Teamwork and Fresh Crab

Teamwork and Fresh Crab

This is a little story about teamwork. Teamwork is very important when flying or sailing together. Lessons in teamwork come to us in unusual ways sometimes. Roy and I woke up on a lovely, Indian Summer Saturday morning, did a little happy dance that the rain had not yet come to the Pacific Northwest, loaded up our RV-7A and headed north to Orcas Island where we keep our sailboat.

A few hours after leaving HIO, we sailed past the red and green buoys that mark the narrow entrance to Shallow Bay on Sucia Island. We gloated a bit that only a short time before, we’d been having breakfast at home, some 200 nautical miles to the south. Thanks to our “magic carpet” we were now in this spectacular anchorage. We also laughed that it took the same amount of time to motor seven nautical miles from Orcas to Sucia Island as to fly from Hillsboro to Orcas.

Inside the bay, we fetched a mooring ball, tossed the crab trap off the side of the boat, and settled in to enjoy the day. We ate lunch, took a nap, rowed to the island for a hike, visited with other boaters on the island, rowed back to Tranquility, cracked open a bottle of wine, made a tray of cheese and crackers, and got all comfy in the cockpit to watch the sunset.

The next morning I popped up out of the sack, quickly shaking off a slight red-wine hang-over. The crab trap. We’d forgotten about the crab trap. It is totally against the rules to leave a trap out overnight, and when it comes to harvesting from the Salish Sea, we are strict rule-keepers. We had our come-uppance though. While we’d been in relax-have-fun-and-sleep mode, the tide had gone out and come in and gone out again. And with that, Tranquility had swung around the mooring ball, not once but two or three times, taking the crab trap line with her. The water was crystal clear, we could see the trap 15 feet below on the bottom – and it was full of crab. We could also see that the line was wrapped around the mooring ball chain, and elephant kelp and entwined with seaweed. Roy and I surveyed the situation from the bow of the boat, and scratched our heads.

 I’m not letting this one go, I said. We’re going to have crab for dinner tonight, if I have to get in the water and swim down to get that thing. Roy snorted and laughed. Silly, he said. I’ll go get in the dingy.

Roy rowed the dingy, little Peace, around to the front of the boat. I un-cleated the crab pot line from the bow of the boat, lay on my belly, hung upside down off the bow of the boat, and unwrapped the line from the top part of the mooring ball, then handed the line to Roy. He couldn't see where the line went underwater from his vantage in the dingy, but I could from the bow of TQ. Row that way, I said. It was in the opposite direction that the line appeared to be going. Trust me, I said. Row towards that power boat over there. Roy looked at me skeptically, but followed my direction anyway. Ok, I said, now row back towards TQ, but go out around the mooring ball. He pulled in on the line feeling it go a little slack, and rowed towards our boat. Two more times of rowing in a circle, and the line was free.

Roy handed the line back to me on TQ. I hauled up the pot and had it on deck by the time he was back on the boat. We did a “High Ten” and admired our catch. The reward for our team-work was a limit-for-the-day catch of large crab.

That evening we had a great time sharing out catch with friends back in Hillsboro. All it took was a Magic Carpet, a Sailboat, and Teamwork.