Day 324, Monday May 12th once more on to the ICW
We our underway by 9:30, and Julie does an excellent job of
getting the boat turned around in narrow shallow Creek. We have a 50 mile day ahead of us, part of it
is in narrow creeks/cannels and some through sounds. We are able to hoist the jib in some of the
sounds. We keep our average speed around 8 mph. We have flipped over to status miles since
entering the ICW as all the mile markers are in Statue miles.
Funny how we had quickly adapted to land in Toronto, and
quickly adapt back to water life. Dawson
did comment however he had looked at his “watch” while we were underway. We don’t wear watches while on the boat,
although we do have methods to gauge time.
After only 4 days in Toronto he had picked up the habit again of looking
at his wrist.
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| Crab fisherman handing over some crabs |
About 3:00 we see some crab fisherman waving their arms so
we turn the engine down so we can hear them and Dawson yells across the channel
to ask if they need assistance. Of
course they don’t have a radio which would have made life much easier. Dawson hears the word “gas”, so we turn
around and slowly weave our way into the crab pot infested shallow waters just
off the canal. The young men are
paddling also to get closer to us. One
of them is paddling with what looks like a milk crate. We pull up alongside with plenty of water
under us, and Dawson hands over our gas can which has ony about 2 gallons in
it, but enough to get them to safety hopefully.
They in turn hand over a burlap sack of soft shelled mud crabs. The bag stinks and gushes dirty water on the
deck. The crew member was about 19,
Dawson figured and captain closer to 30, had very strong back country
accents. They said the crab season was
not so good this year. “Not making any
money”.
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| Dawson handing over our gas can |
We head off slowly, creeping our way out of the crab
pots. Julie refused to put the boat in
gear until the crab pot that had been beside us was found, but Dawson was
impatient and took over the helm. Hmmf! The crab pots could potentially get caught in
the propeller and fowl the engine.
Luckily we did not find any of the ropes attached to the crab pots and
were soon back in the channel. We were
only about a mile or so from our anchorage for the night so it was no problem
stopping to lend a hand, and a good trade for us.
We call our friend Beth on the satellite phone to get some
advice on cooking the crabs. There were
about a dozen of them, and we had no internet to do research. Next trip we will bring a few more
cookbooks. We own lots of cookbooks that
we don’t use much back home as we use our favourite websites, but we don’t
always have internet.
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| Beautiful sunset at anchor |
Beth googled it for us as she had not cooked soft shelled
crabs either and the advice was flour and spice them and pan fry in oil. First Dawson had to stick a knife in their
brains as they were still alive. Then
you cut the eyes and mouth off, lift the shell and clean out the gills and
guts. Well they were a bit of work and
messy to clean, cook, and eat but the meat was very sweet. A real treat and experience for us. There were a few undercooked claws that went
back into the pan but otherwise delicious.
Our anchorage was very quiet, although about 15 boats in
here. We knew we were going to get a
good night sleep which was lovely. We
had our normal coffee and King’s cribbage game and hit the sack early so we
could be up at 5:30 a.m. for a long day tomorrow.
Cheers
Julie and Dawson
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