Crabbing in the Swan River

Early Sunday morning my son Martin went with his friend Ian into the swan River to catch some crabs.  Ian has a nice boat, but they weren’t too successful, catching only  a dozen decent sized crabs.  They were expensive crabs...fuel for the big outboard engine and some collateral damage to a trailer wheel bearing.  They barely made it back home here before one of the wheels made an attempt to fall off.

                        Martin with the male Blue Manna crabs

The boat was parked on my driveway and we commenced removing the bits that were left of the wheel bearing.  It took some time to determine the correct replacement bearing and when one was sourced we found that the wheel hub was severely damaged by the broken bearing bits and a complete new hub, seals and bearings had to be sourced.  All better now, but whilst that wheel was jacked up I spun No. 3 wheel and it too made an expensive rumbling noise.  The boat was towed to its home very carefully.  Haven’t heard whether that wheel survived the trip.  This was all a good lesson for me as I was considering buying another boat.   Forget the address!

I cooked the crabs and one of them was bold enough to reach out of the pot and try and turn the gas off.  We ate him first.

Good news, Martin has just been successful in his application for a hotel maintenance man.  He will have to brush up his skills in tiling, tap washer replacement etc etc.