Date - September 23, 1997 - September 28, 1997 (five days)

Crew list:

Don Boyd (your correspondent)

Peter Hallberg (Scurvy Dog #2 "The fishes friend")

Miles traveled - 75 (aprox)

Engine hours - 8

Sailing hours -10

Money spent:

Food / beer / ice / snacks on board - $30.00

Diesel / gas / marina fees / lock fees - $ 0.00

Charts / guides / port fees / traps - $ 10.00

Eating out / drinking out / touring - $15.00

Aprox. total this leg - $55.00

There are two ways to get free crabs, the big local Chesapeake Bay specialty:

- Catch them yourself with a dip net or trap

- Look for spare change in telephone booths and collect enough money to score some at the local fish shop

The fastest way is of course looking for loose change, as it normally works out to one hour per crab. The sporting way of course is to spend all day to get two or three using a dip net. The method is simple. You use a dip net to scoop up crabs, who hang onto pilings and docks, talking to one another about baseball and hockey scores. Timing is important, because if the crab is not busy arguing with another crab, he may notice you and your dip net and swim away before you catch the bugger.

As you have likely guessed, this was more often the case for me. I'd sneak up on a nice little blue crab and before I knew it he'd have spotted my net and "whoosh!" he'd be gone!

The other problem was that after spending the better part of an afternoon collecting three crabs, I had to convince Scurvy Dog #2, the friend of all fishes (which apparently include shell fish), that once I'd brought the crabs back, that I was only giving them a nice warm bath when in fact I planned to boil the ugly little tikes, with a mixture of water, vinegar and Old Bay seasoning.

I don't have to tell you how upset Scurvy Dog #2 was when instead of freshly washed crabs, dinner appeared. There was a lot of explaining to do when once again the Crew Whacker appeared in #2's hands and I had to convince him that the crabs were just sleeping.

In the end I invested $ 8.50 in a little crab trap, and an additional $ .42 worth of chicken thighs to use as bait and while tied up at the Solomon Island Yacht Club caught about one crab every ten minutes! More than enough for me and Scurvy Dog #2 in under two hours! (I told Fish Boy that they were a locally grown tomato and not crabs...he rather enjoyed them and I fear will waste a lot of time looking for "Maryland Spiky Reds" in the vegetable department when he gets home).

We cruised around some of the area staying at many interesting little places like, Tilghman, Choptank, San Domingo....hey I just realized that most of the names of places on Chesapeake Bay are Klingon!!!

"Mr. Warf!" Picard shouted, "Take these prisoners back to their home world and to the Klingon cities of Choptank, Patuxent, Potomac and Tred Avon!"

"But Captain," Warf responds, ""Choptank" is illegal on the home world, even between consenting Klingons of legal age!"

Anyway, we anchored out in several excellent places and caught up on our beer drinking...I mean, boat maintenance. Scurvy Dog #3 is about to arrive from Washington DC, where his sister was tricked into driving him to Solomon's and our destination for Sunday September 28th.

Till the next installment!

 

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