Overworked & Underpaid
F/V Neptune which happens to be a side trawler located in Stonington, CT. Below is an article about the history of the vessel...
STONINGTON — Neptune lumbers into port a bit late, her hold not quite as full of fish as some other days, her winches and outriggers a bit arthritic with rust. But cut her a break: she’s the oldest boat in the Stonington fleet.
“She was built in 1967 by Luther Blount of Blount Marine,” says her captain, Alan Chaplaski.
To the seasoned mariner, the name Blount summons the same nods of respect that “Ford” or “Chevy” once did among car owners back in the post-World War II days, when Luther Blount founded his shipyard in Warren, R.I. Even greenhorned landlubbers whose most ambitious nautical excursions have been catching a ferry to Block Island or from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty have likely done so on the steel decks of a Blount vessel, a popular choice for commuter and excursion ferry companies for decades.
Blount designed and built America’s first commercial stern trawler, the Narragansett, in 1962. The steel-hulled Neptune, at close to 80 feet, is of the same vintage and class, though she’s what’s known as a side trawler because her nets are cast over her starboard rail.
“What you do is you stop with the wind on the starboard side,” explained Chaplaski. “You then put the net in the water and the wind blows the boat away from the net. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the way they’ve done it since they started towing with nets going back to the early 1900s.”
Chaplaski is a man who is used to the vagaries of the sea. Born in 1950 on Fishers Island, he has been around boats since he was just “a couple of days old,” as he put it. He began lobstering in high school, went off to college, but couldn’t quite wring the salt water from his veins and has been fishing nearly all of his life.
“Not yet,” he jokes, crediting that standard, Yankee one-liner to his cryptic Down East brethren in Maine.
Neptune was built for the Bucolo commercial seafood company in Newport, then later moved to New Bedford, Mass., which is where Chaplaski bought her in the early 1990s. With a crew of three or four on board and powered by a 400 hp diesel Caterpillar engine, she chugs out to sea every week on trips lasting three to four days.
Her normal fishing grounds are about 100 miles off Montauk, an area known as Hudson’s Canyon, at 270 miles long and more 3,600 feet deep one of the largest known ocean canyons in the world. The trawler’s catch is not only determined by fate, but by seasonal regulations. Fluke and squid season just ended; now she drags her voluminous nets for whiting, monkfish, and royal red shrimp (locally known as Stonington red shrimp, though this is a misnomer). Never an easy profession, commercial fishing is as tough these days as it ever was, says Chaplaski. Draconian regulations, the price of fuel, the tooth-pulling exercise of getting fish buyers to cut a check for your catch — these and other challenges often conspire against the average working fisherman.
“We have to get in a trip a week, just to pay the bills,” Chaplaski says, with good-natured resignation.
Then there have been the challenges of keeping an older boat updated with the latest technologies.
This has meant installing computer navigation systems, replacing the asbestos decking (which held up better than modern material, Chaplaski observed), swapping out the old oil stove in the galley for an electric model, and refitting some of the ship’s exposed mechanics with stainless steel after the original steel’s time had come.
“You get an eye for how long it can go. I mean there’s rust, and then there’s rust,” he said, smiling.
But even in the face of rust, and regulations, and the admitted insanity of one man trying to coax a living from the sea, Neptune is a vessel whose integrity remains intact.
“Luther Blount designed a good hull,” said Chaplaski. “She may throw you around a bit at times, but she’s a strong boat and will always get you home.”
Could any skipper ask for more?
www.thewesterlysun.com/news/latestnews/4801754-129/stonin...
Overworked & Underpaid
F/V Neptune which happens to be a side trawler located in Stonington, CT. Below is an article about the history of the vessel...
STONINGTON — Neptune lumbers into port a bit late, her hold not quite as full of fish as some other days, her winches and outriggers a bit arthritic with rust. But cut her a break: she’s the oldest boat in the Stonington fleet.
“She was built in 1967 by Luther Blount of Blount Marine,” says her captain, Alan Chaplaski.
To the seasoned mariner, the name Blount summons the same nods of respect that “Ford” or “Chevy” once did among car owners back in the post-World War II days, when Luther Blount founded his shipyard in Warren, R.I. Even greenhorned landlubbers whose most ambitious nautical excursions have been catching a ferry to Block Island or from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty have likely done so on the steel decks of a Blount vessel, a popular choice for commuter and excursion ferry companies for decades.
Blount designed and built America’s first commercial stern trawler, the Narragansett, in 1962. The steel-hulled Neptune, at close to 80 feet, is of the same vintage and class, though she’s what’s known as a side trawler because her nets are cast over her starboard rail.
“What you do is you stop with the wind on the starboard side,” explained Chaplaski. “You then put the net in the water and the wind blows the boat away from the net. It doesn’t always work, but that’s the way they’ve done it since they started towing with nets going back to the early 1900s.”
Chaplaski is a man who is used to the vagaries of the sea. Born in 1950 on Fishers Island, he has been around boats since he was just “a couple of days old,” as he put it. He began lobstering in high school, went off to college, but couldn’t quite wring the salt water from his veins and has been fishing nearly all of his life.
“Not yet,” he jokes, crediting that standard, Yankee one-liner to his cryptic Down East brethren in Maine.
Neptune was built for the Bucolo commercial seafood company in Newport, then later moved to New Bedford, Mass., which is where Chaplaski bought her in the early 1990s. With a crew of three or four on board and powered by a 400 hp diesel Caterpillar engine, she chugs out to sea every week on trips lasting three to four days.
Her normal fishing grounds are about 100 miles off Montauk, an area known as Hudson’s Canyon, at 270 miles long and more 3,600 feet deep one of the largest known ocean canyons in the world. The trawler’s catch is not only determined by fate, but by seasonal regulations. Fluke and squid season just ended; now she drags her voluminous nets for whiting, monkfish, and royal red shrimp (locally known as Stonington red shrimp, though this is a misnomer). Never an easy profession, commercial fishing is as tough these days as it ever was, says Chaplaski. Draconian regulations, the price of fuel, the tooth-pulling exercise of getting fish buyers to cut a check for your catch — these and other challenges often conspire against the average working fisherman.
“We have to get in a trip a week, just to pay the bills,” Chaplaski says, with good-natured resignation.
Then there have been the challenges of keeping an older boat updated with the latest technologies.
This has meant installing computer navigation systems, replacing the asbestos decking (which held up better than modern material, Chaplaski observed), swapping out the old oil stove in the galley for an electric model, and refitting some of the ship’s exposed mechanics with stainless steel after the original steel’s time had come.
“You get an eye for how long it can go. I mean there’s rust, and then there’s rust,” he said, smiling.
But even in the face of rust, and regulations, and the admitted insanity of one man trying to coax a living from the sea, Neptune is a vessel whose integrity remains intact.
“Luther Blount designed a good hull,” said Chaplaski. “She may throw you around a bit at times, but she’s a strong boat and will always get you home.”
Could any skipper ask for more?
www.thewesterlysun.com/news/latestnews/4801754-129/stonin...