We had a wonderful 4th of July celebration in the village of Sand Point. We went into town and everyone was so welcoming and invited us to their homes for dinner. We declined primarily because we had previously prepared a crab dinner feast on the boat. We have two crab traps on the boat. The first one we received for free from folks in Dutch Harbor when we first arrived in Alaska, we’ll call that the pyramid trap. The second crab trap we had recently picked up at Kodiak’s “hanger sale”. Side note, twice a year on the Coast Base they have a giant garage sale in a hanger for families coming to the island and leaving the island, so we scored this new trap for $20, normally $100 – $120.
As we are learning more about how to catch crabs we have discovered the big differences in our crab traps. The pyramid trap is conical with a hole about the size of the opening of a five gallon bucket on the top. The crab see the bait in the trap then crawl up the pyramid and fall in the hole as they don’t swim they can’t get out. This trap is great for Tanner and King Crabs because of the large opening.
Our new trap has four rectangle equidistant holes and both the bottom and top are solid net. This is a popular style Alaskan crab trap because it primarily catches Dungeness crabs. Dungeness are supposedly lazy and don’t like to travel up a pyramid to get to it’s food; however, we have most certainly caught Dungeness crab in the pyramid trap.
The best part about the new trap is how light weight it is! Before poor Wade would groan about dropping the trap because the pyramid trap is made of steel and is so heavy to lift back on deck. Now with this new light weight trap Sara has been dropping and retrieving the trap. On the 4th of July, Sara took the dingy to pull the Dungeness trap and sure enough the trap was full, only four crabs met licensing regulations but we were so happy. Once Wade saw her trap was full he checked the pyramid trap, he raised the trap for naught, as sadly nothing had crawled in. This morning, as we left the Dungeness trap was empty and in the pyramid trap Wade had two of which one Dungeness crab was the correct size!
Folks in town told us about the community crab traps. We were told if we could lift the trap we could keep what was inside as the community traps are the 6.5 by 6.5 feet. After leaving town we stopped by the first trap that was supposed to be full of Tanner crab, but the line girth was too big. We could not get enough wraps of line around the anchor windless to get enough assistance from the anchor windless to pull the trap up, plus with a couple hundred feet left there was a large knot that would be too hard for us to pull through the anchor windless. Tomorrow we hope to check a community King Crab trap about 35 miles away. Our thought is, if the line is the same girth as today’s Tanner trap we’ll just load our pyramid trap up with bait and drop it nearby then anchor for the night.
Today we filled up on fuel. Sand Point is not one of our favorite places to get fuel because the pier is fixed rather then floating so at low tide we had to climb about 15 feet up a ladder to get onto the dock. Everyone decided to get fuel at the same time, so we were trying to maneuver around at least a dozen fishing vessels. We took on 104 gallons of fuel at $3.10 per gallon making a total of around $324, so if anyone ask how much does it cost to motor from Kodiak to the Shumagin Islands you’ll know, lol.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Petrified Forest 18 feet Sand Anchorage 55° 24.149’N, 160° 45.151W Good VHF Weather Signal, Unsure of SSB Signal, 5/5 Iridium Go connection
To find where are Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, copy and paste these coordinates 55.40248333,-160.752516667 into Google Maps!
