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Boats, Planes, and Mud

Mud season almost makes it impossible to leave Matinicus Island

    The fishermen who live on Matinicus come and go from this island aboard their own boats, and although they have hefty fuel bills and plenty of worries when the weather turns dangerous and the storms push a good mooring chain to its limits, they do have a certain degree of freedom.

    Those of us who do not own a boat live with somewhat less flexibility.

    There are enough days out here when even the larger lobster boats shouldn't try the trip to the mainland, and occasionally there is no way on or off the island, or at least no way unless it's life-or-death. Hurricanes, severe northeast gales, and weather events like the so-called “Patriot's Day storm” last year can make crossing Penobscot Bay idiotic if not impossible.

    “Wait a minute!” I can imagine what some of my readers are thinking right now. “What do you mean, impossible? What if there's an emergency?”

    Sorry, even if it's an emergency, there might be occasions when transport is not an option. LifeFlight will come when they can, but they have to see to land the chopper; the Coast Guard will come if it can get into the harbor, and private boats manned by expert captains who grew up on these waters will go out and do search and rescue if they think they have a chance. Still, no guarantees (and no, there is no doctor here either, but you probably knew that.)

    About now, a bunch of you are thinking “Hold on, how can anybody who lives on an island not own a boat? That is entirely counter-intuitive. Why pay for expensive trips by air when you could just take your own boat? Don't you feel trapped if you don't have your own transportation?”

    I get that a lot.

    A boat big enough to safely make the trip in the winter, suitable to carry toddlers, grandmothers, loads of groceries and everything else, outfitted with radar for the ubiquitous summer fog, plus annual maintenance and moorings in two harbors and skiffs and all that expensive fuel cannot be supported as a means of occasional transportation. If you are not working it, if you are not fishing, or unless you are independently wealthy, a boat simply costs too much.

    It's simple. (Sorry, couldn't resist that one.) That isn't what I meant to talk about anyway.

    I was planning on telling you about the mud.

    A short while ago five teenagers and I were endeavoring to get off Matinicus. Three of us had airplane tickets to the southwest, our hiking boots all greased up and ready; we more or less had to get off the island. The atmospheric weather was perfect...sunshine, minimal wind...but the “mud season” reality of another 45-degree afternoon was taking its toll on the island's gravel airstrip. By the way, before you suggest “the obvious” and mutter something about paving the airstrip...well, I won't get all lathered up right now. Just understand that if it was that easy, we'd have thought of it too. At any rate, our pilot called and asked the six of us to drop everything an hour before our scheduled flight and scramble to the airstrip, and start this exodus right away, because the strip was rapidly disintegrating in the warmth.

    The pilot decided that only two passengers at a time would fly, because of the relative weight in the plane and length of usable airstrip. (A hard, dry airstrip, even one as short as ours, can accommodate a plane with four people plus freight, but that wouldn't be happening now.)

    The last one of our party, still obligated to work on the island, would be taking his chances with the next day's weather, and it wasn't looking good. He was considering unusual options for getting off "the rock” if the flying service couldn't fly.

    A common word in our peculiar local vocabulary is “flyable.” “Flyable” means conditions are safe for a small aircraft to land and take off on a 1500-foot gravel airstrip; that means no problems with wind speed and direction, gusts, ice or mud on the strip, fog or precipitation interfering with visibility, or icing conditions aloft. We don’t say the  airplane is flyable, we say “it” is flyable (linguistically akin to “IT is raining.”) “It” was, that next morning, very, very briefly “flyable.”

Eva Murray has been known to fly off Matinicus — but never off the handle at forces of nature, pilots or captains; she has been known to take offense at those who think life in Matinicus is "simple."