Feeling Crabby?

This past Saturday we had our good friends out to the boat for a visit and a sail.  After the initial tour of the grounds, the kids started seeing crabs in the water. They grabbed the net and started swiping. Those crabs are fast little suckers!

But the kids kept trying and soon one crab in the bucket turned into two, turned into six!

We thought we needed to keep them in a bucket of Neuse Water until we would cook them later.  So they had a sail a on the boat with us.  We would later learn this wasn't necessary.

During the sail, the kids went below and played games.

We sailed to Green Springs, where the kids jumped overboard and play a while. The adults had a good visit on board while watching the kids.

Back in our slip, our friends had to leave before getting to learn  with us how to cook the crabs.

The boys hauled the bucket of crabs up to the picnic shelter where our club Commodore and another visiting guest taught us how to id males from females.

Females have red tip on their claws and a rounded shape on their belly.  We also threw back two females so they could continue the line of crabs.

Males do not have tipped claws and their bellies just have a long marking. They do not need to be thrown back.

The boys were shown how to cut the crab in half,

Clean the yucky stuff from inside.

And repeat until all the crabs are done.  Then we went up to the kitchen to boil them in a little Old Bay for 2-3 minutes, just until they turned red.

Ready to eat!

It is quite a bit of work for the amount of meat you get, but it was a great learning experience.