This past July, while sailing in Maine, we were surprised to discover there were no lobsters to be had on North Haven Island. “Ya got a boat?” a woman with no lobsters to sell asked us.
As it turns out, this year’s lobster season hasn’t been the best one for Mainers, and you’re just as likely to get a fresh catch in Brooklyn as you are in Rockland. Lobster “middlemen”—floating barges that service boats with bait and fuel and also send the catch down the seaboard to restaurants paying top dollar—are therefore often the best source.
In no time we were out on the water again in search of the bait station at the west end of the Fox Island Thoroughfare. It wasn’t hard to spot, or smell. The six of us pulled up in our Ensign just as a lobster boat unloaded its catch. I had cash—and a cold beer—ready in my hand.
We bought six lobsters, a pound and a half each, from a lobsterman who helped us pick out the tastiest. We tied them in a plastic bag and sailed home with the crustaceans snapping at each other on top of the spinnaker bag.
Dinner never tasted so good.
