It’s the season when fishermen of those tasty treats, the Dungeness Crab with claws that snap, venture out onto the waters of the San Juan Islands to catch their prey.
Sitting at home on the dock or at a restaurant, each flake of that buttery tender white-fine threads of sea spun meat fills the mouth and stirs memories of pulling the traps and hoping that the catch is big enough to keep.
Yet, for the boat owner wandering, perhaps for the first time, onto waters around the San Juan Islands, the array of pot markers, some visible and some not so much, seem to float innocently marking the surface. For the fisherman, they mark their trap so they can retrieve the treasure later; but for the boater, they hide the danger below. There in the deep dark waters exists a snake ready to strike the unwary boat owner who ventures too close. Some 150 plus feet of uncoiled drifting line is waiting to snatch that spinning prop and bring that beast of a boat to a sudden halt.
After an uneventful crossing of Rosario Strait, I entered a forest of buoys and bobbers scattered across the waters. Some were marked with brightly colored floats within 200 yards of shore, well out of the channel. Others were scattered like a football team of linebackers stretched across the waters daring you to make your run for a clean escape. On this particular day, the fisherman had set their land mines from Thatcher Pass all the way to the Northwest corner of Lopez Island. Even the Ferries were considerate of the water snakes as they transited the mine field. Some boat owners just blasted across the waters, perhaps they had line cutters attached to their prop shafts. While these devices are good at slicing through the average rope, more and more of the non-commercial crab hunters are using high tech line with names like, Enduro Braid, AmSteel, and Wire Core rope.
With knowledge acquired from a previous entanglement, caution was taken. The autopilot was disabled and I manned the helm to play this game of frogger. I weaved my way through the minefield without incident for about 45 minutes. Only once was I nearly lulled into complacency, as I looked out ahead breathing a sigh to ease the tension, I think I am through the worst, only to see a speck of dirty brown on the still waters. Not bigger than a dinner plate, it stood 20 yards off the bow. I am sure that if it had a brain, it would be thinking – “Oh boy I got this one.” I swerved like a semitruck driver trying to miss that bicyclist that suddenly appeared, the crab float skittered by, tossed aside by my bow wake. “Not this time.”
Article by John Shepard
Waggoner Field Correspondent
Buoy Image: Leonard Landon
Buoy Photo: John Shepard
