on the scheduled day. Well, we were in a sense certain that it would not: if any boat made the scheduled run to Matinicus that Tuesday after Labor Day, it would not be the actual state ferry vessel Everett Libby – “our” boat – but would instead be the Island Transporter. The Libby was in the shipyard awaiting parts. As you may have heard somewhere before, Matinicus gets approximately 30 state ferry trips a year, so a cancellation, whether for mechanical failure or hurricane, throws a significant monkey wrench into the delivery of anything that has to move by truck. The Transporter is the only vehicle-carrying boat available to substitute which is short enough, at 95 feet, to fit into our rather unforgiving harbor.

A word about the Island Transporter, by the way. A lot of people think it is an old military landing craft or some other relic that was given a lick of paint and forced into service as a barge. “Oh, you mean we have to ride that barge?” people ask. Not quite. The Island Transporter is not particularly old, and is not exactly a barge, but was built specifically for the job of carrying heavy loads—such as dump trucks and well drillers—to potentially undeveloped places like private islands and remote properties without ferry service. The Transporter isn’t a bad vessel to ride, as long as you need basically nothing for amenities. There is hardly any passenger cabin, hardly any head, hardly anywhere to pile up your luggage out of the weather. If you’re aboard the Transporter, it is assumed that you probably have a dump truck (and if you’re smart, that you’ve brought a sandwich and maybe a pillow). It’s an industrial sort of conveyance.

As a substitute for the ferry it is perfectly fine for me, because I sit in my erstwhile-garbage-truck U-Haul, eating my sandwich and maybe snoozing on my pillow. But for walk-on passengers – perhaps elderly, perhaps leaning on canes, perhaps with little dogs in tow, perhaps trying to manage a heap of groceries sufficient for two weeks on the island, perhaps underdressed for two hours in the wind – it has grown to have a reputation as a rough ride.

That is not the crew of the Island Transporter’s fault. They never advertised her as a pleasure vessel. Well, except on the AIS; there, she is listed as a pleasure vessel. That’s pretty funny.

Anyway, the morning of the scheduled trip was calm and entirely non-threatening in Rockland, despite the scary weather reports of dangerous surf and small craft warnings. There were four of us scheduled for passage to Matinicus that day: me in the U-Haul doing the regular trash run, and three pickup trucks. There were also a few walk-on passengers, maybe not so young, maybe not so steady, but regulars, mostly women who had lived on the island as children years ago, and who had made hundreds of crossings in their day. I did put some of their luggage in the back of my truck along with the load of plywood and concrete blocks I was carrying to the island, and I gave one of them a drink off my water bottle so she could take her Dramamine. Beyond that, they would be on their own.

We backed our trucks aboard the Transporter, handed over our ferry tickets, and as we departed the Rockland terminal we were called to a sort of briefing on the deck. The captain made it clear that if conditions got too rotten he would be turning back. He also made it clear that we might get all the way to Matinicus and then not be able to make the wharf in a hard easterly, and would be turning back. “If you are not OK with this being possibly just a boat ride, you shouldn’t go,” we were told. It was a bit late for that. “The only reason I am even trying this trip today is they say it’s supposed to lay down later. If I don’t like it, I’m turning back.”

I was reassured by this. I did hope, deeply and profoundly, that the captain could make his decision well before we reached the mouth of Matinicus Harbor, just the same. One time the Transporter did literally get to all the way from Rockland to the Matinicus breakwater and then turn back, in a hard easterly like today. That trip “to nowhere” has become part of the folklore.

I’ve been living in the middle of the bay for 29 years, and am still amazed to run into people who just want to get to their destination no matter what, and who have little awareness of either maritime or aviation safety. If an air service pilot strikes out across the water in a Cessna 206 and hits thick fog and can’t see a damned thing, and then turns around and goes back to Owls Head rather than trying to land on a small dirt strip basically blind, certain island-bound passengers think themselves ill-used. Idiots. Same thing on the water: in an easterly blow there isn’t much wiggle room at Matinicus. We aren’t unloading on Dexter’s Ledge.

Halfway out, I noticed the deckhand standing at the stern. He looked to the left. He looked to the right. He looked at the old ladies and their little dog. He looked at my wheel chocks. He took a walk around all the trucks. Then, he did it again. I happened to see him smile at the dog, and that was a good sign; I figured that meant he wasn’t worried, and we probably wouldn’t have to turn back. I noticed he wore a sweatshirt that read “Bering Sea Fishermen.” This is nothing.

The hard part would be making Matinicus Harbor. To be sure, the east side of the island offered the worst of the seas that day, but once inside the breakwater we had nothing to worry about. I drove off the boat and up to the middle of the island, a gang of neighbors unloaded the plywood and the shingles and the concrete block by hand in record time, we loaded over 2800 lbs of recycling, trash, and beer bottles into the truck, I grabbed the last four whoopie pies off the bakery shelves for the Transporter crew and thundered back to the harbor in the U-Haul. We were still on schedule to make the round trip in five hours. Going back to Rockland were just three of us, two guys in a pickup truck and me, no foot passengers, no old ladies, no dogs, nobody looking for a bathroom or worrying about being seasick.

The seas were a bit rough around the island for maybe ten minutes, and then smoothed out to an amazingly flat day. We could have been playing marbles on the deck. The weather reports were still giving rough seas and dangerous surf advisories and small craft warnings. I don’t know; wherever Hermine was, she sure wasn’t here. Conditions became perfectly calm as soon as we got away from Matinicus.

That’s a metaphor, I think.