10:07 am Daily Log
It was hot today and a frontal passage was predicted for later in the afternoon. I had the boat fueled up and loaded with all the necessary equipment for clamming. Stephen was riding with me today because he was waiting on a fuel pump so that he could fix his engine. I felt bad for him and Shawn because they just had work done on their engine, but when they got it back from the guy the battery was dead and the fuel pump inlet hose piece had broken. Anyway, I like working with Stephen. With two of us it makes all of the tasks necessary to load, unload, and process the shellfish easier.
So Stephen and I towed the boat to the landing and we were getting ready to put in when we ran into the other clammers; their boats were already in the water and they were eager to get out there. King Saul, Sarge, and Mary have been clamming forever, basically. When I first started working on the creek the owner of the fish-house told me that there was a guy in Awendaw that always got 4 bags a day; he was twice my age and could dig 4 times as much as me at that time…so King Saul became a sort of motivator for me. When I would have a bag or two and the tide was rising, running me off the bank, I would think how King Saul was going to beat me if I didn’t hustle. This thought often pushed me to get more than four bags when earlier in the day it felt like I would never even get more than two. Sarge and Mary are the same way; they would consistently get a minimum of four bags, which is 1000 clams (250 clams per bag).
So, at the landing, King Saul and Sarge were shouting to us, “Where are the clams today?” and Stephen yelled back, “We’ll just follow you, wherever you go!” King Saul and Sarge laughed and said, “We’re following you, so you can show us your best spots.” Which is kind of a joke because they know all the best spots so we pulled out the charts and King Saul and Sarge came over to the boat to look at them. King Saul put his finger on the chart pointing to a creek that cuts over to the Bull’s Bay and said “Go down this creek and take a left when you hit the bay. There’s clams all up and down this bank.” This information was as good as gold to me, and I would follow them every day because they know; King Saul, Sarge, and Mary, they know where the clams are. So it was decided and we started to back the boat down the ramp.
Stephen ‘threw me in’ which basically means that I was in the boat, he was backing the truck down, and the boat was not hooked to the trailer so when he slammed on the brakes the boat would go skidding off the trailer into the water. This method takes a few things for granted, for one, the engine will start, and for another, the plugs are all in. So the boat floated off the trailer and the engine started and the plugs were in so Stephen pulled the truck up and parked it. When he came back to the ramp to get in and go I put the engine in reverse and kind of leaned backwards in anticipation of moving in that direction; however, the boat actually went forwards and rammed into the concrete landing. Pretty funny. So, I put it in neutral, but the propeller was still spinning indicating that the engine was still in gear. What? I looked down at the shifter cable and realized that it had broken and the engine was stuck in forward gear. Thunder started rumbling in the distance. There was no way we could go like this.
King Saul, Sarge, and Mary waited no longer, and they sped off down the creek to dig their clams. Stephen backed the truck down again and we loaded the boat up and took it back to the yard to start fixing the cable. Thirty dollars and four hours later and I’ve got a new shifter cable; now all I have to do is put the cable back on and the throttle control back together and we’re good to go. By the way, I’m sure they got their four bags; I actually heard that one of the others, Lamar, got eight bags…Opening Day!