Delmarva Drives

On the Road with Fran Severn

If Hurricane Earl cooperates and moves quickly past us while staying out to sea, it will be great weather for the annual Hard Crab Derby in Crisfield and the Skipjack Race on Deal Island this weekend.

For me, these two events define the Eastern Shore. It’s not just that these two icons of the Chesapeake are being celebrated. It’s also that it’s happening at the places and by the people where they belong. To borrow a term from the organic food world, these celebrations are ‘heirloom.’ No outside management firm staging a commercial show, no big ad campaign, no corporation co-opting the identity, no headline music groups putting on a concert that has nothing to do with the event. Nope. It’s all done by local volunteers by and for their community. That hometown vibe envelopes the visitors. If you care enough to make the trip, you are welcome at the party.

The Crab Derby is pure fun. If you’ve ever dreamt of owning and training a fine racing animal, here’s your chance. For a small fee, you pick a crab from a bushel freshly caught that morning, name it, and enter it in the races. The watermen daub the racing number on the carapace before putting it into another basket. Done. Having spent as much as two days wading through the paperwork of major horse shows, this is the way it ought to be. 

The Governor’s Cup, featuring crabs sponsored by the Chief Executives of other states is at 2:00. Every now and then, someone tries to slip in a ringer, like the time the Alaskans shipped in a king crab, figuring that the sheer size of it would create an advantage. But it couldn’t fit into the starting gate and was eliminated.

But that’s like the preliminary races on Preakness Day. The big event starts on Saturday at 2:30.        Heats are ‘run’ on a large platform that’s slightly angled to give the crabs some incentive to slide, walk, and crawl to the bottom. If you remember the Smother’s Brothers, you’ll be singing the chorus of “Crabs Walk Sideways,” a song about unrequited love between a crab and a lobster. You’ll also be listening to a lot of good-humored insults the local watermen toss at each other regarding the quality and abilities of their respective entries. 

After that, you can watch fingers fly as the professional crab pickers show just how quickly someone can scrape every scrap of sweet meat from a cooked crustacean.

Rumor has it the losers of each heat end up here after a rendezvous with a steamer and Old Bay, but that’s not the case. Local crabbers haul up crabs with their racing number still visible until their next molting.

  The 50th annual Skipjack Race is Labor Day morning at Deal Island. If there is anything more elegant than a skipjack gracing the Bay with her presence, let me know. Seeing just one is a gift; seeing a small fleet of them is a treasure. It’s a whisper of the Bay’s history, remembering when hundreds of the sleek schooners harvested the bounty of the Chesapeake. The day starts with the Blessing of the Fleet at 8:30, followed by the race at 9:30. It doesn’t last long. The schedule says by 10 o’clock or so, the skipjacks will be returning to the dock.

There will be other contests at both places: skiff races, arm wrestling, boat docking and a swim race, as well as all of the other events that go along with the last big party of the summer. But those are sideshows. The weekend – and the Bay—belong to the blue crab and skipjack.

Photos: Skipjack, State of Maryland; Crab Derby and Picker, Crisfield Times; Graphic, Native Son Seafood

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/01/10 at 05:50 PM

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