We have really enjoyed our kayaks this summer and we have really enjoyed crabbing. This weekend we decided that we would go crabbing again. I put Chris in charge of picking out a place to go and he chose Mats Mats Bay near Port Ludlow. Its on the other side of Whidbey Island. Its only 22 miles away from our house, but it takes us about two hours to get there, You can drive there the whole way by driving down to Tacoma, then up and around. Or you can take a ferry. On the way there we decided to drive the whole way and on the way back we took the Edmonds/Kingston ferry.
When we pulled up to Mats Mats boat launch we noticed that there wasn’t much water. There was about 30 feet of thick goopey mud before the water. For some reason we didn’t really check the tide that day and sure enough it was out. We had to get our things ready anyway and by the time we unloaded our kayaks the tide wasn’t too bad (the tide has risen about 15-20 feet) and we were still able to put into the water. What we didn’t realize is that since the tide was coming in, we would be paddling against it the whole way out. The tides and currents were going fast. If you weren’t paddling it would push you pretty far back the way you had just come! It was like floating on a lazy river! It was pretty exhausting to paddle hard the whole way, but it was also a lot of fun. We paddled up to this little inlet that had this old (maybe a lumber run or something) structure of some sort and that was really cool. We saw a deer under it which is pretty cool to see deer while you are kayaking in the ocean. We decided to put in our crab traps there. While we were dropping them we couldn’t paddle (since we needed our hands to drop the pots) and by the time we were done dropping them, the current/tide had pushed us almost half way back to where we started!
After we dropped the traps in we knew that if we went up a canal type thing, the bay would open out into the sound. (We originally wanted to put our crab traps in more open water, but since we were fighting the tide so much we decided to keep it close to where we started!) We paddled and we paddled and it was tough, but we finally came out into the sound. The whole paddle was super pretty and I loved every minute.
After our hard paddle out to the sound, we got to ride the tide back in. That was a lot of fun and we felt like we were flying with very little effort! I definitely prefer to fight hard at the beginning and ride it in at the end! We pulled up our crab traps and we had a few keepers!
It was a nice quick trip crabbing, but it was a lot of fun!
Earlier in the week the kids finished school and Ryan graduated Pre-K! It was fun to watch his graduation ceremony! At his ceremony they announced each kid, then they walked up to microphones, say what they wanted to be when they grow up, then they walked to a teacher and got a diploma. It was so cute! Ryan said he wanted to be an astronaut and a daddy! I was so proud!
We followed the white line up to the little inlet (where the x is) and dropped our traps there, then kept paddling up into the open waters. Then we followed the yellow line down, picked up our traps, and paddled to where we parked.
