July 3: Another one?

I was so excited about the prospect of a full night's sleep (and with concerns about a running set in the morning) that I couldn't sleep. So I thought I'd read a little and a little after midnight, I thought I heard a knocking????

Again, some drift fishermen wanted to travel the beach on top of the high tide, and again, they got stuck. They were a little frantic, hoping that I could use the truck to tow them out. I went down with them to get a look at the situation and saw several things:
1) even if I could get them out, like the truck a few days earlier, they would just get stuck again;
2) the tide had pretty thoroughly undermined the sand between where my truck was parked and where their rig was stuck. That means that if I tried to use the truck to pull them out, I would very likely get stuck myself trying;
3) the tide was already high and it wasn't going to get worse for them. If they weren't stuck to their axles, the water wouldn't have washed the underside of their rig - their engine parts were safe. Really, they were just stuck and it looked much worse than it really was. But they were very stressed and not thinking clearly. Their main problem was that they needed to get to their boat about 5 miles away so they could get out on the night tide so they would be in a position to fish the morning opener. Their secondary problem was that they needed to get their truck safely put up somewhere. I know their buyer so I knew who (else) they needed to get out of bed at 12:30 am for help.

On the other hand, I really know how it feels to fear that your truck is about to be eaten by Bristol Bay and all that that means. So we did try to help them. I went to the crew cabin and asked Josh, Jeff, and Rohan to wake up to help these frantic men. We all know that it could be us. Maybe not trying to go down the beach at high water, but something else. I thought Josh could pull with the Friendly Ranger, I would use the Killer Ranger and Jeff and Rohan could each pull with a four-wheeler. The Killer Ranger wouldn't run so we were down to just the other three. But it didn't work. The thing was that it didn't really matter whether it worked or not as long as they got to their boat and someone retrieved their vehicle.

Finally, I was able to convince them of the wisdom of just letting Rohan and Jeff give them a ride to the cannery where they could wake up the very kind drift fleet manager who would very likely take them to town or possibly get them a cab.

I had a terrible time getting to sleep - it required a cup of chamomile tea and two chapters of my book. When I did sleep, I dreamed about trying to set a net in a waterfall. Argh.

By 7 am, their rig was gone. All was well for them.

As it turned out, the lost sleep was completely for naught. It was an easy push set. We had a little more than 1000 lbs in each boat on the flood. We came in as we waited for the tide to turn and I used the opportunity to do the dishes in my cabin (for the first time since since my birthday a couple of weeks earlier - euwww) and became inspired to bake bread. So the rest of the crew went out on the ebb to clear out those fish and pick up the nets, while I baked complete protein bread, complete protein cinnamon rolls (ok, so maybe protein isn't their most prominent feature), and complete protein maple bars.

Jake arrived!!! Somehow, he adds so much warmth - I think we were all happy to see him. We set tomorrow at 9 am. I believe that the Yamaha outboard on the New Boat may not be recoverable.