Words from the dock

★★★★★

My father took me crabbing in Grays Harbor in 1987, off a rented skiff with two rusty ring nets. He passed in 2023, and last spring I decided my own son, who is 11, was going to learn to pull a pot the way I did. I found Slack Tide through a friend in Aberdeen and told Curt the whole story over the phone. He went quiet for a second and then said, well, we better make it a good one.

He did. He timed our trip to a morning slack so calm the bay looked like poured metal. My son pulled four pots himself, hand over hand, and Curt never once reached over to help unless he was asked, which is exactly right. We came home with 18 crab. But the part I keep thinking about is the ride back in, when Curt let my boy take the wheel inside the harbor and talked to him about his own grandfather Arne the whole way to the float.

We cooked our crab on the dock and ate the first one standing up, right there, the way it should be done. My son asked if we can come back every year. We can, and we will. Some businesses sell trips. This one, whether Curt would put it this way or not, sells the thing my father gave me.