Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
These days I lay claim to being my Dad’s best fishing buddy and boating pal. Before I came along, however, those titles belonged to someone else. That someone else was a gentleman who was known simply as “Sailboat Pete.”. He was about twenty five years older than my father. They met in a boatyard. It’s kind of weird to think of a guy in his mid-twenties being running buddies with a dude in his fifties, but that was the case. Over the years my Dad and Pete had many adventures.
In the boating world, power boaters and sail boaters are the equivalent of the Hatfields and McCoys. Derogatory terms like “rag hangers” are thrown around with rebukes of “stink pots” thrown back. And those are just the examples that are fit to print in this family friendly publication! As his nickname indicates, Pete was a sailboater. He earned his nickname by building several trimaran sailboats from scratch in his backyard. The biggest was right at 40-feet long and 27-feet wide. Old Sailboat Pete was ahead of his time when it came to boatbuilding.
He was “cold molding” the hulls on his boats by soaking strips of plywood in West System epoxy well before the trend took off in North Carolina. Of course, my father was, and is, a diehard power boat guy. I guess the love of boating overcame the difference in boating philosophies between the two of them because from the time they met up until the early 1990s, Pete and my Dad were frequently side by side, whether it was on the water or on land.
Shark fishing was relatively unknown prior to the release of the movie Jaws in 1975. Right about the time that movie came out, Dad and Pete were learning to tangle with sand tiger sharks in the Delaware Bay. Of course, after the movie made it the “in thing” to do, Dad and Pete had to get better at it.
Their system was pretty simple. Anchor up. Catch whatever little fish were biting, which usually consisted of weakfish (we call them sea trout around here), snapper blues, flounder or small sand sharks. Once there was a pail full of little fish cut and mashed up into chum that Pete would ladle over the side. Whatever Dad was able to catch next was rigged as a live bait by threading piano wire leader through the fish’s mouth and out of it’s butt and then twisting a hook on to the end. The still squirming fish kabob was dropped down to the bottom while everyone else kept fishing to keep the chum and bait supply fresh. Dad tells me that it became clear when the bigger predators showed up because the little fish would scatter away and stop biting.
Once one of the big sand tigers was hooked-up it would be fought up to the boat, at which time Dad would do the work on the leader and Pete would hit the fish with the gaff. In the beginning, this was a regular straight gaff with a nylon rope tied to it. Later on it became a small flying gaff with a six-inch hook. No matter what gaff was used the end result was Pete holding on to a couple hundred pounds of angry shark tethered to a length of rope while Dad would release the leader and get his gun to dispatch the shark.
One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that Pete was a bit of a klutz. On more than one occasion Dad had to rescue Pete from the rope before he could put the shark out of its misery!
Come to think of it, Dad had to rescue Pete several times over the years. More often than not Pete would end up in his predicaments because of Dad, so I guess it was only fair. There was the time that Pete had to get rushed to the hospital after he broke his arm while tying up the boat. Dad told him that they only had one shot at the slip they were in because of the strong tidal current and winds. “Make it count Pete! Don’t miss the piling with that rope!” Dad said. Well, Pete made it count alright. He took a flying leap off the bow of the boat about twenty-feet from the dock... with a fifteen-foot rope. When the rope came tight, Pete was spun around and ended up breaking his arm (and maybe a couple of ribs) when he landed on the dock. I don’t remember being there, but Mom said she had to hush her young son when I asked if Uncle Pete was dead as he was writhing in pain on the dock.
Or there was the time that Dad rigged Pete in a makeshift harness and had him climb up an extension ladder to cut a branch off of a huge oak tree in our back yard. Dad had just bought a new chainsaw and he was worried Pete might drop it so he rigged a safety rope to it as well. Up the ladder Pete went with Dad holding two safety lines, one on Pete and one on the saw. Everything went well until the eighteen-foot long, foot and a half thick branch fell and took out the ladder on its second bounce. That left Pete and the saw swinging on separate ropes while my Dad tried to keep them both from falling to their demise. Mom was there to help, but she was too busy looking for a camera instead of getting the ladder back up to the tree. I think Pete only ended up with bruised ribs from that one. The saw is still in Dad’s garage.
Pete moved to Lower Matecumbe in the Florida Keys in the late 80s to live on the last sailboat he built. Dad was keeping the “Last Call” in Islamorada or Key Largo during the winter months back then so he would get to see his buddy whenever he flew down to fish. Pete had bartered a free slip for his services as marina handy man in one of the marinas. He used to ride his bicycle all over the Keys when he wasn’t working. A few years after that, Pete sold his sailboat and moved north to Palm City for some land based living. We only heard from him from time to time when he wrote a letter or sent a Christmas card. And after a few years we didn’t hear much from him at all.
A couple of years ago, fresh out of the blue, Pete called Dad. Turns out he was living in an assisted living facility in Cape May. He was having problems with his TV and asked if we could come up and give him a hand fixing it. Dad and I hopped on the ferry and went to see him. It was obvious after we got there that Pete had engineered his problems with the TV to give him a reason for us to come up. His small efficiency room was filled with boating memories. Pictures of his trimarans were on the walls. He had made papier mache miniatures of his old boats as well as many others. They were little works of art. We had a wonderful afternoon reminiscing about water that had passed under us and our times together on different boats (Pete taught a certain little deckhand the game of “see who could keep quiet the longest” early on in our friendship…). Pete even mentioned how much he hated getting tangled up with sharks. Dad and I both were sad when it was time to leave.
Shortly after that visit Mom received a letter from Pete saying that he tried to take the bus to the ferry to come see us but he couldn’t complete the trip. A few months later his daughter moved him out to Arizona to take care of him. Pete was tired of “all these old women” following him around the assisted living building.
Pete’s daughter called Dad this spring to let him know that hospice had been brought in to care for her father. He passed away at the end of March. Sailboat Pete was 97. As I write this I wonder whatever became of his little papier mache boats. I would like to set one afloat through a chum slick while sharking this year in his honor and the others I would display on my mantle. I think I will write his daughter and ask if they are still around somewhere and see if I can have at least one.
Capt Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” which is docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center, owner of Pettolina Marine Surveying, Inc. and multi-term President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
