Crab, Kiki, and Garbage Day

February 9th and 10th (Sunday and Monday) 

A beautiful sunny morning at the marina.

Over these two days we were mainly at home working on projects. Because we were at home, we had put out our round crab trap off of the dock, and used the heads from the fish that we had caught the other day as bait. We hung out one head at a time, from the top, in the middle of the trap, so that the crabs were attracted into the trap, but also so that it was not so simple for them to eat the bait. This way the bait lasted longer, and we could set the trap and check it more frequently. Because the crabs were able to get out of the round trap, we tried to check the trap every hour or so. 

Over the two days, the variety in our catches was amazing. Sometimes we had up to 15 crabs in the trap with all of them being female, other times there were no crabs in the trap, and sometimes we got lucky. In the two days we managed to catch five, good-sized male Dungeness, one of which was a massive 8.5 inches. This was the most luck, by far, that we had had since being back in January. We were hopeful that this was a good sign, and that perhaps we would be able to catch large males more consistently.  

We cooked up, and cleaned the crabs, and it was amazing how much meat we got from four large Dungeness. We ended up with a heaping-full, large, snap-lock container of delicious crabmeat.

To celebrate, Jason made a scrumptious crab pasta for dinner, and it barely put a dent in the container of crabmeat. 

Since we did not have any whole milk, cream, or cans of evaporated milk, which Jason has used in the past as the base to a white sauce, he had to get creative. He used the last bit of the delicious, butternut squash from Dorothy, as part of the base for the pasta, and it turned out creamy and delicious.  

We took the outboard off of Kiki, and pulled her up onto the dock to give her a good clean. We scrubbed her pontoons on the top and the bottom in preparation for some work that we were going to do on them. 

Last September, when we had cleaned her bottom really well at Eucott Bay, we noticed just how deep some of the scratches were on the bottom of the pontoons. We try to be very careful around rocks and barnacles on shore, but inevitably she had been scratched. We decided that we would add a second layer of PVC material to the back ends of the bottoms of both pontoons as armour.  

When we were in Vancouver in January we had managed to purchase a piece of material and glue, and here at the marina in Ocean Falls there is a floating building called “The Shack.” In the summer it would be a communal room with tables and chairs, some books and games, a radio, and a bulletin board, but since there was no one else here right now the shack was not being used. We had talked to Ken about the possibility of us turning on the heater and using it for our project, and since Ken had said that such was totally okay, we decided that this was the perfect opportunity to get the job done.

We made use of the beautiful sunny weather in the morning to get the cleaning done outside, and then put Kiki inside to have her be warm and dry, and ready for us to work on the following day, when it was forecasted to be raining.

While I was working on cleaning Kiki, Jason worked on installing some snaps.  He had gotten me a snap-installation tool for Christmas, and we had been looking forward to a good day to use it. He installed snaps on the straps that hold our oars secure on Kiki.  

The strap with Velcro.

The tender came with Velcro on these straps, but it quickly stopped holding the oars securely. If we were out in choppy weather the oars would tend to bounce up, which got dangerous while we were planing at 18 knots, and we often had to hold them in place. The tool for punching the perfect hole through the fabric, and also the snap installation tool worked perfectly! 

The strap with a snap installed.

Jason also installed more snaps on a part of our enclosure. We have two forward-facing flaps that cover the zippers, and when a strong wind blows toward us, these flaps blow up and allow rain to come in. He installed four snaps along one of these flaps so as to hold it down securely. The flaps had been a nuisance many times when we had ended up with water dripping down onto our chart plotter, or ourselves, while underway. So, it was really nice to finally have that dealt with.   

On Monday morning, at around 10:15, Ken stopped to pick us up on his way by.  Mondays, between 10:00 and 11:00, is Ocean Falls’ garbage day. We put our garbage and recycling into the back, along with his, and hopped into Ken’s pickup truck. We drove across the bridge that goes across the river coming out from the dam. We had never been over to that side before, because the gate was locked. We drove past the Bitcoin building, past the power plant, past what is left of the old sawmill buildings, and on to the incinerator. One guy works as the garbage-disposal incinerator operator, so it was simple to drop off our garbage and cardboard. They also had recycling bins for the glass and tin cans. 

Garbage Incinerator