by Nick Fisher
The upside is, if the weather holds and they haul another 15 or so shanks of the same quality as the first four, without snagging on a big boulder, or wrapping a warp rope around Kitty’s propeller, or killing each other, they should head home with a decent enough catch. Even though the shipping forecast and the squally gusts barrelling down the Channel suggest the ride home is going to be long and spine-jarringly rough, today might just yet be worth the grief.
As he unlashes the bungees from the wheel, checks the position on the chart plotter and corrects Kitty’s course to the next pot buoy – only a couple of minutes away – Adrian almost immediately begins to regret having moved so fast, when he was out on deck. A quick glance over his shoulder confirms his fears. The deck crew’s heads are up. Matty and Tim have caught up with themselves. Everything is stowed and stashed and ready for the next haul. Just a little too soon.
They have time now, to stop working and look around. Their hands empty, everything in its place, more or less, and like toddlers with Attention Deficit Disorder, instant boredom, need and want, sets in.
Just the way Matty is wiping his hands down the front of his bait-splattered fleece – a promotional gift from Kenny’s Tackle Shop that says ‘Team Diawa’ across the chest – tells Adrian he’s helped his crew too much. Matty finishes cleaning his hands by wiping them up and down the seams of his Dickies, before stepping into the wheelhouse and saying exactly what Adrian knows he’ll say.
“Just time to skin up, Skip.”
Fuck. Too soon, thinks Adrian. Too fucking soon.
Matty peels a king-size Rizla out a broad red packet, and lays the packet on the sink drainer, to rest the cigarette paper in the right angle between the pack and its cardboard cover. The angle creating the perfect cradle to hold a fag paper. From a battered packet, fished from deep within his fleece, Matty produces a Dorchester Menthol cigarette and proceeds to lick it along one side. Using his thumb, he teases the cigarette open along the wet line of spittle. The compressed tobacco bulging out as he tips the whole length into the open Rizla.
As Matty ferrets around with one hand, inside his fleece jacket, searching into the lining to locate his knotted bag of spliff, his other hand snakes its way towards the unopened can of Scrumpy Jack in the steel sink. One hand pops the ring pull on the top of the can, while the other produces half an ounce of Bristol’s best Vietnamese-grown skunk. Matty is ambidextrous when it comes to consuming drugs.
Too fucking soon, thinks Adrian. He should’ve left them to do their own deck work or just helped them for five minutes. Kept them busy right up until they reached the next shank. Not let Matty get a moment. Get his head up. And do what Matty always does – have a smoke, toke, drink, pill, or anything else that’ll get him wasted.
It is 18 minutes past ten in the morning. Way too soon to let Matty get much of a buzz on. His mind will wander. His co-ordination will falter. His hands will fumble. And sooner or later his mood and his temper will turn to shit.
Fuck, it’s like running a fucking kindergarten, thinks Adrian. Like being an unpaid child minder, looking after Matty and Tim. Fact it’s easier looking after his two tiny sons, Jack and Josh, than keeping tabs on Matty’s mood swings. Exactly the same mindset though. Knowing when they’re hungry, when they need a nap, when they need a crap, and when they should or shouldn’t smoke a finger-thick spliff. Or neck half a litre of industrial cider. And now, before they’ve hauled a third of what they need to haul to make today even a passable punt at earning a living, is not a good time.
“Coming up on it now,” says Adrian through gritted teeth, nodding at the pot buoy 60 yards off the starboard bow.
Matty says nothing, his tongue between his teeth as his filthy fingers roll and knead and smooth the joint into shape. He’s already sprinkled a mammoth heap of dry skunk along the back of the baccy and is squeezing, squashing and rolling it to fit inside the king-size skin. His tongue sliding along the gummed edge. His forefingers smoothing the sticky seam shut, before he upends it and puts a twist in the bottom of the joint, to stop any precious mixture spilling out.
“The fuck, Matty,” says Adrian, annoyed as much with himself, for letting this moment happen, as he’s annoyed with Matty for skinning up, right in the middle of a series of pot hauls.
“Not the fucking tide table!” whines Adrian. Hating himself for sounding like a little bitch. But, it’s too late anyway. Matty’s already torn a square hunk out the cardboard cover of the tide table. Adrian only bought a new tide table book three days ago, from Kenny’s, as the last one’d fallen to pieces because Matty’d torn off the covers to make roaches for spliffs.
“I just bought that!”
“Good man,” says Matty, as he sucks a pull from the Scrumpy Jack can and burps a gassy, cider-stinking burp in Adrian’s face.
Matty holds up the nearly-finished can in front of Adrian and raises his eyebrows in a question – You want this?
Adrian turns away and watches the pot buoy as Kitty drifts closer and closer. Now only ten yards away. He doesn’t look back at Matty. Can’t. Too angry and too scared of his own boiling hate for his little brother, but he does hear the click and spark of his Zippo as Matty lights the spliff.
A waft of acrid skunk smoke and menthol baccy rolls over Adrian’s shoulder. The smell partly disgusting him, but also making him angry and jealous and sad and frustrated. Adrian doesn’t want to get off his face most of his life, like his brother does, because Adrian has dependants and responsibilities and even ambition. But he does sometimes want to be stoned and pissed. Some of the time. Any of the time. At times. At hard times. At good times. At bored times. At this fucking time, for God’s sake!
And so Adrian fights it. If nothing else, if not for his wife, his boys, his faint little hopes for the future, if nothing else, to just be different from his head-case of a brother. If nothing else, just to not be like Matty.
Five yards before the pot goes under the keel. Four. Three. Matty out on deck now. Two yards. Like a miracle Tim is already waiting, leaning against the starboard gunwale, holding the boat hook, ready to give it to Matty.
Was a miracle that Tim, little shithead Tim, should actually think ahead, and be ready for Matty. Adrian knows why. Isn’t some amazing revelation of learning and forethought. No, simply that Tim’d seen Matty get a spliff on the go. And Tim thought if he does something useful to help, then Matty’ll give him a tug.
Adrian knows Tim and Matty getting stoned will just slow down and complicate the rest of the day and cause him more grief. And yet, weirdly, at this precise moment the spliff is a positive thing, because it encourages sneaky Tim to suck up to Matty, by having the boat hook ready. Which means with one yard left to go before the pot buff gets sucked under the keel, Matty snares it with the boat hook and drags it over the gunwale.
He flicks the rope up through the jib hook, winds it into the hauler and draws in a lung-busting toke, holding the chest-full of skunk and menthol inside him as long as is humanly possible. Then he passes the burning joint to Tim, who with his blackhead-pocked 15-year-old face, grins like a fucking retard, exactly mimicking Matty, and sucks on that thing like tomorrow was cancelled.
Fuck, thinks Adrian. Way too soon for this shit.
First eight pots of the shank went well. Adrian nudges the throttle and corrects the angle of the Kitty so she drifts perfectly on the line of the pots. The swell growing from the west, whipped up by the south-westerly winds that push her just a little too fast into the drift. Gusts hitting the wheelhouse, making her lean over into the drift. She leans, as a wave sneaks up on her port side pushing her even further over, into the drift.
A boat that’s leaning while being wave-bumped from behind during a haul makes a hard job harder. As the winch bites into the lift, the side with the pot-hauler is pulled down towards the sea. Sometimes so far, the top of a swell rides over the gunwale.
Matty’s boots are getting wet as sea surges up through the starboard scuppers. He’s leaning forward, hand outs
tretched, holding the swinging jib that guides the rope up out of the sea to the winch wheel, where its V-shaped profile pinches on the rope. Kitty is leaning over, practically as far as she safely can, Matty leaning with her, riding her. Stopping himself from falling into the sea, just by his one hand on the jib. Adrian’s shoulder is squashed hard against the pitching starboard wheelhouse window. Even Tim is struggling to stand upright at the bait table, when suddenly the rope jams.
So many potters have been sunk by winching on a jammed rope or snagged pot. If a pot’s being hauled by an electric or hydraulic winch and the rope is unexpectedly caught underwater, in rocks or a wreck, hauling has to be stopped, immediately. Otherwise a meaty winch can pull a small boat right on over. If the sea’s swelling on the opposite beam of the boat, a crabber can flop right over on its side, and then over on its back – keel stuck up in the air, fisherman trapped underneath – in a heartbeat.
And still the winch will keep on winding and pulling downwards, causing a small crab boat to flip over again. Only this time it’s spinning under the surface, being pulled deeper down. Down until the winch finally stops pulling. Which in the case of an hydraulic winch is when the engine is engulfed with seawater, and coughs and splutters to a stop. But in the case of an electric winch, powered from the boat’s batteries, it can go on turning and pulling until the boat’s been winched down to the seabed. Either way, hydraulic or electric, doesn’t make much difference to the crew, when they’re trapped underneath, getting sucked into the winding gear or tangled in the deck ropes, fighting to hold their breath. Until eventually they’re forced to suck in a lungful of seawater and call it a day.
When a small boat like Kitty is already leaning right over and then the rope jams, it might not be enough to hit the kill switch and stop the winch. Stopping winching only stops the pulling. If the boat is pitched over, and being held tight at an angle, one more wave – which might be only a second or two away – could be enough to kick her on her side.
To stop her breaching, the pulling needs to be stopped, and the rope needs to be yanked out the V-trough on the winch wheel and made slack. Only when there’s no tension yanking down on the pot rope, is the boat safe.
If ever there was a moment when Matty’s drug-addled reactions and sloppy sense of safety was a threat to Adrian and Tim’s life, this is it. If Matty’s slow to kill the winch, or fumbles getting the rope out of the V-groove, they could all be sucking seawater.
Being inside the wheelhouse means Adrian would get longer to breath than Tim. Matty and Tim would be flipped over the gunwale in a blink, with the boat rolling on top of them. But Adrian would be stuck inside the wheelhouse when Kitty’s keel went tits up. Sea crashing in through the wheelhouse door, making it impossible for him to get to the winch controls, or swim free of the sinking boat.
For all his fucked-upness, Matty still has the ability to surprise Adrian. Before Kitty is tipped more than half way over, with the winch growling and the rope singing with tension, Matty punches the kill switch and whips the rope out the winch wheel.
“Jam up!” he shouts as he bangs on the wheelhouse window. As if Adrian needed to be told.
Most shanks of pots are shot with two anchors. One on each end of the shank, with a rope and buoy attached above each anchor. Anchor at each end is the safest way to shoot pots. Means both ends of the shank are fixed to the seabed. Otherwise the end that doesn’t have an anchor can move, if tides are big. A powerful tide pushing the line of pots for six hours and then swinging round and pushing from the opposite direction for another six can roll the end that’s not anchored. This can start a slow tide-powered wag. Like the tail of some gnarly big dog. If the end of the shank furthest from the anchor begins to wag, with 50 foot of polyprop rope attaching each pot to the next, the potential for snagging on sunken rocks is high. This is exactly the reason most boats, especially those shooting pots on snaggy ground, or in big tides, shoot with an anchor on each end.
Trouble with anchors is they cost best part of 20 quid each. Sure, you can make your own, a lot of crabbers do. All it takes is a few scrap steel reinforcement rods and an hour or two in the workshop every week, wielding an arc welder and an angle grinder. Which is definitely something you might do, if you own your own crab boat. If you haven’t sold it already. And of course, if you give a shit.
Anchors cost money. Anchors also take up a lot of room on a small boat like the Kitty K. If you shoot 20 or 30 shanks of pots, that adds up to 60 anchors. Fuck of a lot of dead weight to be shifting across the Channel on overpriced diesel.
The most important function of an anchor is that it’s designed to get snagged into the seabed or caught between, behind or under rocks. If it didn’t get caught up to the seabed somehow, wouldn’t be much of an anchor. Trouble with anchors is sometimes they don’t know when to give up hooking themselves into the seabed. They get themselves so involved with underwater structure, they don’t want to come out. Even when the man on the other end of the anchor rope dearly fucking wants that anchor to give up with the anchoring shit and come back on board without any more struggle.
Anchors get stuck. Anchor ropes get cut in frustration. So boats like the Kitty K end up with fewer anchors than they really need, if they intend to shoot their shanks of pots with an anchor on each end. And so some shanks, like the one now jammed under the bucking, tossing Kitty K, only have an anchor at one end.
To haul this kind of a shank, you need to haul up the end with the anchor first. Which means if you hit a snag half way along the shank, there’s every possibility of losing all the other pots from the snagged one down the line. Because without an anchor and marker buoy on the far end, there’s no way of telling where the end of the line of pots lies. If you don’t know where the far end of the line is, you can’t haul it. So, if you cut through a snagged line, especially in a big sea, on a shank with just one anchor, you probably have to wave goodbye to the rest of the pots in the shank.
To lose 20 pots today would be a major fucker. Matty and Adrian’s deal with Paulie is a share in profits as well as running costs, including diesel and gear. If they lose pots, they lose money. And today, so far they’ve barely broken into profit. New pots, off the shelf, are best part of 40 quid a pop. No fucking way Adrian and Matty can afford to lose one or two pots, let alone 20. So snagged or not, this shank is coming to the surface, no argument.
First thing Matty does is walk the rope around the stern of the boat and up the port side. They should be able to drift down past the snagged pot and use the force of the tide, straining in the opposite direction, to try and dislodge it. But the weight of the boat isn’t enough, and the pot doesn’t shift. So Matty loops the rope back up through the hook and roller of the jib and tries to winch the pot with the rope running across the deck of the boat, rather than straight down. It’s safer, because it pulls the boat flat, instead of tipping it over. The rope bites into the port gunwale gouging a groove into the wooden rail. Adrian slips a length of nylon drainpipe over the gunwale to protect the wood. Still the pot doesn’t shift.
Those are the two safe options to try and shift a snagged pot. The only choices left are more dangerous ones, like tying the pot rope around a cleat on the stern of Kitty K and using her engine to yank on the rope. Tugging with the tide and using her propeller to force her whole weight down on the line. It’s a shit-or-bust alternative. The pot could pop out, or the rope could snap. Or worse, if Adrian misjudges the lumpy sea and the heaving swell, he could pull the stern of the boat down under a rear-ending wave, flood the engine compartment and sink Kitty arse-end first.
Matty winds the rope twice around the stern cleat and Adrian pushes the throttle forward, gently at first, increasing the load until finally he’s gunning the engine. All the time keeping an eye on the transom for a big wave that might swamp them from the rear. With every power surge of the engine, the back of the boat dips down lower and lower. As the engine howls the rope stretches so tight it changes colour as the fibres stress and straighten
, almost to breaking point.
Suddenly the K jolts forward, as something gives. Adrian yanks back on the throttle and shoots a quick wary look at Matty, who stands staring down over the transom…
“What was that?” shouts Adrian, once the engine roar dies.
“Not the rope.”
“It free?” asks Adrian. Matty leans over and hauls on the rope to check.
“Hey fuck-face!” he shouts at Tim, who realises he should be hauling too. They both heave together, making a few yards of rope back in the boat, until they can’t make any more. Both straining. Matty puts his boot up on the transom to get more leverage. But they can’t make any more line. Matty winds the rope back around the cleat, to hold the boat, as Adrian slips the gearbox into neutral and walks to the stern, where he joins them, all staring over the stern at the rope, disappearing into the deep.
“Something shifted. Now, it’s snagged again,” says Matty.
“Maybe we pulled off a rock into another rock.”
“S’a fuck,” says Matty spitting.
“Could go round, pull uptide.”
“Take fucking ages.”
“What’s the choice?” says Adrian, staring at the line where it disappears beneath them. “Still ten, maybe 12 pots down there.”
“Buoy it off. Leave it. Do some other shanks. Come back when it’s calmer.”
Adrian says, “When’s it ever calm out here?”
“Buoy it off. Least we can haul some of the other gear,” Matty says. “We spend an hour trying to get this unjammed, we’ll never get to haul the other gear.”
“’Less we work into the dark.”
“Bollocks,” says Matty. “I’ll tie a buff on it. We leave it. Pull rest of the gear. Come back tomorrow.”
“Then we’ve got exactly the same problem, this time tomorrow,” says his brother.
“Fuck it.”
“No.”
“Come on,” says Matty. “Don’t be a dick.”