We shared last night’s anchor site in Santa Anna Inlet with a commercial salmon fisherman. He saw Angie checking her crab pot, waved her over, and kindly gave her some salmon roe and innards for crab bait and suggested she drop the crab pot in >10 fathoms of depth (60 feet).
A full crab pot
The next morning when she hauled up the crab pot it was very, very heavy. Turns out there were 17 Dungeness crabs in the crab pot! This was a new record for number of crabs/haul- beating last year’s record of 13 in Cutter Cove in British Columbia.
Happy crabber!
As a minor aside, Santa Anna Inlet is an unbelievably beautiful place. There are ~1000 foot high heavily wooded hills on all sides, and we anchored about a mile into the inlet just beside a huge waterfall.
Around 3 am, both Angie and Mike were awakened by what sounded like large air bubbles hitting the bottom of Madrone’s hull. A minute or two later, we heard it again. After another 30 seconds or so, Madrone began rocking as if she was in the wake of another boat. A quick check out the window confirmed that the fishing boat was still anchored.
What was it? It was definitely large (because of how much the boat rocked), and it definitely sounded exactly like air bubbles hitting the hull (or at least what we imagine air bubbles hitting the hull would sound like). Maybe a whale exploring the anchorage? We’ll likely never know for sure.
