August 4, 2013 ~ Sullivan Bay

Erin made a great breakfast this morning, baking eggs, sausage bits, cheese, green onions and a few cherry tomatoes into sort of a frittata.  Lynn and Laura came back from a walk to the store with some cherry and apple turnovers to complete the morning menu.  It wa a good way to start the day.

Just to keep our options open I went ahead and paid our tab in the morning, just in case we decided to cruise on to somewhere else.  None of us seemed especially motivated to do that, and having no specific plans made it fairly easy to hang around here at Sullivan Bay for another day.  John and Rebecca had an option to go out fishing early in the morning with the low tide, but their motivation to do that didn’t rise to the action level until high tide a bit after noon.  That left plenty of time for some visiting and dock walking. 

In the early afternoon Laura and I took the dinghy over to the small channel to the west to set a crab pot there.  I had some bait fish scraps left, and John and Rebecca gave us some shrimp bait pellets to add to the pot – this would allegedly improve our odds.  Rebecca was helping the local neighbors with some fish cleaning, and procured some halibut carcasses for us to use as crab bait in the future.  They didn’t catch anything today during their afternoon fishing exploits, but their entry in the fishing derby yesterday brought them good luck.  It wasn’t the first place winner, but they won the mystery prize.  Two playing cards were drawn – a face card and a nine – for a total of 19.  Their entry was the only fish weighing 19 lbs and they went away with a cash prize of $100 as well as a few additional items, such as a Sullivan Bay shirt.  What a great deal!

Time really flies when you’re having fun, and that was the case today.  Before we knew it the afternoon was gone and it was getting to be early evening.  We headed back to the crab pot to see if we had any waiting for us.  Sure enough, we did!  There were 3 in the trap, and two of them were keepers.  We brought them back to the boat to show off, and they then went into “crab hotel”, a 5 gallon bucket with holes cut into it.  We submerse it behind the boat with it tied to a cleat to keep the crabs alive until it’s “their time” to transfer to the stove top.  We’ll cook them tomorrow morning before we leave.

Late this evening we had a meal of some Johnsonville brats with cheese that Laura brought along from home.  I put the barbecue grill downstairs and we had a nice picnic, with caramelized onions on the hot dogs, and a side of baked beans with onions and a couple of the brats chopped up into them. 

Tomorrow we’ll check out again, and this time we probably will head out, most likely up towards Claydon Bay and Turnbull Cove, with a sightseeing cruise by the Roaring Hole Rapids. 

This bird would dive into the water from a tree branch, emerge with a little fish and return to the tree.  What kind of bird is this?

Lynn, Laura and Tribble