The clam feast

Once a year we brave the cold water to go out to the clam beds and this year it is rumored that too many people have taken too many clams and there are very few to be had.

January 7th is an incredible day for January; about 75 degrees and completely calm with no wind expected for the rest of the day.

Four of us load in an inflatable dingy with an old Sears Elgin outboard which hadn’t seen much service in the past decade. Still it starts up without problem and seemed to run well.

Clamming has been part of this area’s culture for hundreds of years and it is obvious by the mountains of clam shells which line the shore. Many of the varieties of clams are no longer found because they have been over harvested to extinction.

Other clams like the chocolate, scallops, oysters and conch snails, are rare and are being depleted in spite of restrictive laws.

The clams we were looking for are the small steamers about one and half to two inches across.

The timing has to be precise. The best clamming day is one where the tide is at its ultimate low in mid day, and this was the case on January 7.

We didn’t tell anyone else we were going clamming. That would be bad luck and if we didn’t get any clams, the laugh would be on us.

We have all the clamming gear. Net orange bags, pronged forks and a big bucket.

The little outboard scoots us out about a mile from shore to a place called Pelican Reef. It is not much of a reef but just big enough for birds to stand on and fish.

The water is less than knee deep and the first person out of the boat shouts she has several clams on the first try. They are so abundant that each try brings up a handful, some to small to keep, but others fill the bags fast.

Within 20 minutes we have all the clams we can eat and someone shouted “That’s enough!”

We try not to take more than we need for a dinner because we worry we will deplete even these small steamers.

On our way back to shore, the little Elgin hiccups and dies. We are three quarters of a mile out to sea and the motor is dead. It is time to row, however, rowing an inflatable dinghy is harder than a rowboat.

The oars are short and two people pulling seemed to send the boat into circles. We opt for taking the oars out of the locks and using them as paddles. This work as well as can be expected and in a half hour we were back home with our bucket of clams.

Now we can invite other guests and we did. Three other beach people are the first we meet and they get invited.

Fresh French bread is baked and butter with crushed garlic is melted. Throw together a fresh salad and the clams go into two steamers waiting on the stove.

The clams can not taste better. No one goes hungry and at the end of the meal everyone is rubbing their tummy.

Life on the beach gets no better than this.