Pre-season June 18, Day 19

How I hope that this will be the last long day in town until the end of the season. Todd from Alpha called to let us know that the skiff is ready!! Yippee!! That was really fast. So we scampered into town, swapped the red truck for the white truck with the trailer hitch and went to get it. It's kind of scary dragging that big boat around.

We got it back to the cannery and began its preparations. Water (track down Brad for the adapter for the firehose), test the outboard (check), install the plugs (check), test the power roller (check sort of - the power pack works and the roller works, but the throttle on the power pack moves but doesn't affect the speed of the engine. Maybe it's just stiff?), tie offs, bailing bucket, and other accessories (check, check, check). Better ask Roy to take a look at the power pack.

While waiting for the time to get into the water, Bob and I went to get some ... uh... refreshments for the beach gang so they'll feel like bringing us some lumber, some of which we'll scavenge for the walkways and miscellaneous hillbilly building projects. While there, we noticed that the GCI guy was in so we went and both signed up for a phone, which apparently does not get any reception on the beach. Now we know that.

I went back to the cannery expecting to pick up Erik's laptop and Josh's backpack... but I found Erik, Josh, and Paul - Roy looked at the carburetor on the roller's powerpack and it won't do. Must order a new one. It'll take a couple of days... starting Monday. Sigh. Oh well, we need to change out that hydraulic oil anyhow. We'll just do it at the one speed that the engine runs.

When we got back to the cabins, we found that Jake and Chris had built me a structure to house the composting toilet. I was beginning to consider just putting it on the tundra someplace with a tarp that I could crawl under - who needs a whole separate room? But the crew was very responsive to my request. And Jeff began the installation of the toilet today too.

Liz