Periwinklers save boy stranded by tide

One Grand Manan family had extra reason to celebrate Thanksgiving weekend, thanks to the quick action of some periwinkle pickers early on the morning of October 8.
Larry Marshall and Berton Farnham were out on Buttermilk Ledge, just outside Woodwards Cove, about 45 minutes before daylight. Marshall saw two lights on the ledge, and thinking it was other periwinklers with a boat, he stayed away, not wanting to overstep someone else's area. He says the ledge is as big as a football field, accessible about 50 minutes before low water, and this gives pickers at best two and a half hours to work. Toward the end of that time most will work on the inland side, keeping an eye on the tide. Because of its contour, one cannot see across the ledge from each side. Marshall admits to staying a bit too long, and when he returned to shore, the tide was over the top of his boots. He says, "Once it's past your knees, the current is very strong."
As they were getting ready to leave, it was Farnham who thought he heard someone calling for help. He was wearing headphones, and the music had just stopped as he reached the truck. "He said, 'I'm sure I heard someone calling,'" Marshall recalls. "I figured I'd better go check." Having dismissed the lights he'd seen earlier as older men in a boat, he'd forgotten about them. The men were shocked to see an 11‑year‑old boy whom they knew, now trapped by the tide, waving and calling. He had been periwinkling with his brother, who had left earlier. "I knew he was in a predicament," Marshall says. "I started to panic; I had to find someone with a boat."
As he was thinking about who he could call, he found Wayne Green nearby. Green lives near the seawall and was sitting outside with his cat when Marshall came by after failing to get in touch with someone else. Green's skiff was inside the breakwater, an area that drains at low tide, so they would have to wait for enough water to use it. He got his binoculars and could see the youngster. Marshall went back and shouted across to him that he was in no danger now, to just carry on picking periwinkles and move up the ledge. He said the boy had a phone and had previously tried to call "a few people" for help.
"It's like a river," Marshall says of the current between the ledge and shore, and both agree it could have been challenging to swim. Marshall says he would have left because he hadn't heard anything; it was a lucky chance, perhaps aided by the wind, that Farnham did because they were some 1,500 feet away by then.
When the water was deep enough -- about three feet -- Green took the boat across the 30‑foot stretch and picked up the boy and his sack of periwinkles. Modest, he says, "It really wasn't much on my part. There was lots of ledge left by the time I got there." He says it only took 15 minutes and that he didn't give it much thought afterward because everything went so smoothly. The weather was fine, and "there wasn't a lot of time for people to worry. When there's a happy ending you don't think it's an important story," he says. "It could have been intense, but it was very calm. I'm no hero; I just happened to be there. All the dots connected."
The boy's family asked that he not be identified. His grandmother says he and his brother picked periwinkles all summer without incident. Green says, "You can't be too hard on an 11‑year‑old going periwinkling to make a dollar. Most kids want to play video games." He says the boy was out again the next day. "Life's a learning curve. It was a great way to learn about tides." He reflects that incidents that could have been tragedies don't stick in people's minds when everything goes well and no lives are lost. He adds, "I've done it, even at my age," overstaying, and his advice to the boy -- and anyone else -- is to be certain of tide times and to pick toward shore, putting a sack or some other marker near the waterline and keeping an eye on it.
Marshall says people like Buttermilk Ledge because the periwinkles are a little bigger and more plentiful there. However, he too stresses the importance of watching the tide and knowing what time to leave. He heard someone had to swim back this year. "You can still pick elsewhere," he says. "There's always another tide tomorrow. [The periwinkles] aren't going to run away." While pickers do spread out to give each other room, he says they will occasionally warn one another to get off a ledge when it's time to go. He now has a boat, which will allow him four hours' picking time, with a "five-minute drive across the brook" and fewer worries.
He is thankful for the course of events and the people who helped. "It's a good story that's not bad news," he says, "and it's Thanksgiving weekend." He adds, "If people are told the story, they might be more alert and not overstay. Fifteen minutes could be too late." He derives 75% of his income from periwinkling and says he's picked "every tide" some months and that the ledge can be spooky at 1 a.m., with strange little noises that have him peering around in the dark. But, he adds that "it's not wise to be alone on the beach" at any time without a phone, in case of accident. "This is a wake-up call for me," he says. "I've got to get a watch."