24 September 2007

24 September 2007
Hello everyone,
Cyril arrived Friday afternoon and we immediately went to sea. It was a bit rough and we only caught two crabs but it was a good introduction to the fine art of crabbing. We enjoyed the crabs for dinner; freshly caught and cooked crab, baked potato, sliced vine ripened tomatoes and garlic bread. The meal was a great start to Cyril’s crabbing adventure. Saturday morning we left early for the bay and a real day of crabbing. The sea was heavy and exciting but we only came home with four crab; a big disappointment for me but a big day for Cyril. We spent some time in the afternoon driving around; the bay checking out the sand dunes and the ATVs that make good use of the wide open spaces available to them. Saturday night I prepared my new Crab Fettuccini for Cyril and he allowed it was “okay”, which sounded like a real compliment to me.
Sunday morning we headed out to sea again and really worked the traps. We came back with just one crab; a real bummer. Everyone I’ve talked to has agreed that crabbing is really poor but still, only one! We cleaned and cooked our “one” crab and decided to do some sight seeing. We drove to Florence and had a wonderful lunch at Mo’s, Florence’s gift to sea food meals. The place was packed, as usual, but we lucked out with a bay side window table that made the day. We returned to Winchester Bay and Cyril packed up and began his return trip home. It was nice have a visitor for a few days.
After Cyril left I recalled that I wanted to share with him my favorite Umpqua River story. When Dee and I took the “Jet Boat Ride” on the Umpqua,six years ago, we enjoyed a story that our guide/driver shared about a school teacher who lived on a ranch on the North side of the river and swam across the river each day where she parked her car that she drove to work. In the afternoon she repeated the swim as she returned home. The story teller insisted that she did this every day for almost thirty years, never missing a day of work in the process. About this time in the story, we each dipped our hand in the water to assure ourselves that the water was really cold; in August. The reality of the situation was that the ranch could only be reached by boat and if the teacher in question had another choice it would have been to take a boat across the river each day probably getting thoroughly soaked most days given the Oregon propensity for rainy days.
I met a sailor today when I stopped at the fuel dock to gas up. The man was doing maintenance on his thirty five foot sailboat prior to going to sea. As I chatted with him I found that he was sailing solo from Ensenada, Mexico to Seattle. I commented that I had been told that the Northwest Coast was one of the roughest sailing venues in our part of the world. He assured me that I had been correctly informed. Then he went on to vent about the difficulty of the trip he had chosen. He said that the weather reports he received hourly were obviously from some other place in the world. He said that on his way North he was informed that the ocean had eight foot swells when actually they were twenty feet or better. He asked me what I knew about the bar at the entrance to the Umpqua. I could only tell him that I had heard that it was badly silted and that difficulty crossing the bar had convinced most of the commercial fleet to move to other Oregon marinas. I suggested that he call the Coast Guard. He had made such a call and was told that they wouldn’t advise sailboats larger than twenty-five feet to try the passage. He had decided to try it anyway. I followed him west on the river as he approached the bar so that he would be crossing at the exact moment of the announced high tide. He made it but after talking with him for awhile at the fuel dock I think I was as concerned as he probably was as he approached the bar.
I worked as hard as I ever have at crabbing Monday morning with only two crabs in the bucket. The total for the past efforts is now at 28, a little behind my take after a week of crabbing last year. An old timer native that I met at the cleaning station told me not to worry. “It’s bound to be better tomorrow - it certainly can’t get worse” was his encouraging advice. For now, all that has been caught has either been eaten or is packaged and in the freezer. Fortunately I have room in the freezer for more.
Love to all……………………………….........Grandpa Dad