My Mountain Trail

Crab Fishing, Swimming, and Living

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Swimming is not a sport that I spend a lot of time pursuing.  I can swim, but don’t get a lot of joy from it.  I think it comes from a traumatic experience when I was learning to swim when I was a kid.  When asked about swimming from our triathlete friends, I usually make some quip like “I swim, but I usually try to limit my swim time to survival situations.”  Yesterday, I went swimming with Lori.

This Fall’s adventure sport was (is?) crabbing for Dungenous crabs (don’t ask me how I come up with these things, I don’t know).  To that end, I spent a good part of the weekend digging my two-person kayak out of the jungle (or the remnants of the jungle since Lori has pretty much tamed the jungle), cleaning it up and getting it ready to use as the crab boat.  I also rigged my newly acquired crab pots and prepped the Jeep to transport the kayak.

Yesterday afternoon Lori and I drove down to Bolinas to set the two pots out near Duxbury Reef.  We launched the boat, baited the traps, strapped down the pots and headed out to sea.  We  had a small problem with the tide because we were running late and the tide had started to ebb.  I figured it wouldn’t be too much of an issue, since we would be able generate quite a bit of speed in the two-person, 17′ boat. 

The first trick was getting through the surf at Bolinas Beach.  Bolinas Lagoon drains into the ocean through a channel between Stinson and Bolinas beaches.  This is also the well known break of all local surfers because as the tides change the swell can create big waves.  This bit of deep water creates a tongue of relatively flat water to get past the surf line.  We managed to power our way through the swells (some were pretty big) and get out into the deeper water.  After paddling for another 10-15 minutes, we noticed that the boat was sitting pretty low.  Not good.  At this point we were maybe a mile from the Bolinas Lagoon channel, so we decided to set the pots and head back in.  I turned around to unstrap the pots and realized that when we started getting sideways to the swell, the normally very stable boat was becoming very unstable.  That’s when I realized that it was too dangerous to be moving around trying to set the pots, and that we had taken on more water than I realized.  And that I had forgotten to bring a reasonable bailing device.  Uh oh.

We turned around and started paddling in with quite a bit of motivation.  The boat was tippy, but we were able to make some progress.  About five minutes later a swell rocked us so far over that we couldn’t stay upright.  At this point, I thought something like:  “I don’t want us to become a statistic here.”  Once in the water, Lori and I both independantly assessed our situation.  Lori said after we got back to land that she wasn’t scared since she knew she could swim in to shore, but she wasn’t sure we would get the boat in.  And, she was worried about me.  Me, I was surviving, and swimming.  We had life jackets on, Lori had a full wetsuit on, and I had a shorty wetsuit on under my foul weahter gear. 

While Lori’s initial reaction was to potentially swim in to shore, mine was to stay with the boat.  The best way to get help (and I knew we needed some help) is to stay with the boat.  Of course we both felt it was too early to abandon the boat, even if swimming in was the only way to save ourselves.

We couldn’t right the boat, so we climbed on top of the upside-down hull.  This actually worked pretty well, and we started paddling in like this.  Of course, a few rolling swells later, the boat tipped over again.  Now it was right side up again.  Unfortunately one of the top hatches had come up and the boat was much more swamped at that point.  And we didn’t have a bailing device.  That is the one preparation that we should have never gone out there without.  If we had a pump, we would have been fine.  Pump out the water.  Get on the boat.  Paddle back in.  So basic… 

Without a bailer, we decided to try to swim the boat in.  This is where the ebb tide was going to be a problem.  It was very hard for us to make headway, and I doubted we would make it back in if we tried to go up the channel.  But I didn’t want to leave the boat yet, and was hoping if we could get in the surf it would push us back in.  We had a long way to go.  And then I saw Todd.

Todd is a crab fisherman.  He has a 22′ Boston Whaler Outrage with a 200hp engine.  I could see him about a quarter of a mile away from us coming in from the south and lining up on the channel to Bolinas.  I waved, but he didn’t seem to see us and kept on his track into the harbor.  As soon as we missed him, my thoughts turned back to trying to rescue ourselves.  Yep, it was definitely rescue time.  Just before entering the surf line, Todd suddenly flipped a u-turn and headed straight for us.  He pulled alongside and said something like “You guys want some help?”  Our crisis was over, but the adventure isn’t.

The crabbing is good right now, and Todd’s boat was pretty heavily loaded with crab.  He was concerned about the weight of the kayak being too much for his boat, and he didn’t want to try to tow the kayak through the surf.  After a bit of discussion and looking things over, we decided to try to get the kayak on the boat and dump the water out of it.  We got the kayak up on the boat, but it had a lot of water in it, and in combination with the weight of the crabs and us, and the swells, the weight was too much for the Outrage.  We dumped the kayak back in the water and decided to tow it in closer to the beach and anchor it.  At this moment the kayak is still out there.  I am hoping that the surf didn’t get it during low tide last night…

Back on the dock helping Todd offload his crab catch, we talked a bit about the rescue.  He said he never saw us on his way in to the harbor.  He was just concentrating on making it in safely with his loaded boat.  Just before he hit the surf line he just had the feeling he needed to look back, now into the glare of the sun.  He saw us but thought we were a pod of seals; then thought he saw the boat.  Maybe an overturned boat.  He decided to go investigate, and he became our rescue angel.

Lori and I did a post-incident review last night.  In retrospect, I can’t believe I took us out there without a bailing device.  That was the fly in the ointment (aside from the leaky boat of course).  I did have flares.  We had wetsuits.  Life jackets.  My cell phone survived, so we could have called for help.  We are in good shape and could swim in. 

We were in danger.  It was a survival situation.  It was not life or death.  Niether one of us panicked or got negative or angry.  We survived.

The plan now is to go back to Bolinas this afternoon to rescue the boat.  High-low tide is at about 11:00 a.m. so we will wetsuit and fin-up and swim out with a bilge pump and paddles.  Pump out the hull, jump on top, and bring the boat in.  It will be an adventure…  I’ll let you know how it goes.