Thursday, September 27, 2007

Crabin' out of Astoria, OR

George throwing out the line of a crab pot. He kind of looks like a fisherman on a book cover doesn't he?
The secret is placing the pot in the water level
First Mate George and Skipper Joe with one of the pots. We got 21 keeper crabs total. I think George threw back about 5 that were too small. You can only keep males. Females and small crabs have to be thrown back. George had a gauge made of metal that measured their width.
George shows me some tips on crab cracking
It was a great time and Joe and George couldn't have been better hosts!
Yesterday we went crabbing and on a Columbia River tour. There is just so much that we learned and experienced. Our Skipper (or Pilot) was Joe and our First Mate was George. Joe is only 28 and he is a great guy. Their company “Tiki Charters” doesn’t normally take crabbing tours like ours. This is a slow season and they accommodated us. Joe is friendly and informative and has had a lot of experience. In the off season he pilots yachts from place to place. He told of a yacht he took from San Diego to Florida that was probably a 5.5 million dollar vessel. He said the yacht hasn’t been untied since he delivered it 4 and a half years ago. This winter he will take a yacht from San Diego to Hawaii. It will be the fourth time he has done this for the owner. I think the owners want their boat in an area and then they fly there to enjoy it for a few days and then fly back. Joe said it will take about three weeks to get to Hawaii.

Another interesting story is about the bar and river pilots. Joe said there is a very dangerous bar in the Columbia River. We read where 200 ships and over 2,000 vessels have been lost there. A bar pilot goes on board a big ship and takes charge of navigation of the ship till it is in safe waters. He then leaves and another pilot takes over to dock the ship. Joe said the bar and river pilots make about 300 thousand dollars per year. He said they have a license to pilot anything of any size. He said they can even pilot a nuclear submarine. One of the dangers of being a bar pilot is the task of getting on and off a ship in heavy seas. We talked to a retired river boat pilot who told of hanging from a rope between the ship and his delivery boat in 45 foot seas. He was banging back and forth against the ship while dangling from a rope. Joe said every year or so a pilot dies while trying to get on or off of a ship. If the seas are really rough, they sometimes use a helicopter and suspend the pilot from a rope and lower him to the deck – still a formidable task in 45 foot seas. Joe said they go pilot a ship 24 – 7. That’s just how it is. A pilot is on duty for 22 days and then off for 22 Days. Interesting hours.

Crabbing
The crabs are caught in a cage called a pot. Our pots are 50 pound pots but the commercial guys use 120 pound pots. The 50 pound pots can be pulled in by two guys fairly easily but there are moments when they pull hard. We used 60 feet of rope between each pot and the buoys and dropped the pots in 35 feet of water. Pots are dropped in the morning at low tide and gathered in the afternoon after high tide. We had 8’ of tide yesterday which is too much for good crabbing. The current was flowing in at 4 knots and that is kind of brisk for crabs and George says the crabs kind of hunker down and don’t move a lot which reduces our catch. Crabbing is best when they walk around freely because then they are more apt to get into the pot. We dropped 5 pots and gathered 21 crabs. One of our pots was empty and Joe thinks someone robbed our crab because the latch was secured differently than he does it. He says that is fairly common. Crabbing is not allowed until October 1 for commercial crabbers but we are considered recreational crabbers so we can crab now but according to law we cannot sell the crab.

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