When Life Gives You Crabs…

Ok, over the past year or so, I’ve been known to extoll the virtues of my handy GoPro Hero. It was inexpensive, easy to use, water-proof to one-hundred and eighty feet and incredibly awesome in every way. This weekend, my trusty “Hero” actually saved me some serious trouble and potential peril and quite possibly major bucks!

We were planning on heading out to a sweet little anchorage about two hours north of Rock Hall to jump in the water and clean the bottom of the boat. When she sits in a marina for any length of time, growth can begin to accumulate on the bottom and well… it gets quite nasty. You don’t really want to jump into the water in a marina since there are some indiscriminate guests who still pump their heads (toilets) overboard even though it’s a major No-No! Also, there are folks who spill gas, diesel, cleaning agents and all sorts of nasty stuff into the water from their boats. At this particular spot on the Chesapeake, jelly-fish are really bad and provide you with a particularly lovely sting or ten… and if one gets up the leg of your bathing suit… sweet Jesus… look out! Any way… the larger concern about jumping into the water at a marina is stray electrical current. It will kill you dead! And that’s no fun. Sometimes with all these boats next to each other, electrical current and leak into the water from improperly grounded boats or what have you and if you dip your foot in… bang! Dead. No need to worry about the jelly-fish. Happens every year.

Ok… back to the story… we were preparing to head up to the fresh, jelly-fish free waters of Still Pond to enjoy the day and clean the muck off the bottom. In preparation of this trip I thought, “I’m just going to hook my GoPro onto this handy-dandy telescoping pole and run it under the boat to see what I can see.” Splash! Down she went… tap… tap…slide her along the hull to find my place… Ping! That must be the shaft! Thud… “Rudder”… dull thud… huh?  Dull thud again. “Hmm. Shouldn’t be a dull thud there… that’s the prop”… this is me talking to myself. Let’s pop the SD card in to my Mac and see what we’ve got. Well… I’m gonna let you see what we got. Just hit play! Go ahead… this is the “interaction” portion of the show! Click… you’ll love it.

Amazing! Right? Mr. Crab just sat there even as I poked him and prodded him to GET OFF! You know what would have, what could have happened if I started that engine and took off with all that rope around the prop? I could have bent the prop shaft. That’s a big “cha-ching”- ding to the cruising kitty.  Now it’s probably unlikely that would happen since I most likely ran for quite some time with that crap on there during my trip up the bay. We were in heavy weather and the route was fraught with crab pots. Sometimes our lovely crab boys put their pots right on the edges of channels and what have you and if you miss seeing just one… this is what happens. Now proper etiquette dictates that if you hit and snag one of these pots, and have to remove it from your prop, you should dump out the crab (so the pot doesn’t sink to the bottom never to be found and full of poor, trapped crabs) and take the crap pot ashore. They are usually numbered or have some identification as to whom it belongs to. There is no telling if I actually hit a pot or just picked this crap up floating in the water. Anything is possible but it does explain why I had lack luster performance from the engine on that wet, chilly, nasty Saturday.

So, here’s what happened. I had no other choice but to don the mask and my gloves, grab my handy-dandy (see that’s a catch phrase today!) razor knife from Lowes and hit the drink. The nasty, possibly-poopy, possibly-electrified, definitely jelly-fish laden haven known as our marina water. Melody was on the dock with the hose and pressure nozzle blasting the water with a stream of water with the hopes of keeping the jellies away. If nothing else, she would at least drive them swiftly into the back of my head or up my shirt. I have to say, I learned a little more about my lady that day… she seemed a little disappointed she didn’t get to witness a jelly-fish sting first hand or get to pee on me. That’s what you do. You pee on the sting. it “neutralizes” the sting. I think someone just started that rumor so people would be seen standing there on the beach peeing on someone. They say meat tenderizer works too. I vote for that. Anyway she uttered something like… “damn, not one jelly-fish.” I don’t think she meant to say that out loud… but she did.

Alas, in conclusion I’m left with the impression that while my lovely wanted me to get stung by a jelly-fish, my GoPro is truly the last of my heroes. My GoPro and Brooklyn Decker. (See how I worked her in there again) Jet, my trusty K-9 companion was down below in the AC and wanted nothing to do with Mr. Crab or the jellies. GoPro… Hero. You see, when life gives you lemons you make lemonade. In this case… life gave me crabs… so to speak. Sounds like an episode of Jersey Shore. Anyway… I guess I’m left with no option but to make crab cakes.

GoPro… You are as good or better than sliced bread. Cuz’ sliced bread would be mushy crap under water.