With a show of hissing and fluffing, Henry the Swan makes it quite clear that a photographer has ventured too close to his feeding bowl next to the harbormaster’s office. Richard W. Dionne Jr. photos
WESTPORT — The harbormaster post, such as it was, ran a bit more casually back in 1987 when Richie Earle decided to give it a try between jobs.
“The Harbor Advisory Board was looking for someone. It was seven months, part-time kind of laid back so I took an interview” and got the job. “I figured it would just be a year and I’d be on to something else.”
Going on 28 years later, Mr. Earle told the Selectmen recently that he meant to retire August 31— and this time he means it.
Mr. Earle said he’d be happy to help out by staying on as an assistant but needs the extra time for family and other pursuits. The Selectmen were quick to accept his offer.
He still enjoys the work out on the water but at times feels “other parts of the job are outgrowing me. The paperwork piles just get bigger and bigger, computers, emails, state regulations, training — it just starts ratcheting up on you.”
“Helping people out on the water, that’s still the best part. Someone who has run aground, did something silly, got himself in a bit of trouble, trying to get in through the fog …”
Mr. Earle grew up “a little wharf rat” in Westport. His father had done some lobstering and “I was on the water down there at the docks every chance I got.”
He loved fishing, did some sailing in high school at Tabor Academy, but has always preferred motorboats — “I like to get somewhere.”
After school, he and partner Paul Brayton got a 65-foot fishing boat and named it Side Show. “It was always a circus for us out on that boat “— in fact their corporate name became Sea Circus Inc.
A bit later they found a fishing boat floating upside down offshore, salvaged it and bought what was left from the insurance company. They named that addition to their fleet Bearded Lady.
“We did all sorts of fishing — dragging, lobstering, sea scallops, you name it.” He especially enjoyed their days of swordfishing “but that’s pretty much all gone from here now.”
In the late 1970s they launched Atlantic Survival Co. providing survival suits, life rafts — “just about anything to do with survival at sea.”
“We did well with that for awhile, pretty much saturated the market.”
But Mr. Brayton, who had been a carrier pilot, “was getting antsy, wanted to get back to flying.”
They sold their fishing enterprise and later moved on from the survival company as well.
“I was doing yacht deliveries up and down the coast and some other stuff” when the harbormaster opportunity came along.
“I had gotten married so figured I ought to do something. I’ll do the harbormaster thing for a year.”
It was a different era for harbormasters — fewer regulations, less paperwork, considerably less good equipment. And he said it was a challenge to follow in the footsteps of well-regarded men before him — Harry Tripp, Ab Palmer and Bob Sykes.
“You had to make sure nobody plugged up the mooring field, do a few rescues but otherwise I had to start pretty much from zero.
“We didn’t know what moorings were in the river or where, there was no revenue stream … people pretty much dropped moorings where they pleased” without much concern about getting a bill from the town.
They did have a 1976 Tripp Angler harbormaster boat — “we still have that one” — but otherwise “didn’t have crap for equipment.”
Bit by bit, “we tried to make sense of it all.” Moorings fields were mapped, mooring regulations drafted, registration fees and stickers set up. “It was a lot of work.”
They’ve also kept close track of the ever-changing channel and the buoys that mark it and, eight years ago came cause for real celebration.
“We finally got the channel dredged”— it had only been a three decade wait or something, four or five years just of testing.”Some of us began to think think we’d never live to see it.”
“There are lots of big competing interests down here — dune restoration, shellfish, moorings, fishing.”
And there are nautical versions of the issues town police and firefighters deal with.
“We get road rage too, domestic disputes, reckless drivers .. It’s like being a referee sometimes.”
And they get rescues.
With the two river branches, the harbor and the outside, “we’ve got 33 miles of shore to cover and some of it can be pretty tricky.”
The harbormaster is on call around the clock and those late-night calls often mean boat rides into nasty weather.
“In the dark, in the fog it all seems bigger” — he lists the harbor entrance, Gooseberry and Hens and Chickens as especially challenging places.
Even experienced mariners can get in trouble here in fog or big seas —“The entrance has a reputation but aids to navigation and equipment are better now.” Still, “we never cease being amazed by the ways people manage to get themselves into it.”
They’ve tracked down anglers in tiny boats in awful conditions without radio or life jackets, lone windsurfers blown far out into Buzzards Bay. “Often the wife calls up — ‘My husband was supposed to be back at sunset’ — by now it’s after 11.”
He recalls the time a good-sized sailboat making its way along the coast got into trouble in bad September weather off Westport.
“It was a father and son and for whatever reason the boat was moving really slowly — the Coast Guard had been with them for six hours” but wouldn’t risk escorting the sailboat through the harbor entrance breakers.
“It was blowing 40 and we radioed them to aim for our blue light. They were only making a knot and really getting pounded before we could finally get a line on them and start towing them in.”
The ordeal ended well but the two wanted nothing to do with getting back on their boat. “One of them had to change his shorts.”
Others have been less lucky.
Mr. Earle and Fire Department Lt. Dan Ledoux were the first to set out into frigid winds to search for three missing duck hunters on Jan. 7, 2014. Two of the hunters died, a third was rescued by the Coast Guard after several hours on low-lying Cory’s Island.
He guesses that it took them just over 5 minutes to reach the harbormaster boat after getting the call that morning.
“It probably took us another 5 minutes or more to get going,” Mr. Earle said at the time. “Everything was iced up — had to bang ice off the battery.” But the motor started right up — they’d run it for a half hour the day before” just in case. “Being prepared — that’s a big part of it.”
“Sadly by the time we got word it was already too late to save two of the men,” he said.
And it was also too late back in 1996 when two boats set out together from the state ramp (Mr. Earle was out of town for this one). Both made it outside when one got into trouble, the other tried to tow it, and both rolled over. Three youngsters wearing life jackets made it ashore onto the outer beach but three adults perished.
“One reason I stayed as long as I did is that they left me and my office alone — didn’t bug me, kept the politics out of it,” Mr. Earle said. “That’s key for the next harbormaster.”
That and good assistants — he said he’s been blessed by a bunch of great ones, paid and volunteer. His wife has even helped with the paperwork.
Mr. Earle said he also profited from advice offered long ago by his father — never get into an argument with an idiot. Be firm, stick to your guns, but best to listen and treat people well.
His successor will get good mileage out of that approach, he said.
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