Maiden Voyage! Crabbing trip, Netarts bay, 11-9-14

We started early in the morning so we would arrive a little before deep low tide.  We wanted to give time to fuss with equipment, to make relations with this motor we'd never used, and still be able to crab the incoming and slack tide.  High slack looked to be around 1:30 pm.  

Getting the boat off and set up was relatively easy.  We did have to figure out how to get the motor on at the dock, but it wasn't too onerous.



Three Danielson's and two rings plus gear.  There is room for one more trap since we have 2 anglers in the boat, and I hope to get one of the new ring/slip type.

Now that we're back from the trip, we plan on paring down the gear and adding clip-on locations so we can bungee cord buckets and boxes to the sides of the boat.

 We didn't take pictures during the trip because it was wet as hell and we don't own underwater cameras.  After very few false starts we got the motor running, wiggled around to figure how how to steer it and went off.  The morning was drizzly, but do-able when we first went into the bay.  After a few hours, suddenly the rain was sideways and there were little 1-2' rollers in the bay.

Things got a little exciting.

We took one or two rollers on the backside and suddenly had a good 15+gallons of water in the boat -- around 4" deep at the back.  During one turn, I saw Hunter's eyes get wide.  Talking later, this was the moment when he saw water slosh OUT of the boat from the inside and we knew we had to get bailing.

Bailing from the back of the boat isn't easy, you have to turn around and slop this bucket around and it can get a little dicey feeling. Regardless, we got back to the dock in one piece and took a bathroom break.  While we were doing that, the weather calmed down as quickly as it ramped up.


As for results, we caught two monster Dungeness, around 8" across the shell.  Look at those beauties.  We also caught 4 more keeper Dungeness and probably 2 dozen Red Rock crabs (which have no size or sex limits, 24 allowed per fisherman per day).  And one Spider crab.

The picture above is just my 1/2 of the haul.

We brought the Landis cooker/canner setup and cooked the crabs right there in the parking lot.  This works out well because by the time all of unloading is done the water's ready to go.


 The only "problem" we had with the motor was that it didn't like to idle and would cut out if you weren't feathering the gas a bit on the low end.  It always started back up, but we wanted to fix that right away.

Below we see the motor in lightly-detergent'd water, idling beautifully after getting the Benson Treatment (tm).

Thank you thank you thank you Paul Grubb for this awesome boat!

Ps:  I forgot to mention that Hunter was armed with a shotgun and versatile shot (both duck and goose) on our first run out into the bay, in case some geese or ducks came around.  Turns out, there were plenty of geese, but they were on the lawns to either side of the boat ramp and unshootable.

A good comment from one of the fellow crabbers along the dock in the morning was "hey, you don't have to shoot 'em, you can just throw them in the bucket."

Tick, tock...

Now we're just waiting on a motor. We hear there's a 4hp Evinrude coming our way via the Puget Sound in about a month. It's difficult to wait, I tell ya.

 As soon as possible after we get that motor, we're hitting the bays for crab. I promise.

Bp

Oh, why not just go crazy again -- bring on the stencils! (2 of 2)

Eventually, I promise, there will be pictures of actual adventures. We are waiting on a motor, you see...

Aaaand, time to flip it over, take a look, and start painting the inside. 1 of 2

Only reasonable at this point to add some ducks...

More fun with stencils (photo credits to Criddle)

Painter will paint

Base coat, stencils, hand work, and multiple pigment layers through the stencil. This is the beginning of something great. All work by HB. I look forward to getting brush in hand to help with the detail work.