A Beached Boat
Wednesday, July 16, 2015
Decatur Island, Washington
The water looked calm and beautiful today! After a slow morning,
we loaded up the crab rings into Ramy’s 1989 Tahoe that she let us borrow and
drove down to the boat for opening day of Crab season. We were so excited! As
we unloaded the rings and started walking down the dock, Jeff said, “Amy,
should I be seeing the boat?” I looked up and started scanning the buoys. No
boat! I started to panic! My knot must not have been good enough! I hoped maybe
someone had moved it to the dock but I scanned all the boats tied up at the
dock and ours was not one of them. My heart sunk and I had a pit in my stomach.
I had lost our rented boat! Within a minute, Jeff spotted it beached about 300
yards down. A tiny dot on the long mud flats. It was low tide and our boat was
a good 150 yards in from the water, resting on a small rock in the gravely
mudflats. I was still sick about it! I started to cry as we made our way across
the mudflats to see the damage. I just felt like I couldn’t do anything right!
I’m always trying to have these “adventures” but maybe I just go too far! Jeff
was kind and reassuring but I felt terrible.
When we finally got out to the boat, the buoy was still tied
on! The prop was up and undamaged and my knot was sound! It hadn’t come untied,
the buoy had failed! Even though the situation was still the same, I felt so
much better knowing it wasn’t my fault. The bolt on the shackle that held the
buoy onto the concrete anchor at the bottom of the line had come unhooked and
the buoy and the boat had floated away. Luckily the prevailing winds were
towards the island and our boat had been largely undamaged. We called the
caretakers (Ramy and Leo) and the arrived within minutes with their friend, Ed,
who had set the buoy. Ed let loose a string of curse words and apologized
profusely. He said he had just set that buoy 3 weeks earlier and must have not
secured the wire through the bolt right. They helped us lift up the boat and
move the rock it was resting on so it could sit evenly on the mud until the
tide came back in. We pumped the water out of the boat and tested the battery.
Everything seemed okay, much to everyone’s relief! Now it was just time to wait
for the tide. We set the anchor so it wouldn’t float away when the tide came in
and Ed offered to take us out in his boat to set our crab pots.
Jeff and the little boys set our pots while Calvin and the
girls and I fished from the dock and enjoyed the sunshine. Ed taught Jeff and
the boys all about how to set the crab rings and how to tell which crabs you
can keep and which ones you can’t (female, soft shell, too small). We learned a
lot of stuff we didn’t know!
Jeff and I went back a few hours later to retrieve the boat.
It was floating and the anchor was secure. We pushed it out far enough so we
wouldn’t touch any rocks and it started right up. We tooled around the bay a
little just to make sure it was sound and then we ran back to get the kids to
help us with the crab pots. Crabbing is actually pretty fun. It does get the
boat pretty dirty but the kids loved pulling up the pots, hoping there were
crabs. Isaac would cross his fingers, arms, legs and even his eyes to help us
be lucky. We were only skunked twice. Every other time there were at least a
few crabs in our pot, but none were keepers. Ed was checking his pots at the
same time and he caught 2 huge crabs that he gave to us! We told him not to but
he insisted. I’m sure he was still feeling a little bad about his buoy failing
and our boat getting beached. We had a beautiful crab dinner: garlic bread with
homemade thousand island dressing, bacon and loaded with crab. It was seriously
amazing!!
Comments
Post a Comment