Setting Day 2023: The Boats Head Out
By The Store Team
There's no morning on PEI quite like Setting Day morning. It's still dark when the trucks start rolling toward the wharf, traps stacked high, engines warming up, thermoses of coffee passed between crews. By sunrise, the boats are heading out of the harbour in a line, and half the community is standing on the shore watching them go. It never gets old.
The North Shore season opened around April 29th this year, and the boats went out the way they always do — loaded down, hopeful, ready for the work ahead. But this year was different, and everyone on the water knew it.
The harbour channel is still a mess from Fiona. The breakwater that protected the entrance was split open by the storm surge last September, and seven months later, it hasn't been repaired. The channel is shallow, clogged with debris, and unpredictable. This spring, more than a dozen boats were stranded outside the harbour during low tides and high winds — unable to get back in safely. Fishermen hit submerged rocks from the broken breakwater. What used to be a routine run in and out of port became something you had to think hard about.
Despite all of that, the boats went out. That's what fishermen do. You prepare as well as you can, you watch the weather and the tides, and you go. The season doesn't wait for harbour repairs or federal tenders. The lobster are out there and the families that depend on this fishery need to be out there too.
On our end, we had the store stocked and ready well before the season opened. Rope, marine hardware, fasteners, fuel cans, rubber gloves, rain gear — the full list. We know what Setting Day prep looks like because we've been part of it for decades. If something breaks on the boat or in the shed, you need the part today, not next week. That's what we're here for.
Setting Day is about more than lobster. It's the heartbeat of this coast. It means the harbour is alive again after a long winter. It means money flowing back into families and businesses. It means the restaurants will have fresh catch, the wharves will be busy, and the community will have that energy it gets when the season is on.
To every crew that headed out this spring — stay safe, fish well, and we'll see you at the wharf.