The Sea Monster

[Fubar512]

I started typing up the following story, several years ago. While it is a work of fiction, the events are based on some of my true-life experiences. In August 1975, a charter boat fishing out of Barnegat inlet, captured a record blue marlin, within 30 miles of the beach. It had been hooked while the crew was trolling for bluefin tuna, and had allegedly swallowed a hooked skipjack, and somehow became hooked itself.

The Sea Monster

Ahhh....The Summer of 1975. I was just a few weeks shy of my 17th birthday, and like most teenagers, I thought that I knew it all, thought that nothing could faze me, and felt immortal. It was also the summer of Jaws. And, it was the summer that I did battle with a real live sea monster.

Our next door neighbors, the Smiths, kept a Summer home in the town of Bayhead, NJ. They'ed invited me over for a two week vacation every July and August, to keep their son, (and my faithful sidekick), Billy company, while Mr. Smith commuted up to his business in Northern NJ, and Mrs.Smith went shopping, visited friends, or did whatever else she could manage to do to occupy herself during the long Summer days.

This summer was no different than the previous ones, that is, except for Billy and I having seen Jaws, at the local cinema. That movie had a profound effect on us. While I'll actually admit to having been just a little uneasy every time I got near the water that summer, (even if it was just the mudflats and lagoons of Barnegat Bay), the part of the movie that really took a hold of me, where the shark-fishing scenes. I'd never really been "Deep Sea" fishing before (that is, out of sight of land), and decided that I wanted to go real bad. Unfortunately, 16 year olds don't usually have the finances to charter a boat, and usually aren't invited along on offshore charters.

Billy must have been working on his father all summer, because, one day in early August, Mr. Smith announced that he had chartered a boat to go "Deep Sea fishing" for tuna, and that Billy and I were to accompany him. Hot Damn! Mr. Smith also said that the boat he'd chartered, the Slammer, was the same vessel that he'd booked several times a year with his friends and co-workers, and that they've always had a good day out on the water. He then added that we would enjoy meeting the Slammer's skipper, a seasoned old salt named Milt.

Milt turned out to be a crusty character, a salty-looking dude who was probably in his mid-50s, and who’d obviously spent an entire lifetime out on the water. His deeply tanned skin had taken on the appearance of old shoe leather. He had white hair, a closely trimmed white beard, and clear blue bombardier's eyes, that seemed to bore right through you. Billy and I decided right there and then that he'd have made a better "Quint" then Robert Shaw had, any day!

His deckhand, Tommy, looked somewhat out of place. He resembled an easy-going, blonde-haired California surfer dude, that was getting over as a mate on a Jersey charter boat. It turned out that Tommy was, in reality, a collage student from Philly, who spent his summers earning his way on Jersey shore charter boats.

Milt’s boat was a wooden vessel of lapstrake construction, approximately 40 feet in length, and powered by a pair of 6-71 Detroit Diesels. Judging by her lines, she was probably built just after the second World War. She may have been old by my standards, but she just about sparkled. Every visible metal fitting that adorned her hull and superstructure seemed to have been polished to within an inch of its life. The name "Slammer" was emblazoned in gold leaf across her mirror-like, varnished mahogany transom. Needless to say, she was spotless and ship-shape as we boarded her that morning. She sported an open-backed deck house, a small fly bridge, an old Rockaway fighting chair, and, what were probably the first pair of aluminum out rigger poles ever manufactured. She had a pair of sturdy wooden gin poles mounted to both forward corners of the cockpit. Her electronics "suite" consisted of an ancient Simrad paper recorder, what appeared to be a huge, US Navy surplus LORAN A unit, an old RDF sitting on a chart table in the open deck house, a VHF radio, and the height of luxury, an 8 Track tape deck!

Milt commented, as I pointed the tape deck out to Billy. "Yeah, I had Tommy install the damn thing so young fellows like yourself can listen to that garbage that you call music and not get bored. But you know, that crap is killin' your brain cells as you listen to it. You'll all be useless, brain-dead vegetables by the time you're my age.

Captain Milt and Mr. Smith conferred for a few minutes, then Mr. Smith went to park his car, and returned quickly. Milt leapt aboard and warmed up the diesels, telling us that it was the last call to use a real toilet before we headed out. Billy and I declined, and settled in for the ride out to the grounds, as Tommy cast off the lines.

We were soon clear of the inlet, and on our way offshore. The rising sun shone and burned like molten steel on the plate-glass smooth surface of the ocean, bringing with it the promise of a scorching hot day out on the water. Mr. Smith handed Billy and myself a tube of sunscreen, and told us to put it on, before we burned up.

The Slammer was oozing along at its cruising speed of perhaps 12 knots or so, and would, according to Tommy the mate, take almost three hours to get to the grounds, which, I imagine, was probably either the area we call the Star or the Fingers, today.

"Think we'll see any sharks out there?" I asked Tommy. "Maybe. You never know what you’ll run into out here. I saw a big tiger shark on the last trip. It must have 11 or 12 feet long. Definitely a man-eater", he added.

Almost as soon as we were out of sight of land, Billy and I occupied ourselves by keeping watch for tall, triangular dorsal fins, expecting to see one at any moment. It wasn't long before we actually spotted one...

to be continued....

Edited October 7, 2009 by fubar512

[OReely]

My grandfather, who ran charters, starting in the early 50's out of Brielle NJ, then Fort Pierce FL from the mid 50's on through the 70's could have been a model for your character, Captain Milt. Gristled old salt, white hair, goatee rather than a full beard, blue eyes. Not mentioned by you, but worn by many captains back then, the requisite pot belly from the adult refreshments.

I'm not sure about his first boat but his second boat was plank on frame rather than lapstrake and not as old as WWII. The second boat was built in the late sixties.

You just doing this for fun or planning on a short story, book, etc?

[Fubar512]

'Milt", ran charters out of Point Pleasant Beach from May-October, up until 1981 or so (it was berthed at a marina off Channel Drive). During the Winter months, he ran a 26-foot Pacemaker out of the Florida Keys.

His boat (the "Slammer") looked to be a typical, locally made 40 footer, possibly a Johnson Brothers cruiser from the late 1940s or early 1950s. I believe that it was renamed the "Striper", and ran out of Belmar for a couple of seasons.

[Fubar512]

PART 2

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Billy, as he pointed out a black, triangular fin that was moving slowly through the water, leaving a wake on the flat calm water. “A shark!” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, until Tommy joined us at the port rail, studied the sashaying dorsal fin, and said, simply “Nah”. The conversation must have carried over the growl of the twin Detroits, and up tp Milt's ear on the bridge, because we felt the Slammer start veering to port, on an interception course with our “shark”. Billy climbed halfway up the varnished bridge ladder to get a better look, when we heard Milt say to us “Come on up topside, boys. You’ll want to see this.”

Milt pulled the throttles down to idle as we approached the fish, and the hen took the boat out of gear, allowing the Slammer to coast up alongside. The fish sounded just as we came up on it, but was still visible several feet beneath the surface. It wasn’t a shark. It was huge, about the size of a manhole cover, and about the same shape as one. “That’s an ocean sunfish”, Milt explained. “They’re harmless, and very curious. Watch this..” Milt goosed the throttle on one of the engines while it was out of gear, and the sunfish reacted by gliding right up to the hull. “Get a brush out, Tommy, and give him a scrub….that’s all he wants”

Tommy reached out with a deck brush, and proceeded to scrub the sunfish’s back. It soon laid on its side, like some tame, over-sized pet, and seemed to be quite content as Tommy ran the brush across its flanks. I sat there mesmerized, half expecting the strange creature to begin purring like a cat at any moment "That’s enough, Tommy.” Milt said “Time to get a move on.”

The Slammer was soon up to speed and back on course. Billy and I just sat there, up on the fly bridge, in quiet contemplation. Milt’s voice soon broke the spell. “That was neat, eh?”

There had been a noticeable change in Milt’s demeanor since we’d left the inlet. Billy and I had attempted to join him on the fly bridge, shortly after we’d left the dock, and while we were still navigating through the marina channel, only to be told to stay below, by a gruff and seemingly angry disciple of Captain Bligh. Milt’s voice was softer now, and even his gaze seemed to have lost its tough, steeley glint. It was, at least to my 16 year old way of thinking, an amazing, unexpected, and most welcome, transformation.

For the next hour or so, Milt opened up to us, telling us of his experiences at sea. Of typhoons off Okinawa during World War II, to salvage dives off of Manilla after the war, to his early days as a charter skipper, when he relied on nothing more than a stop watch and compass for navigation.

“In all that time, I realized that I’d found my calling, found what I did best, and what I truly enjoyed. And that’s being out here” he emphasized, sweeping his arm in an arc across the horizon. “Some will tell you that the sea is cruel, that she takes more than she gives, that she takes away your youth and leaves you broken down and decrepit. The truth is, she can be cruel…but only only in the senese that she reveals her secrets to you piecemeal, a little at a time, and only after you’ve put your time in, have gotten over your fears and your cockiness, and have learned to respect her. I’m 57 years old, and I’m still learningg, each and every day I’m out here. And I hope to God that I never stop learnin’. And” he added “I’ll never stop respecting her, ‘cause she’ll do her damnedest to kill you, if you give her half a chance.”

Milt seemed to take a deep breath, as if drawing strength from the salt air, and began consulting the LORAN A, and reconciling its readout against a navigation chart. He plotted our position with a pencil, and called down to Tommy. “Time to get a temperature reading…”

Edited October 7, 2009 by fubar512