CrabbingInTheHood.com

My family and I are doing something different this year to celebrate New Year’s.

We’re heading out west to Grayland WA, situated along Washington’s Cranberry Coast, just south of Westport on Hwy. 105, to the Ocean Spray Cottages.

The owners of the Ocean Spray Cottages Resort, Gary and Diane Johnson, are friends and former real estate agents with the Windermere office here in Silverdale WA. They recently retired from real estate, and moved out to the coast, where they purchased the Ocean Spray Cottages Resort.

The Ocean Spray Cottage Resort consists of well-maintained private cottages, complete with kitchens and many amenities, including cable TV. Some cottages are small and quaint, just perfect for that romantic retreat. Other cottages have 2 bedrooms and can sleep up to 8. The resort is situated on a beach access road, and is conveniently close to local restaurants, grocery, and antique/gift shops.

Our upcoming stay coincides with the Razor Clam Dig scheduled for Dec. 31st thru Jan. 2nd

Ocean Spray Cottages Resort

1757 State Route 105, Grayland Washington 98569 / (360) 267-2205

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, SOUNDBITEBLOG, ActiveRain, Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Are ya Feelin’ Crabby? Well, if you’re a lover of all things crustaceous, then head on up to Port Angeles WA this weekend!…

Downtown Port Angeles WA will be the site for the 8th annual Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival from Oct. 9th thru the 11th. The festival will feature music and entertainment, kids activities, and lots of delicious fresh seafood.

You won’t want to miss the huge crab feed, sponsored by Windermere Real Estate, which runs all 3 days in the big Pavilion Tent. Additional events also take place at other locations, such as the Port Angeles Pier, Red Lion Hotel, and Gateway Center. The festival opens at 4pm to 8:30pm on Friday Oct. 9th, and continues from 10 a.m. to 8:30 pm on Oct. 10th, and 10 am to 5 pm Oct. 11th.

Attractions during the fun-filled weekend will include a demonstration kitchen, crab derby, craft/merchant booths, and environmental education programs.

For more information, call (360) 452-6300, or access the web: crabfestival.org.

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com and SOUNDBITEBLOG, or e-mail:  kitsapagent@gmail.com

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Towards the end of this coming week, testosterone levels will be at an all time high as male bonding among the Jacobson men goes into full swing.

We’re talking March Madness and Razor Clamming! What a glorious combination!

As former residents of Lawrence KS, we’re avid/diehard KU Jayhawk fans. On Selection Sunday our brackets were skillfully filled out and proudly displayed on the kitchen refrigerator. Currently, Luke is in the lead, followed closely by brother, Elliot. Mom and Dad take a distant 3rd way tie.

Kansas soundly defeated Dayton earlier today and will play Michigan State this coming Friday in the Sweet Sixteen.

Rock Chalk, Jayhawk! GO KU!

Early Saturday morning, we’ll drive out to the Washington Coast for one of several Razor Clam digs of the 2009 Spring season. It takes us about 2 1/2 hours to drive out on Hwy. 3 through Shelton, past Aberdeen & Hoquiam, and then on up to Copalis Beach. Four area beaches will be opened to harvesting on that morning, including Long Beach, Twin Harbors, Copalis, and Mocrocks. I prefer Copalis because you can drive your vehicle right onto the beach, park it, and walk just a short distance down to the surf.

Next to crabbing, I enjoy digging Razor Clams almost as much. It’s a great time for male bonding and experiencing the awesome, breathtaking scenery that comes from living here in the Pacific Northwest.

There’s a lot of work that goes into harvesting Razor Clams. Shoving the clam gun barrel deep into the sand quickly, then pulling it out under suction, uses muscles in your back that have been hibernating since high school.

Then, when you get your bounty home, the cleaning process takes nearly as long as the drive out to the beach! There’s a very methodical process to cleaning the clams, and the ‘EASY’ button doesn’t work!

But I tell ya, when you dip the clams in flour, egg, and cracker crumb, and fry those bad boys up, there is nothing better on the planet than eatin’ Razor Clams! They’re especially good reheated in the morning along with scrambled eggs.

Such are the rewards of living here on the Kitsap Peninsula WA – making your own smoked salmon, pulling up live Dungeness Crab from Hood Canal, digging Clams or Oysters, or picking blackberries for a freshly baked pie!

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com and SOUNDBITEBLOG.

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One of the best things I enjoy about living  out on the beautiful Kitsap Peninsula here in scenic Washington State, is taking my 16 ft. C-Dory out on the Hood Canal, part of the extensive inland waterways of Puget Sound. The Hood Canal is a long, deep, narrow strip of water wedged in between the Kitsap Peninsula and the picturesque Olympic Peninsula. The Olympic Mountain Range rises up rather dramatically from the edge of the water. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking.! 

One of the many benefits of boating on the Hood Canal is recreational crabbing. The Dungeness Crab is the prized catch in these waters. The season typically opens the first week of July and runs through Labor Day weekend. The Washington Department of Fish & Game is extremely active in monitoring sports fishing in our state, so you better be in compliance with all current rules and regulations! (WA Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)

We launch our boat out at Miami Beach in Seabeck WA. We learned through experience to be mindful of the tide schedule. If you go out too close to low tide, you will have a rough time getting your boat down the ramp. So we usually launch an hour or two before the peak of high tide. (WA Tide Schedules)

Once on the water, we head over towards Dabob Bay, just around the Toandoes Peninsula, and prepare to lower our crab pots. You can purchase crabbing gear from the Sportsman Warehouse in Silverdale. You can figure on spending a minimum of $80 per rig, including the crap pot (cage), buoy & flag, 100′ of weighted line, bait box, and weights. Being bottom-dwellers, crabs will eat just about anything, but they seem to be partial to salmon guts. Several of our area supermarkets (Silverdale Red Apple Market and Central Market in Poulsbo WA) save the guts when they clean the fish, and sell them for crab bait. 

We lower the crab pots (usually in about 60 to 100 feet of water) and then head over to Pleasant Harbor, a quaint little port nestled on the Olympic side. They have a convenience store, pizza parlor, and deck overlooking the harbor. We’ll grab some cold drinks, pork-out on pizza, and catch some rays as we wait a couple hours in hopeful expectation that our pots will fill up. 

We head back and pull up our crab pots, carefully extracting the prized booty. We prefer to clean the crabs while we’re out on the water. It makes for less clean-up later and allows you to put more edible crab into the pot when cooking. We also bring salt water back with us, to use for boiling the crab in. Some people prefer to use fresh water and add a crab boil spice pouch. I have found that boiling the crab in saltwater gives it a really great natural flavor. There is a difference of opinion on how long to boil the crab. I have found that 12 to 15 minutes after reaching boiling point is more than enough time. I’ll drain the water, and put the crab into a big stainless bowl, covering it with ice to cool it quickly. Some people like to dip their crab in melted butter, but I prefer to eat it right out of the shell.

There are few things better in life than spending a few relaxing hours out on the Hood Canal, bringing home some fresh crab, and porking out!

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com, and SOUNDBITEBLOG.

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You have to understand what it is that motivates any person in their right mind to ever consider buying a boat in the first place.

Crab. Yummy, tasty Crab. Lots of Crab.

Our initially sad, but comical efforts with the Wally Mart inflatable left much to be desired. Hence, the purchase of the sea-worthy C-Dory!

Now it doesn’t usually take all that long, from the time you buy your first boat, and enjoy the brief thrill of ownership, to quickly realize what an utterly ’stupid’ and ‘idiotic’ purchasing decision you’ve made.

The learning curve of safe boat operation is a painful and costly succession of errors.

Our first trip out was disasterous! We went over to Brownsville Marina in Bremerton, one of the better launching spots in the area. We got the boat about halfway down the slightly steep ramp when the winch strap ’snapped!’ Luckily, we had the security chain attached, and the boat only slipped down a few inches. The Marina Store was conveniently located nearby, so we purchased a new winch strap (the first in a very long line of expenses)

Let me stop right here and just mention one of the basic tenets of ‘Murphy’s Law of Boat Repairs:’

“Whenever you need to buy something to repair your boat, you will never, ever be remotely close to a store that sells discount boat parts, or anything that even remotely resembles a bargain priced item.”

We installed the over-priced, gold-plated, diamond studded winch strap and lowered our vessel into the cool, blue waters….

For the next several hours, we vainly attempted every conceivable option known to man in an effort to coax/ellicit life from our 40 horse Johnson outboard motor. When that failed, we switched our novice attentions to the 9 horse kicker motor. Nothing there either. It was an outboard motor tag team. They were both in cahoots against us.

All the while, as we toiled, sweat, and prayed for a motor miracle, we neglected to notice, that the tide was going out.

As the resident boating Newbies, what we didn’t realize, was at the Brownsville Marina, when the tide goes out, the launching ramp is rendered useless for several hours. The only thing worse than not being able to start our boat engine was having to sit helplessly at the dock, watching the paint peel, and waiting for the tide to come back in.

To make matters worse, because the launch ramp is directly adjacent to the marina store/cafe, our escapades were on full display for all the luncheoning patrons to see. We provided some really great comic relief!

You know, sometimes, life is a lot like learning how to safely operate a boat. Inevitably, you’re going to make a few mistakes along the way (okay, a lot of mistakes). Sometimes the mistakes are costly. Other times, they’re just frustrating, embarassing, and, well, just plain stupid. What’s important, is to learn from those mistakes. And it’s not simply a matter of learning what you did wrong, but learning what you can do right or better the next time.

Oh, the joys of boat ownership! Trust me, this is just the beginning of “Stupid Human Boat Tricks!”

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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing empowerment and relentless representation of clients throughout all of Kitsap County, and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him on KitsapLife.com and his local real estate blog, SOUNDBITEBLOG.

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Welcome to “Crabbing In The Hood” (the Hood Canal, of course).

Soon this site will be loaded up with interesting and entertaining articles about Rich’s adventures stalking his wily prey, the Dungeness Crab.

Rich Jacobson, the website owner, is an avid Kitsap County crabber with many a tale about his times on the salty brine as well as a collector of Pacific Northwest recipes for cooking the delectable morsels he so patiently traps.

CrabbingInTheHood.com is still in the process of being set up so come back soon. This site will feature articles about local crabbing, crab recipes and crabbing gear recommendations for the novice crabber as well as the experienced crabber.

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