Harbormaster Stuart Smith To Retire In March

CHATHAM – In his 39 years with the town, Harbormaster Stuart Smith has seen the ebb and flow of countless tides, town administrations and passionate debates about Chatham’s waterways. When he retires in March, he’s looking forward to ticking off items on life’s long to-do list, items postponed by the round-the-clock demands of the job.

Smith started working for the highway department in 1985, and soon took over as wharfinger from Walter Young, a salty former fisherman who kept a revolver in his desk drawer. (“I said, Walter, when you leave, make sure that goes with you,” Smith quipped.) At the time, the wharfinger and harbormaster were in separate town departments, and then-Town Manager Tom Groux proposed combining them. Smith didn’t care about the merger, since he didn’t intend to stay working for the town as an assistant harbormaster.

“I said, this is not my long-term plan. Boy, did I eat those words,” Smith said. Groux put it this way: if he wanted to keep his job, Smith would become the harbormaster.

He had the benefit of a number of mentors. His predecessor, Peter Ford, taught him the importance of being closely tied with the community, and Coast Guard Station Chatham Chief Jack Downey demonstrated the value of having a good sense of humor. “And honestly, I learned a lot of the hands-on waterways work from commercial fishermen,” Smith said.

Peering out through the window of the wharfinger’s office, Smith looks over the newly renovated fish pier, with its new bulkhead, parking lot and stairway improvements and observation deck. Seeing that, and several other key waterways projects, to completion was one of his goals before retirement. He was eligible to retire last year, in fact, but wanted to provide time for a transition to new leadership. While the department is without a wharfinger, it has a strong deputy harbormaster in Jason Holm, Smith said. While the police and fire departments chose their new chiefs from within the ranks, it is possible that Town Manager Jill Goldsmith will open the harbormaster position to outside applicants. Smith said he doesn’t oppose an open application process, but he’s also confident Holm has the unique skill set that will make him the right person to take over.

One part of the job is having an intimate knowledge of the town’s ever-changing waterways. Looking out at North Beach Island, Smith shakes his head.

“One of my biggest challenges, and it certainly will be the next person’s, are these waterways. They’re just not normal,” he said. Keeping navigational channels clear has been part of his work and practically a full-time job for Coastal Resources Director Ted Keon, Smith noted. New Natural Resources Director Greg Berman will be a strong leader in the years ahead and is well versed in issues of erosion and shoaling, he said.

Another part of being a harbormaster involves keeping a level head and an open mind when dealing with the public. “It’s a lot of different interests,” Smith said. From commercial fishermen to beachcombers, kayakers to yacht owners, a harbormaster’s constituents are all passionate about their needs. “There’s a lot of competing interests with a very finite resource.” Over the years, that has led to a number of heated arguments. “Most of it was unnecessary, but nonetheless, a little bloodletting, and people got through it,” Smith said. Managing moorings is a key challenge. “When you say no, people are shocked. They don’t take ‘no’ well,” he said. Much of his job is diplomacy, he noted.

With Coast Guard Station Chatham abdicating its traditional role of surf rescues, the town is forced to enhance its search and rescue capabilities, and voters have approved budget increases that reflect this need. The Coast Guard downgraded the station from a surf station to a heavy weather station and has since downgraded it again, Smith said. The good news is that the station survived a recent service-wide survey, “and Station Chatham was not closed or made a seasonal station. I don’t know if that would have been the same outcome had we not protested strongly on the surf and heavy weather designations,” he said. Smith predicted a time when the Coast Guard permanently removes its boats from Chatham Harbor and operates only from Stage Harbor. “I think they’d do it today if they could,” he said.

What will the future bring for the waterways themselves? Change, Smith replied simply. North Beach Island is forecast to wash away toward the mainland, further choking Chatham Harbor with sand. “So we’ll be quite exposed here, more than we are now,” he said. “It comes and goes,” as in the case of Lighthouse Beach. “That’s a tranquil body of water. Ten years ago, it was a nightmare. We lost people there,” he said.

The year-round commercial fishing fleet has also changed dramatically since Smith started. “There’s people that still make their living predominantly from fishing, but there’s a lot that just augment fishing with being an electrician or a plumber or a builder. Whereas, when I started, that’s what they did — that was their job, year-round.” Can Smith envision a time when the Chatham fleet is back to its previous glory? “That certainly is the goal when trying to rebuild the fish stocks. Maybe by that time we’ll be catching southern fish because the waters are so much warmer. We see evidence of that,” he said.

Smith says he has few regrets about his time as harbormaster, but if he had it to do again, he might have taken the job later in life, when he was 40 or 50 instead of 27. “It’s a really rewarding job. I loved it,” he said. “But you sacrifice a lot. You’re on the water, around the water or responding to the water every day,” he said. “If you have young kids and you’ve got soccer...none of that’s happening,” he said.

So has he had enough of the waterfront? Smith laughs. In his retirement, he and wife Julie (the town clerk, who will retire in a few years) will spend time boating. Smith is selling his Bertram cabin cruiser and is in the process of buying something a bit more fuel-efficient for a trip on the Great Loop, going north to the St. Lawrence Seaway, west to the Mississippi River, south to the Gulf of Mexico and back up the East Coast.

“I’m psyched,” he said.