Crabby Kids
A perfect summer day. Last night (Friday) I got pizza on the way home and we went for a quick sail but did not have enough time to get anywhere. This morning I got up early enough so we could do some biking and get on the boat with more time to spare. Ellie has outgrown her 12″ bike which we had purchased for Phoebe on Ebay some time ago. It is hard for her to to get any speed going due to the tiny cranks. At some point recently I remembered we had another 16″ bike given to us by our neighbors from Baker Lane and we found it in the shed and cleaned it up with windex. I think the girls used half of a bottle on it so it should stay shiny for some time. Ellie fits better on this bike and is now able to outpace me on my scooter. We went for a ride into town so she could really stretch her legs and I think it frustrated Phoebe a bit that Ellie can almost keep up with her. Phoebe can stand push the pedals so she maintains some advantage on the hills. However, Ellie is not afraid of just hammering the legs down indefinitely and she impressed me by climbing Church St. back to the house without needing to stop or requesting a push.
When we returned to the house we went out to the boat and headed out into the Bay. The wind was SSE so we headed more or less straight to Woods Hole on a close haul with Cristin driving. This is the most challenging point of sail for beginners and she already has a good feel for it. I do worry though that I have led her into a bad habit of relying to much on the masthead indicators. We got headed a bit as we reached the Hole and were forced to bear off towards Woodneck beach in North Falmouth. At that point the wind started to die and we were running out of water so we turned back to Mattapoisett. Cristin had a party to get to so we cheated and started the motor and by the time we were halfway back across the Bay the SW wind had kicked up and we sailed the rest of the way home.
When we got back we went for a dip and the water was perfect, well, almost. At one point Ellie climbed out and I noticed what looked like a tick on her leg and I reached up to get it and realized it was a tiny crab. I informed Cristin of this who told me she had seen some on the mooring line and I began looking around more carefully and realized they were everywhere. I would say conservatively that each cubic meter of water held several hundred of these tiny crabs on their pelagic journey to somewhere safe, which would not include Ellie’s leg. When we got back I had the girls shower and as Phoebe took her suit off I saw no less than a dozen on her back and bum. I was tempted to inform her but decided against it. The life of these r-selected creatures is obviously quite different from ours with only a small fraction of the million eggs a female produces needed to survive through year one to sustain a population. The crabs we saw were likely at the end of their larval stage as they had an appearance of the adult. They were incredibly fragile and were probably hoping the SW wind was going to carry them somewhere where they could effectively hide for a year or two. On Sunday we enjoyed a short sail and a dip with the Mottas with no sign of the crabs. What a weekend!
