Crab N Sail

The family counselor of a friend once said that in his experience, boats are the single best family-centric activity there is.  With that in mind, and a decade of living right next to Puget Sound never having taken advantage of it, we bought Sojourn back in November.

This spring I repowered over the course of a couple of months and, sadly, as I occasionally drug the kids up to the boat while I finished the repower, it did not endear them to the boat.  In fact, to my 7 going on 17 year old, boating and boring are now synonymous. 

I have it in my head that fishing is a fun and patience building experience for kids.  Why? I have no idea. In my experience with fishing, it is aptly named.  I see and know others who actually catch, but I seem to just fish.  So I had a bright idea to take the kids fishing on the boat.  A friend advised me, “just put a piece of hot dog on a hook with a sinker and drift the south shore of Hat Island.  You can’t fail.”  Apparently I can.

Fortunately as we approached July, we also came upon crabbing season, and another opportunity.  On Saturday, I bought all of the gear for two pots.  At the risk of sounding like I know what I’m doing, we are almost ideally situated for crabbing and sailing.  One popular crabbing spot is basically a quarter mile outside of the marina.  My hope is that it will be convenient to toss a couple of pots on the way out whenever we go sailing. 

On Saturday, we had a short afternoon window,  so we motored out to the crabbing area, dropped anchor and pots and just enjoyed the sunshine. We pulled the first pot and got two small crabs.  This was promising.  We pulled the second, which also had two – both over 6-1/4 inches.  One turned out to be a female and the other very tasty! And, I think I’ve started to turn the tide on the perception of our boat. 

Jack and Annie spend hours delighting in the various aspects of the crabbing experience. Annie desperately wanted to keep it for a pet.  Jack got to “help” clean it.  They both spent about an hour trying to muster the courage to pick up the shell.