PORT ANGELES — Don and Patricia Galvanin exited the John L. Scott Crab Central pavilion Saturday each with a toothpick sticking out of their mouths.
The University Place couple made the trip to Port Angeles to get a load of the harvest at the fourth annual Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival at City Pier.
The event runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.
Admission is free.
They heard about the festival in a AAA travel guide, Patricia Galvanin said, and skipped the Grab-A-Crab Derby to concentrate on eating crab, rather than catching them.
“We went for the sure thing,” Galvanin said.
But the derby was clearly one of the more popular events at the festival, said Curtis Beus, a volunteer who helped coordinate the derby, which saw people dangling snares in giant cauldrons filled with crab.
The line snaked out into the middle of the central courtyard on the pier.
In the past, the derby had people trapping crabs in Port Angeles Harbor. But the new, more user-friendly derby has proven a success.
“We’ll probably never go back to the harbor derby,” he said.
Scott Nagel, festival executive director, said the 50 arts and craft vendors, eight restaurants and eight non-profits with kiosks helped to make the fourth festival the most well attended.
Organizers are hoping the festival will draw 10,000 people over the weekend, he said.