“Aw, Shucks, We’re Back at Bayshore!”
After a bit over an hour on the bus and the traditional stop at Wawa, we arrived at the Bayshore Center in Bivalve, NJ. By the time we got there, the rain had stopped, but the wind was picking up. Looking out over the water, you could see the gusts. First, we met Captain Johann and got a tour of the the facilities. Then, we were split up into groups to work on different projects.
The first was filing photos. This group worked in the office, helping to preserve old photographs pertaining to the history of the organization and the schooner AJ Merwald. With gloves on their hands to prevent any damage, they archived photographs dating back multiple decades by arranging them in plastic sleeves by category.
Another group had the task of cleaning the boat belowdecks. Starting with brooms, moving to a vacuum, and then ending with rags and spray bottles, they cleaned floors, bunks, galleys, and more. The boat was filthy, not just because of a whole season of use but because up on deck the crew had sanded off all the old paint, causing the dust to drift downwards. While cleaning, we played music on a speaker and had fun singing along and cleaning together. Though we focused on the work, we still joked, had fun, and learned about the boat from one of the deck hands.
A third group washed life jackets and then cleaned and organized in the museum and woodshop areas. It took about an hour to clean more than 100 life jackets, some of which had gotten moldy, and all of which had to be sprayed and scrubbed. Cleaning the woodshop involved using a big vacuum connected to a central pipe to clean the floors.
After lunch the whole group watched a short documentary about the schooner and the history of the Delaware Bay’s oyster industry. The day ended with a dramatic viewing of what was once the oldest continuously operating fishing vessel in the country and is now a rotten hulk, the oyster boat Cashier, almost entirely underwater at high tide but still roped to one of the docks behind the Bayshore Center.
