The family reunion was a lot of fun.  It’s always nice to see everyone all together having a good time.  John and Tootie open up their cabin to everyone and put in a lot of work to make it a success.  Thanks for everything you do.

All the kids roamed around like a pack of wolves going from one adventure to another.  The rope swing is always a huge hit and watching them treasure hunt at the beach was fun.

Eating fresh clams just harvested off the beach (sorry no crab) makes the best appetizer to a great dinner later that evening.

We woke up to a fog layer over all of Oro bay. It was a beautiful sight. As the sun started to burn it away we knew it was going to be a hot day!

One more day of crabbing then off to Pirates Cove this evening. We had no indication our luck would change but I actually had high hopes of some crab after leaving the pots in all night. When the fog burned off Skylar and I ventured out for the pull. We also had the stuck pot to deal with. Hopefully the owner of the commercial pot it was stuck to has already pulled his up and set mine free. We pulled the 3 free pots first and of course nothing but starfish, rock crab and females. So much for the overnight trick! It was time to go get the stuck pot. The commercial pots were still in the area but our pot was nowhere to be found. We circled the area several times thinking it must be there but it was gone. What happened to it we will never know!

We set the pots back for one more pull in a couple hours but we were mentally done. We decided to take a nice hike around the island then get out of dodge. I was anxious to get back out on the boat and on to our next destination. We gave away our 2 lonely crabs to a nice guy on the dock who was helping Skylar fish and shoved off for a quick run to Pirates Cove.

We ran the boat at 8 knots for the 15.75nm trip. The boat runs really nice at that speed as we burned just 3 gallons per hour.

We pulled into the cove and ventured over to our usual anchoring spot. In 20’ of water we set our anchor for the first time paying out 120’ of rode with no worries of swinging into anyone around. There’s nothing much better than the moment you turn off the engine after setting the hook.

At just about 90 degrees the heat started to fill the boat as we sat still in the water. Julie had the bright idea to jump off the top of the pilothouse into the water. Skylar and I went for it. The fall was fun but wow that water is cold! Even though it was Julie’s idea we could not convince her to make the plunge. Even Ava jumped off the swim step!

The day wrapped up taking the dinghy to shore to meet up with some family getting to the cabin early for tomorrows big reunion.

The day was spent crabbing and hanging out on the dock.  We had special guests make their way to the island via a short ferry ride.  My parents came to see us for a few hours and had lunch with us on the dock.  The kids were super excited to see them.  Fortunately they were able to bring me my jeans as I forgot all long pants for our 3 week adventure in Washington weather.

Don’t get too excited.  While this was a monster crab (about 8 inches) it was only 1 of 2 we caught all day!  pulling 4 pots from 150′ by hand from a small dinghy really gives you a workout.  A lot of work for not much reward.

To finish off our dismal day of crabbing our last pull (about 9:00pm) yielded one stuck crab pot.  Pulling the first 50′ feet felt kind of funny and extremely heavy.  At first I was excited that we finally caught the mother load, then everything came to a halt.  I could pull no further.  Even with Skylars help it would not budge.  So I did what any guy would do, tied it to the dinghy and cranked up the engine.  We pulled in every direction with no luck.  So the pot still sits there.  Hopefully its stuck to the commercial pot next-door and they will be back tomorrow to pull their pot and set mine free!