Bad news. I returned to Gannet Rock on Tuesday, April 25/95, alone, because I could not find a crew. It was the perfect morning and every able bodied person was out fishing or otherwise unavailable.

After anchoring the boat with 2 anchors, I made it ashore with a third line and secured it by wedging a grapnel in a rock fracture. I then pulled my little row boat onto a flat ledge 2 or 3 feet above the level of the tide. The tide was going down.

On climbing to the top of the rock I realized my Gannet decoys had all disappeared. Later I found 2 plywood cutouts farther to the north-east part of the rock. One was O.K., the other had its bill broken off.

On April 3/95, the decoys had been placed on the the western part of the highest part of the rock, which is about 50 feet above the high water mark. There was a slight breeze and I quickly realized that glueing the decoys with silicone seal would not work because, until it sets, it has about the same adhesive proporties as petroleum jelly, and it would not keep the plywood cutouts upright, even in that light breeze. Luckily (or unluckily), I had also brought 4 tubes of acrylic caulking compound called "Mono" or something like this. It was adhesive enough, right away, and seemed to do the job.

We had our windiest winter storm on April 4 and 5/95. 75 to 80 mph winds from the west. Lobster fishermen in the area lost many traps, and Gannet Rock was covered with ice from sea spray.

The storm washed out the decoys, eventhough they were about 50 ft. above the normal high water mark. Two of the carved cedar decoys had each been fastened with stainles steel screw to a 20lb circular piece if 1/2 inch steel before being glued to the rock; they too were gone.

I reglued the 2 plywood cutouts with silicone seal. Last year I had only used silicone seal and some of the decoys were extremely hard to remove in August. A couple had fallen over, and even those were only feet from where they had been glued. The story is not finished!

When it came time to leave, the tide had gone down a few more feet and when I lowered my rowboat (almost vertical), the stern dug into the water and filled it up. I tried to haul ithe row boat up again to tip it over, but it had become too heavy and the rock was too slippery; I just made it worse and I lost an oar in the process.

Next thing to try was hauling the motor boat to the rock, and I managed to pull the stern of it to the rock. The anchor lines were tight. The motor was tilted up and fastened to the transom by way of a "OMC-SeaDrive" which makes the propeller about 6ft from the transom when the motor is in this tilt-up configuration, as it was.

I hopped onto the propeller hub and into the boat with my backpak. There was still a plastic storage container with tools and caulking compound on the ledge and I had not unfastened the line which was tied to the rock, so I easily jumped back to the rock. I dropped the plastic container into the partly waterfilled rowboat, unfastened the line, and tried to hold the boat as close as I could to the rock. When the time seemed right for me to hop onto the motor, the stern moved sideways in the swell or for some other reason, I lost my balance, and as I was falling in, my arms grabbed onto the transom.

I was wearing a life jacket over a vest of pockets which held among other things, a cellular phone, a pair of binoculars, and a wide angle lens. Luckily, my camera with telephoto lens had beed if the backpak. However, under all this, I was wearing a pair of insulated coveralls and knee-length rubber boots with felt liners. Needless to say, I weighed a ton, eventhough I only got wet up to my waist. I could not come close to pulling myself into the boat but after a few tries, and seconds which seemed like minutes, and getting very tired in the process, I got my right knee caught on a ledge of the "SeaDrive" and I pulled myself in.

Lessons learned:

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West Pubnico
Nova Scotia
B0W 3S0
Canada
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