He nodded, checked the pot once more, and flipped it off the stern. While he straightened out the filled boxes, Rachel slipped the boat into gear and headed for the next–and last–buoy for the day.
Mary had been insistent that Rachel fish all the traps. She’d held out until the middle of June, fishing only fifty–twenty five in the harbor and twenty five outside in the open water. The catches were generally pretty astonishing. They kept careful records on each day’s landings and had been consistently averaging twelve to fifteen kilograms per trap–bringing in over half a ton a day with fifty traps and well over a ton a day with a hundred. It took them about three hours to fish the hundred traps, so theoretically they could probably manage two or even three hundred traps a day. She giggled a little considering how much of a load the boat would have with three hundred traps. It was rated at five tons, and it would probably need all of it.
She got the boat lined up on the last buoy and cut the engines back as Otto snagged it with the gaff. As he worked to haul up the heavy crab pot, she thought that two hundred traps would be quite enough load for one boat in a day. As the toggle cleared the water, she reached back to help him heave the streaming catch over the side. It was a good haul, and she stepped back to the podium to give Otto room to work and to adjust helm and engines to keep the boat on station against wind and wave.
“Okay,” Otto said, as he finished with the trap.
She popped the boat in to gear to give it a little more steerageway and he dropped the pot over the side once more.
Otto slipped his gloves off and rubbed sweat off his forehead with his wrist, trying to keep the salt water and bait juice out of his eyes while he did it. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for lunch.”
She grinned. “You’re always ready for lunch.”
“Not always. There’s dinner, and breakfast, too.”
“And evening snack.”
“And afternoon snack.”
They had a good chuckle as the boat got up to speed and began planing across the water. The loud engines and the roar of the wind in their ears made it hard to talk, so they lapsed into a comfortable silence, Rachel at the helm and Otto leaning on the bows, his back to the wind and looking over the stern at their spreading wake.
Rachel’s eyes strayed to the forty-odd boxes of crabs stacked neatly along the far rail. The weight on that side gave the Crabby Patty a bit of a list, but nothing serious. On the grand scheme of things, a metric kiloton of fish–even specialized fish like crabs–wasn’t going to make that much difference. Alan was even complaining that it wasn’t really enough to process efficiently.
She smiled. About half this lot would be getting on the shuttle and going up to the Orbital to be used fresh in one of the trendier restaurants there. The rest would be going to the Fairfax House. She suspected that once it caught on, there’d be a lot of local restaurants wanting a share of the catch.
She started doing the math in her head. Two tons a day times five boats would be ten tons a day. Over the course of a two hundred and fifty day fishing season, that’d be two and a half kilotons. Multiplied over the four thousand fishing villages along the South Coast that would be ten megatons. Compared to the thousand megaton quotas they’d be facing next year, it didn’t seem like more than a teaspoon against the tide, but every ton of crab fetched ten times the price of even prime mouta.
Rachel made the turn back into the bay, following the channel markers back to the dock. The processing crew waited for her with a grav pallet. She and Otto hefted the boxes up to waiting hands. A quick turn with a bucket and mop got the boat ready for the next run. In a matter of a few ticks, they were walking back to the cottage and lunch.
“So? What do you fancy for lunch?” she asked. “Crab cakes?”
He laughed, voice cracking a little, before saying, “I think a little soup, some of that nice sourdough bread, and a nap for dessert.”
She grinned and didn’t argue. It sounded very good indeed. Especially the nap.
It was only a matter of a few ticks to warm a pot of soup and slice a couple of hunks of bread from the loaf. They settled down to eat.
“What do you think of this crabbing business, Otto?”
“That’s a lot of crabs, but can it really make a dent in the landings?”
She smiled at his thoughts echoing her own. “Well, not just one boat, of course.”
“Yeah, I get that, but look at all the tons that come in on the draggers every day. How many boats would it take to match that?”
“A lot, but we’re only fishing a half day with a hundred traps. If we set our minds to it, we could probably fish two hundred.”
“True. Maybe as many as three hundred. That’d be pushing the limits of the boat, if we keep getting that many crabs consistently.”
“Start on the far end and work toward port?”
“That could work. The more load in the boat, the closer we’d be to the dock.”
“Okay, well, assume ten kilograms for three hundred traps. That’s three kilotons a day.”
“A dragger brings in what? Eighty a day?” he asked.
“True, but we make more money.”
“Really?”
“Not really, but on a price per kilogram, we make ten times more money. It’s just they can bring in so many. Keep in mind, though, that we have a much smaller, cheaper boat and gear, and it’s only two of us, not three.”
“Yanno, what else?” Otto asked.
His mother nodded for him to go on.
“This is safer.”
She thought back to the box fish which made her think of Richard.
That line of conversation petered out for a few heartbeats.
Rachel said, “I got a message from your father last night. They’re doing well out there. The crew rotations are working and all that.”
“He’s probably having a ball.”
“Actually, I thought he sounded a little homesick,” Rachel said, but didn’t add that it was probably just her wishful thinking.
They finished lunch and headed to their respective bedrooms to make good on the nap idea, but sleep eluded Otto. Perhaps he slept a bit, but after a time, he rose and slipped out to the shed. As he crossed the back yard, he stopped, sniffed the air, and found something in it that made him frown a bit. He continued on and lit the fire in the stove. He gathered some herbs, wintergreen, penny royal, and foxglove among them, and wrapped them round with a strip of hawthorn bark. A quick slice freed blood from his thumb and he pattered a few drops like rain on the bark. He pictured his father and watched as the bundle caught fire in the stove, the redolent smoke sucked up the chimney and blown south on the offshore breeze.
When the bundle reduced to ash, he stirred it with a bit of driftwood, and tossed that on the small pyre, stoking the stove until a cheery blaze burned. Smiling to himself, he settled down with a bit of wood to carve. His eye caught the line of a storm petrel in the wood and he thought it an auspicious find. He blotted the blood from his thumb with a bit of tissue and started to free the petrel from the stick. His hands worked by themselves as his mind was busy elsewhere.
Chapter Forty-Six
Pirano’s Seamount
September 27, 2305
Jimmy looked at the clouds. They piled across the western horizon. As the sun passed the zenith and sank into them, the afternoon took on an ominous cast. “Well, I guess we’ll find out how good our planning was.” After the frantic early morning work–unloading fish, loading food, and topping off the fuel and water tanks–the day had oozed along like honey.
Richard, standing beside him in the mess deck, nodded but smiled. “Looks like I’m going to have a lot to hear today,” After a couple of ticks he asked, “Are you sure you want to ride this out with me, Jimmy?”
“No, but I’m here. Seems only right that I be the one with my butt on the line. They’re my ideas. And it’s kinda late to leave now.” He glanced at Richard. “Are you sure you won’t leave?”
Richard shook his hea
d. “Harve and I got things to do. When the boats come back after the storm, the crews’ll need showers, food, and fuel.”
The draggers had all run off to the south that morning when the weather satellites had started showing the atmospheric instability which had spawned the storm bearing down on them. They took all the crews and staff with them when they went. It was a little crowded in some of the forecastles, but better safe than sorry. Richard and Harve had volunteered to stay with the barges.
The barges were all buttoned up as tightly as they could be. They’d disconnected the big cables that provided power for the processing plant, rolled them up, and stored them in the lockers on the power barge. The engineers had powered the heavy fusactor down to standby so that it would be ready to come back online at a moment’s notice. Over on the processing barges, the crew had shut down all the equipment, locked it down, and generally stowed anything that might blow away. The fuel barge rode a bit high in the water, with all the extra fuel they’d pumped out of it but it had the least deck obstruction and was the least likely to have a problem in a heavy blow. The dormitory had its own power and water supplies and could operate for weeks without replenishment, except for perishable foodstuffs.
All the barges rode with double anchors splayed ninety degrees apart off the bows with the dormitory barge farthest west. That wasn’t anything new. They set the anchorage up that way on the first day on the mount. Heavy weather was most likely to come from the west, and indeed, the prevailing winds came from the west the majority of the time, so they’d oriented their small fleet to take advantage of the prevailing winds.
The exception to the double anchored mooring was a string of five empty barges linked together in a train on the easternmost edge of the anchorage. They were the barges that had brought out supplies, and were waiting for fish to take back in. Another one would join them in a day or so. The tug captain hove to about a day north, just down over the horizon from where Jimmy and Richard stood. He’d put out his sea anchor and was battened down for a blow. He didn’t want to be too close to the seamount when the ocean started heaving.
“Well,” Richard said so suddenly that Jimmy flinched, “who’d like a nice cup of tea?”
Jimmy blinked at him but Harve Godwin, the barge’s maintenance mechanic, stepped onto the mess deck at that moment. “Oh, I think that sounds lovely. Shall I put the kettle on?”
“No, sit, Harve,” Richard said. “I’ll do it. Did you get that door seal repaired?
“Oh, yeah,” Harve said, flopping bonelessly into one of the settees. “Should be good now. It was just crimped over a bit. A little loving persuasion and my glue gun took care of it.”
“You didn’t glue the door closed, did you?” Richard asked.
Jimmy chuckled in spite of himself and Harve chuckled right along with him. By the time they’d gotten tea brewed and scavenged a few cookies from the larder, the storm clouds had swept across the sky above them. Off to the west about a half a kilometer, the artificial reef was already paying dividends.
Over the course of the summer, every other barge came out loaded with concrete blocks as ballast. Those blocks got dumped in a line west of the anchorage and built up until they formed low wall about two hundred meters long, fifty meters wide at the base and almost twenty meters above the seamount. There was still five meters of water over the top, enough that a fully laden barge or fishing boat could scoot over the top of it. What it did was catch the rollers that came in from the west, and forced them to break early, splashing harmlessly over the pile of rocks and dissipating their energy. The resulting lagoon effect was noticeable even in good weather. With the storm driven waves beginning to hit, a lot of splashing whitewater glowed in the gathering dark.
The first pattering of rain struck the glass as the wind began building in earnest and the barge began to take on a significant fore-and-aft pitching. Richard and Harve settled down on a couple of the couches facing the glass, and sipped their tea, each lost in their own thoughts. Jimmy stood at the windows for another tick or two, but soon joined them, trying to relax onto the cushions even as the sound of the wind got louder as it whistled across the glass and around the deck house.
There wasn’t much to say and each of them didn’t say it. Harve looked totally unperturbed by the rising wind and sea. The rain picked up and began sheeting sideways across the glass as the wind blowing across the glass overcame the gravity pulling the droplets down. Inside the mess deck, it got darker as the combination of the sinking sun and rising storm wrapped them in dimness. A light in the galley splashed across the floor and provided enough illumination for them to see each other, but storm drew Jimmy’s gaze out into the murk.
“How strong do you suppose the wind will get?” Harve asked Richard.
“As strong as it needs to, I suppose.”
Jimmy thought that was rather an odd answer, but it satisfied Harve.
Richard reached down and put his mug of tea on the low table in front of him. Jimmy noted that the table was in a lot better shape than he’d expected. He had a sudden flashback of the day he’d hired Richard and remembered thinking that the furniture and fixtures on the barge would take a beating with all the fishermen using it over time. He also remembered the blood on the rail and hoped that whatever blessing Richard had placed on the barge was still in effect.
Outside the wind started ripping the tops off the choppy waves and adding the salty water to the fresh rain as it was driven into the front of the deck house. Jimmy had to squint to see the foaming breakwater but it was obviously doing what it was intended to do. The pitching kept building but was still not enough to do more than tilt the tea a bit in the mug that Richard had placed on the table. Jimmy took some comfort in that. So long as they weren’t going to be pitched so far forward that the waves were blown over the bow, they were probably in pretty good shape.
They sat there in the gloom, eyes adjusting to a dimness relieved only by the light of the galley behind them and the foaming surge outside. The rain blew in horizontal sheets that would periodically obscure even the gleaming breakwater. Every tick that went by, the wind’s howl rose in pitch until what had started out as a growl was transformed into a banshee’s wail in the dark night. Jimmy looked at his chrono and surprised to see that he’d been there for over three stans, just sitting silently watching the storm. With an awareness of time, came an awareness of his body and how much he needed to use the head.
When he moved, the other two looked at him and he smiled at them in the dimness. He pointed in the direction of the facilities, not even trying to speak over the water pounding against the glass, and the shrieking wind. The deck was remarkably stable, given the weather outside. The breakwater continued to stop large waves from rolling across the seamount’s surface. He re-zipped and was just beginning to feel more than physical relief when the deck pitched up under him.
It wasn’t a lot of pitch, but it was a lot more all at once and that made him nervous. He hurried back to find Richard catching his mug before it slid off the table. He found walking to be much more difficult with the deck tossing beneath is feet. The wind appeared to have abated a bit, or at least, the screaming went down a notch in pitch. He staggered back to the couch. Cleats held the furniture to the deck and Jimmy was grateful for the support as the fore-and-aft pitching became more pronounced.
Jimmy glanced at Harve and saw him curled up on the sofa, apparently asleep. When he looked back, Richard grinned at him. His eyes and teeth glowed in the reflected light from the galley. Jimmy jerked a thumb in Harve’s direction as if to say, “What’s with him?”
Richard just grinned wider and the barge began to pitch more and more.
Jimmy squinted out of the forward glass and could no longer see the white foam of the breakwater. The relentless pounding had shifted enough of the blocks that it was no longer blocking the waves as effectively as it used to. They weren’t breaking over the blocks anymore and the energy of the huge rollers was getting amplified as the rolled
onto the relatively shallow sea mount. As the up and down movement became more and more violent, Jimmy began to wonder if they might not actually crack the hull against the only rock around–the one twenty-five meters under them.
As soon as the thought came to him, he knew it was foolish. While twenty-five meters wasn’t a lot, on the scale of the sea, it was still a huge amount when measuring waves. He wondered what else he should be concerned about instead when he saw something large and dark moved on the water outside the port side glass.
No, it wasn’t moving. They were being blown backwards past the power barge, dragging the massive blocks along the bottom as the wind caught on the deck house and under the bows each time the barge pitched up. Jimmy glanced over at Richard who looked to be considering something.
Jimmy moved over to the couch to sit next to Richard. “We’re dragging anchor.” he shouted to be heard over the racketing storm.
Richard nodded. “Waves broke the wall. Each swell tugs the anchors a bit more,” he yelled back. “They’re sliding on the mud.”
Jimmy kicked himself for overlooking one last obvious problem. On the smooth surface of the basalt plug, slime and mud build up would provide an effective lubricant for the large block anchors they’d set down to moor the barges to. “If we slide far enough, the blocks will fall off the mount and we’ll be floating free in the wind,” he shouted.
Richard appeared to consider that. So did Jimmy. Worst case, the anchors would be too heavy for the barge to support and would pull the bows down far enough to ship water straight up the length of the barge. Best a case, they’d be blown westward until the storm blew itself out, leaving them who knew where. They had a couple of kilometers before either one happened, but the storm pushed them pretty fast. Jimmy saw Richard’s gaze flick out to the dark shape to port then swing to starboard where Jimmy could make out the low slung fuel barge riding securely at anchor.
Richard frowned at that and reached into his shirt to pull out the small figure hung around his neck on a leather thong. He lifted it to his lips and gave it a kiss before dropping it to his chest. Jimmy thought it looked like some kind of sheep, but he wasn’t familiar enough to identify what kind Richard stood and walked to the front of the mess deck, stopping just before he got to the glass. He stood there for a long moment, not moving. Jimmy noticed that his arms were locked straight down by his sides with his hands balled into fists. Richard’s head bowed and he looked rooted to the pitching deck. Up and down he rode, as stable as if he were part of the barge, bolted down like the furniture.
South Coast (Shaman's Tales From The Golden Age Of The Solar Clipper Book 1) Page 28
