Pre-season June 19, Day 20

Today is Bob's birthday! We'll have carrot cake tonight.

Getting things done here requires so much flexibility - it's like racing with your left wrist tied to your right ankle. It turns out that we have no GCI phone reception on the beach. With Bristol Bay cellular, at least we have some. Eddie Clark mentioned a "bag" phone. I'm not sure what that is, but he says that its reception is great. Lolly says that it must be tied to AC power, so it can't go in the boat. At this point, having a phone in the boat seems like a luxury when we have a VHF radio. I ended up canceling the GCI contract today - it really isn't very useful if it has no reception at the beach. Maybe next year.

The throttle cable for the Honda outboard worries me. So I went to the AGS parts room to see if they could order one. But they needed information that's on the cable or the throttle apparatus and that's in the boat, down the beach, out in the mud. So I tried Charlie's Sport Shop in King Salmon and they're down one person and all around swamped so no one was able to answer the phone. I tried to call again when I got back to the cabin, but it's so hard when the reception is so spotty. But eventually I understood that it would take them 2 weeks to order it for me, so that isn't a good way to go. So I tried to call Bayside Marine in Everett where be bought the outboard in the first place... and the call dropped. Tried back - each time it takes a calling card - and didn't dial fast enough so ATT ended the call. Tried an email and then decided to try again. Got them! Many repeated questions and answers later, they could find the old invoice! They knew the cable type and length! Many more repetitions later, along with despair that the call had probably dropped (it hadn't - it was just a low spot in the transmission waves, I guess), we decided to have it shipped to my house in Seattle so my sister can pick it up as she swings through from Micronesia on her way up to join the crew on Wednesday night/ Thursday morning. So we should have a new throttle cable by Thursday afternoon.

I still feel like we're almost ready, despite today's realization that one skiff is dicey because of the throttle cable, another because of the carburetor for the roller's power pack, and the third (I hope) because of a faulty fuel hose connection. That just leaves our little 16' Grayling skiff with the outboard that pretty much runs fast or not at all.

I love it here, but the only thing easy about it is the breathing. That's a lot.

The crew went to set up the nets in the boats for setting on Monday at 9 am. We'll have quite a bit of water then, so it'll be a deep water set, meaning that we won't be able to have someone standing at the inside buoy holding it as we walk the skiff toward it, trailing the net out the side as we go. It's not a sexy way to set, but it's steady, the net gets set without problems, and no one gets hurt. But on Monday at 9 am the water will be too deep for anyone to be outside the boat pushing it along; we'll need to use the outboard. The risk with that is getting web in the prop. A very bad situation. But Monday will be a good day to practice that, just in case we need to do it when the fishing is heavy. We may use an anchor - run from the outside buoy toward the inside buoy with no intention of catching it and when we run out of net, toss out an anchor. Then at slack water (when the tide is high and not pulling the net one way or the other as it prepares to start going out), we can pick up the anchor and connect the buoy to the net until Wednesday at 9 am when we are required to pick the nets up.

The report from the crew when they returned from working with the boats was that the throttle in the Ambi has given up entirely. Glad I ordered the new cable today. In the unlikely event that the fishing will be heavy before Thursday when Trina arrives, we'll be able to tow the Ambi to one net and have part of the crew just go back and forth under that net. Then the Bathtub and the Grayling will cover the three other nets. (I was able to get the Yamaha fitting for the fuel line for the Bathtub. Bob looked at the old fitting and could see why it wasn't working. He put on the new end and after the second try, it seems to work. One down.)

After carrot cake, we headed into town to go dancing at the Red Dog. Of course, it was a blast. I even washed my hair for the occasion. Makenzie, Ev and Tony met us there. Wendy Lee and Todd were in fine form. It was a wonderful night.