Crabbing for Our Supper

La Trappe Creek, MD N 38 37.903 W 76 07.216

Yesterday morning as we left Cambridge we encountered a race. Not a sailboat race but a swimming race. It appeared that the race course was 2-3 miles long in the Choptank River. The racers seemed to be almost equally spaced along the course so it must have been a race for time. At the finish line there was a crowd of people and vehicles. It looked to me like all the vehicles and the people were firemen. It must have been a fireman's swimming race. Boy, I have a hard time visualizing me or my fire department buddies swimming a three mile race.

The other day we saw a sailor merrily pulling up one crab after another in La Trappe Creek so we decided to try it. We got lots of action but no crabs. To do it you merely throw a line in the water with a piece of meat scrap or a chicken bone into the water. In a few minutes crabs come along to eat it. You gently pull up the line and the crab is reluctant to let go. When the crab is nearly up to the surface, you scoop it up with a net. Our problem was that we only had a small bait net, not a proper Chesapeake crab net. Every time we tried to scoop up the crab with the net it would scoot sideways and escape. The proper nets are bigger and their lines are made of blue tinted mono-filament which makes them invisible in the water. Oh well, we had fun trying anyhow.

This morning we fixed the fuel cutoff. The cause of the problem was a bronze spring that embrittled and broke. I happened to have a spare spring because last year I replaced a similar bronze spring on the throttle. I should have expected at the time that all other bronze springs of the same age should have been replaced. Anyhow, diagnosis was simple but it took us hours to get the new spring attached. It seems like everything critical on this engine and everything were I have problems fits within a 75 cubic inch volume. That volume is full of manifolds, pumps, and fuel lines and it is almost impossible to reach. Even a forest elf would have hands too big to fit in those spaces. I tried, then Libby tried then I tried again. By the time we succeeded we were both greasy up to our elbows. Does anyone sell laproscopy kits for laymen to work on things like engines?

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