July 3, 2005

As of now, we have had an entire week of "the gray that made Seattle famous":  Every day we wake up to lots of gray low-level clouds.  Cool temperatures with daily highs being in the low and middle sixties.  Wind, just a zephyr, casts cat paws across the water.  Rain is a constant threat, but the reality is moisture comes only as a mist, stopping and starting without notice.  Obviously, the mountains are hidden.  But in spite of all this, the days are quite pleasant and very low keyed. Saturday, shortly after noon, it all changed.  A glory hole opened with us in the middle.

We could see clouds in all directions, but here it was sunny and bright.  Everybody suffers from collective amnesia, forgetting how bad it was and enjoying the moment.  People who were huddled in their homes suddenly are compelled to get outside, open their windows and "do things".  The whole spirit of people changes.

The Seattle area is a paradox.  It has a very high suicide rate because of the constant "gray days" and yet Seattle has the highest skin cancer rate in the nation.

The start to my summer job at the golf course was to be Friday, but they called to tell me of a scheduling error and asked me to delay ?til Monday the 4th.

Friday turned out to be a pretty exciting day anyway.  It was the opening day of crab season.  For the last couple of weeks we have been soliciting opinions on crabbing from the locals.  Everyone has strong opinions and they are often contradictory.  The Internet suggested that the best time to catch crab is at slack tide (high tide) and that the trap need only be down for a couple of hours.  The local consensus on bait suggests that turkey legs are best.  Just throw a leg in the trap and you?re all set.  Dissenters suggest fish parts, chicken parts (backs and necks), or cat food.  Some like fresh clean meat while others prefer rotted and spoiled.

Photo on left is Jerry heading out to set the crab pots.  Photo on right is the pile of logs that went for a ride on the boat track.

High tide on Friday afternoon was 3:30 so Jerry baited both traps with chicken wings and headed out to deep water (30 feet deep) and dumped the traps at a likely looking spot.  Each crab trap has to be marked by a red (one end red) and white buoy six inches in diameter and about twelve inches long.

Meanwhile, we noticed that most of the houses along the beach were showing signs of life.  All the weekenders were showing up and the families and friends of the permanent residents were arriving.  Only a few traps had been placed before ours, but after ours the whole bay became littered with crab trap buoys.

About 5:30 I rowed out to pull our traps.  The first trap had only one crab, a female that had to be thrown back.  Then I noticed that the trap had malfunctioned and the little door was jammed open.  The second trap yielded four crabs:  two four inchers, one large female,  and one lone keeper.  All the crabs were Dungeness and must be male and at least 6 and 1/8 inches across the back to be kept.

Since the bait on the first trap was still good, I reset it.  I did unjam the door.  And brought the one crab to shore in the trap because I didn't bring a transport container.  Nancy met me at the beach, took the crab, and I rowed out to reset the second trap.  We then left the traps out for twenty-four hours.

Saturday afternoon we pulled the traps and were very happy with four keepers out of a total of 9 in the two traps.  The limit is five.  Nancy cooked the crabs for a "crab feed" on Sunday as Sheila and Jay and the two girls were coming to visit for the day.  You can only catch crab on Wednesday through Saturday, so the crab adventure is on hold 'til next week.

We have been cutting and removing some of the decaying logs from our beach.  The last had been cut and the neighbor to the south offered to let us use his rail car to get them to the water.  I thought that with Jay here, loading the logs on the train car would be easy.  Problem was that Saturday afternoon the car derailed.  So first thing Sunday morning the neighbor, Bob, and I had to re-rail the cart.  Fortunately, I had brought a six-ton hydraulic jack (everybody takes a six-ton jack with them on vacation ? right?) and soon the train was functional.  In the early afternoon Jay and I loaded up the cart ? piece of cake.  And launched the cut logs into the bay.  The wind and the incoming tide conspired to bring them right back onto the beach ? three houses down.  The same wind/tide refused to let them be pushed off again, so that?s a problem for another day.  The tides have a way of dealing with problems like that.

Meanwhile, Sheila's daughters, Katie and Allie had become fast friends with the neighbor's granddaughters.  The girls had invented dozens of games and diversions many of them having to do with water; mixing water with sand to make pies; running through the sprinklers; and washing things, etc.  But their favorite, by far, was all crowding into the tiny plastic wading pool.

Sheila's girls are the blondes.

At dinner we all sat down to cracking and eating the crabs.  By eight o'clock the little girls were so tired that the promise of fireworks was not enough to keep them awake and Sheila and Jay packed them off to home.  They were due to march in a Fourth of July parade

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