Thoms Place is a undeveloped State marine park. When we arrive we discover a crabber setting crab pots all over the bay. There must be dozens of pots out greatly reducing our anchoring options. We are entering at high tide and check the tide tables. Tomorrow morning the water will be 18' shallower than it is now. We decide we will anchor in nothing less than 30' to be safe. We circle around, winding through the pots, and find a pretty good spot. At this point we are very close to the crab boat. The single man aboard holds up a crab and waves it at us. I step outside and he says "do you want some?" Without hesitation I yell back "sure!!!". He says he will pull along-side. As he gets closer he asks how many people we are. I tell him 4. He asks is I want him to clean the crabs. I tell him I can do it. He says it only takes him a few seconds per crab. I let him clean the crabs. To my surprise he cleans 8 crabs for us. Wow! He puts them in small grocery store plastic bags and comes over. I offer to pay him for them and he declines. What a nice man!!!! Today is a good day. This is the REAL Alaska.
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| Alaska crabber pulling crabs out of his catch for us., |
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| Cleaning one of the eight Dungeness crabs he gave us. SO nice! |
We then spend about 15 minutes finding a spot to drop the anchor. We notice a shelf where it goes from about 30 feet to less than 20'. We will need to anchor in front of this drop off or we will be grounded tomorrow morning. We can't go too far ahead of the ledge though because of all the crab traps. Or we can motor to the center of the bay and anchor in about 60' - 70' of water. We decide to make a few more circles to survey the bottom and decide we should be good here. But, we might be close to ledge at low tide. We drop the anchor in 34' of water. Backing towards shore to set the anchor we end up in 30' of water. We predict we will have about 9' - 11' under the boat at low tide tomorrow morning. We will get up and watch the tide drop in the morning.
I "detail" clean the crabs and then I boil them. We spend the next hour+ eating and cleaning dungeness crab, fresh from our anchorage in Alaska. What an unexpected treat!
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| Reebok sniffing fresh crab. Mmmmm. Meow mix, Meow Mix please deliver. |
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| A whole mess of fresh crab. Yummmy. |
After lunch we get two kayaks down and send the kids out exploring. There are several small islands that we predict will not be islands at low tide. They paddle over and disappear behind the islands, appearing from time to time in the passages between the islands. They are gone for an hour or more and we can hear them talking and laughing. They are having fun together away from the boat, and us adults.
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| The boys disappear around the back side of an island |
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| Just hanging out and talking. Good times. |
We watch several movies together tonight, and go to bed late. First late night we have had together. It has been a fun day.
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The large sailboat from last night joined us as the only other boat in the bay
for the evening. |
I awake in the morning at about 6 and check our bay. The tide is low and still dropping. We have about 20' under the boat and the shoreline is still a good distance away. Low tide is at 8. At 7:00 the shoreline has gotten much closer, and it circles around us on both sides. Pretty much what we expected, and our math was correct. Boating is definitely more challenging here. But also more rewarding.
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