Word: boatful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Recently, Plaquemines has had a new minority to deal with. An old wooden shrimp boat, billowing black smoke, pulls into an isolated bayou near the mouth of the river. Laughingly pushing his cousin aside, Phuoc Nguyen, 11, grabs the tie line and loops two half hitches around a stake on the bank. Phuoc, who has picked up English in the three years he has been in the U.S., translates for his uncle as a white-haired mechanic explains the problem with the carburetor. "How much we owe you?" asks the boy. The mechanic shakes his head, refusing payment. Like many...
Just up the bay at Gaspee Point, Rhode Islanders each year burn a vessel in effigy to celebrate the burning, in 1772, of the revenue schooner Gaspee, an early warning about Yankee distaste for King and custom's duties. Last year the rusty old fishing boat Dorchester turned up in the bay with six tons of marijuana hidden aboard, then departed leaving a web of mystery, gangland murder and suicide that narcotics agents have yet to unravel. Westward, the old naval air station at Quonset Point is now the sprawling headquarters for oil-drill teams working the Baltimore Canyon...
...water and fell back with a splash we could hear but not see. The glow of the Cyalume marked him 100 yds. to starboard. We could detect only the eerie green light, which now began tearing across the inky water and around our stern. The swordfish was encircling the boat with line. Mann cranked furiously on the reel, trying to take up slack while Peacock revved the engines, and the boat leaped forward...
...makes setting a hook firmly as much a matter of luck as skill. Many a fisherman has struggled for hours with a swordfish, only to have its tender mouth give way and the line come in empty. Still, when conditions are right-a full moon and a fast, nimble boat-swordfishing can pay off. Unlike his billfish cousins, the marlin and sailfish, the swordfish is edible, and a sale at dockside can more than compensate for the expense of a night's sportfishing...
...night lengthened, and still we waited for the big strike. It was time for fish stories. In that genre of hyperbole and pride, swordfish stories are unique: most of them are true. The broadbill is an aggressive fish, to put it mildly. Swordfish have punched holes in boats, Jaws-style, and have even been known to charge in packs when one of them was hooked. As half a dozen fish bore down for the second time on one Miami angler, he called it quits, cut his line and sped away. Another fisherman lost his broadbill when, after a three-hour...