Velociworld

CRABBERS

Acidman weighs in on Jawja Blue Crabs, the delectable meat as purgative, and the risks of poaching the blue beasts.

I can relate. I poached a few blue crabs in my younger days, knowing full well the penalty if caught. The trick isn't outrunning a crabber's boat. Any powerboat will do that. It's outrunning the bullets. "I'll just wing 'em" does NOT fit a crabber's worldview. Those dudes in white rubber boots work like slaves, and don't like their pocket picked. They'll blow you away, and gut you if they can get close enough, and a Georgia jury will say what the hell did that stupid pudknocker expect?

The only time I got caught was when my cousin poached a dozen when we were on his parents' sailboat. I warned him not to do it, and we were happened upon by the owners, and lost that chase. Luckily I had the better part of a half-gallon of Crown Royal on board, the Flagship Intoxicant of crabbers, and twenty dollars. I believe it saved our lives.

Amazingly (but not really if the body of water you inhabited was Wassaw Sound) that same cousin and I ran across those same two crabbers a couple of years later. We weren't poaching; we'd taken out a $400 boat with no cowling cover on the outboard, like the feckless stoners we were, and had taken a wave in the carb. I'd named the boat, presciently, Danger Will Robinson.

They didn't recognize us, and were nice enough to haul us back to the Landings Marina. The tow rope was about twenty feet long, and periodically they'd ask us if we wanted a beer. Then they'd fire one like Roger Fucking Clemens straight at our heads, just for fun. We finally knocked one down into the boat, but it was a foamed catastrophe, unfit for consumption. These guys also had their women with them, and every so often one of the girls would lift up her T shirt and show us her breasts while her man would squeeze them and yell "How 'bout these fuckers, huh, boys?!?" through a gap-toothed grin. They liked my lab Prudence, and made us let her ride with them. They didn't squeeze her tits, thank Bejus, but you could tell they wanted to.

When we finally pulled in to the marina, with all the preppies hanging around the harbor in their Izods and Sperrys, we were thankful but, to be honest, a little chagrined to be rescued by these hallooing ruffians. Then, right as we got alongside the pier, one of the girlfriends dropped her Daisy Dukes and pissed about a quart of beer right off the side of the boat, in front of a hundred people, most of whom we knew.

Crabbers. If they don't kill you they can be quite entertaining.