Kaimusailing

The Memorial Day weekend was coming up and it is a big deal in Crisfield as well as most of the rest of the Chesapeake. It is the traditional beginning of the summer season. All the boats are launched or commissioned, lots of activity in the marina, motors started up for the first time in a long time, exhausts spewing oil smoke from winterization.
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It took a couple few days to recover from my nighttime swim with my groceries. I had scraped the dock on the way into the drink and the open wounds were bathed in the foul waters of Somers Cove. I would probably have been happy to swim in such surroundings when I was a small kid, and even later as a windsurfer. Some of the waters I windsurfed in were quite nasty.
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Aboard SUNSPLASH I removed my wet clothing and sorted out the groceries that had been inundated. I wore a colorful set of dry clothes the next day, but I hadn’t showered the marina chum off myself yet. I biked over to Cuddily’s waterfront home and helped her drop a couple crab traps in at her dock, baited with fish heads and tails from her freezer. Her neighbors give her fresh fish if they catch enough and she enjoys that very much as well as stowing future bait in her freezer.
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Our motivation for the crab traps was an idea hatched at the Legion as we contemplated the upcoming holiday, which in Crisfield is “Soft Crab Festival”. We thought of the best soft crabs ever, the soft crabs Eve, the artist, sauteed in Irish butter. We thought of her dinner parties and the fun we used to have. We could have fun again, maybe even start up Pizza Night, but the easiest thing is to bait crab traps and drop them in the water, who knows, we could actually catch some.
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The next day I couldn’t go out in public without hosing my body off, take a shower, get into fresh clothes that aren’t marina scented. There was no bike trip to the Legion or any other social activity, just a short trip to the wine shop. I was looking for two brands of pinot noir, Saddlebred and Angelene or Angeline. They had Saddlebred at $9.80 a 750ml bottle, 20% off in quantities more than 6. I bought Black Box again. As long as they had it I probably would stick to it.
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I had to get more work done but it seemed every step of the way was impeded. The power was out, the power was on, and now the power is out again. This time it is the electrical contractor, big time outage with yellow tape making the dock off limits. These guys don’t fool around. They had a crew of 4 or 5 and a boat oddly made out of conductive aluminum. They had heavy spools of heavy electrical cable, spools of rope to pull new cable, they had the stanchion for slips 23 and 25 dismantled with the heavy duty stubs of cables protruding above the dock where the stanchion had sat. My power was back on and I made breakfast. The marina called and said there were power disruptions on the dock. Really.
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We were to inspect the crab traps after a 48 hour soak. That would be mid afternoon. A blue crab feast was scheduled for 5ish. I had time to kill. I needed to replace my ruined linguine, so I would be biking to the grocers. I rode aimlessly around the marina looking for any signs of the big Soft Shell Crab festival. I rode to the city dock where the main event was scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Nothing. There was an onshore breeze and I could see a strange craft out past Jayne’s Island following the shipping channel, maybe coming to one of the local docks.
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Cuddily called and said she would need help checking the crab traps later. I still had time to kill. Time slowed down, down to the snail’s pace of the strange vessel that came closer. I was aware of the quietness in spite of the breeze in my ears. Quiet Andrew, let the ship come in. As it got closer I could see it was probably a barge with a tugboat pushing it.
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They came closer and I could make out that the barge had vehicles on it. Tuckerton EMT vehicle, a couple of U-haul trucks, and a U-haul trailer were onboard. The EMT vehicle said “Deal Island” on it as well. Why would they come by sea, Deal Island is accessible by land. They docked at the ferry dock right next to the town dock. I left on the bike.
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Up RT413, the main drag, up to the grocers. I got my linguine and some Texas Pete’s buffalo wing sauce and blue cheese for the wing fest later. Cornelia Marie had a quantity of crab claws from a fish market in Baltimore. I left the grocers and crossed town to Cuddily’s beautiful waterfront home. We had more time to kill. We pulled up the traps and saw 3 crabs in one trap and only one in the other.
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Her next door neighbor knocked on the door and asked if we wanted crabs, he had an excess, maybe a dozen, yes, sure we would. He had the excess crabs in a submerged cage with a fish head. If you don’t give them food they will cannibalize each other.
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I got the wooden bushel basket that Cuddily uses for crabs and we dumped the neighbor’s crabs into it, then emptied our traps into it. There were some undersized crabs that were pitched back into the inlet as well as a couple dead ones. We looked for females to cull them out but it looked like all the crabs were males.
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Cornelia Marie arrived with Nori the wonder dog. Teri arrived with a magnum of white wine. There were ingredients for Orange Crush drinks. CM made one. Cuddily had a whisky drink and I had another Saddlebred pinot noir.
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The crab steamer is a huge pair of pots, kind of like a double boiler, with the liquid boiling in the lower pot and the crabs getting steamed in the upper pot. Cuddily poured a can of Guinness stout along with some water in the lower pot and brought it up to boil. The upper pot of crabs which was perforated on its bottom went on top the boiling pot. I felt sad for the crabs who now began jostling about when they felt the heat.
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Corn had been shucked and another pot was brought to a boil to cook the corn. It is better to steam the corn. Grilling or microwaving still in the husk is a more flavorful way to cook corn. We had timers set for the crab and corn, both set to go off a couple minutes from each other.
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I had prepped celery and carrot as if for wings, but we wouldn’t be making wings tonight. Save them for another day. The crunchy veggies were our appetizer, dipped in a blue cheese concoction. Brown paper bags were laid out on the table in the porch overlooking the inlet. Drawn butter, pile of boiled corn, platter of steamed crabs, and we sat down to consume an excellent feast.
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My daughter in England texted me through Skype that her water had broken and she was in hospital to have her baby, my grandson. It had been a day of many calls from afar, but this one was significant over all the others. We celebrated. Later she sent a photo of the little baby, literally only a couple hours old. We celebrated more.
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Outside it was the full moon and I took a photo of it. We had been under a thunderstorm watch, but the storms passed us by to the North and South. The image is of a thunderhead passing to the South, backdrop to the small boat harbor. A day I will never forget.