Goin' Buryin' on Little Cranberry Island

My father was a UCC minister. When I was a child, we lived in Maine on Mount Desert Island, where he was the minister of two small churches, one on each side of the harbor. Back then, the denomination was known as Congregational, which later became the United Church of Christ.
My father has a unique distinction, among ministers, of having helped to dig the grave for a funeral he officiated. Here's the story.
About 50 years ago, my father got a call asking him to do a funeral on Little Cranberry Island. The deceased had been from there, had moved away years ago, and had just passed away. The family were all buried on the island, so the funeral was planned for there.
Little Cranberry Island is about a mile long and lies just off Mount Desert Island. There are about 50 year around residents, living in the town of Isleford.
My father related meeting the hearse and one of the relatives at the town dock in Southwest Harbor. Another relative was there with his lobster boat to transport the casket to Little Cranberry (the bait had been swept up to make the boat more presentable). The grave digger joined them, dropping his tools into the boat.
After the short trip, the boat arrived at the Isleford Town Dock. The casket was loaded into the back of a pickup truck, which drove away. No one was left to direct my father, so he started walking around the tiny community, looking for the cemetery. Little Cranberry has several small cemeteries, with some graves dating back to the 1700's. My father spotted the pickup truck down the street, and joined the grave digger and one of the relatives.
Apparently, the grave digger was also the town drunk, and had a bottle with him, so progress on digging the grave was a bit slow. In the meantime, other relatives joined the group. One of them reported that a huge storm was approaching (the sky was already changing) and the seas were going to be extremely rough. One of the old salts offered the opinion that, if the visitors didn't get off the island within an hour or two, they might be marooned on the island for a couple of days.
The relative who had come over with my father took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work with the grave digger. My father said he looked at the sky, and decided to join them. The grave was quickly finished, and the relatives gathered for one of the shorter funerals in recent memory. The deceased was reportedly "planted good and proper", and my father and the others were able to return on the lobster boat to Southwest Harbor in time.