June 23: First emergency period announcement

This was probably our last day of pure preparation. It felt luxurious. I didn't tune into how hard it is to prepare and fully fish two tides a day at the same time. It's hard to figure out when to sleep. Setnetters often don't fish the flood and instead just come out on the ebb. This is especially true when fishing is slow. The effect of tying down our leadlines is that it creates a basket that holds anything that's loose, including loose fish. (Also including flounders, tundra, garbage, floaters, and more.) Because I feel like we're asking fish to come to our nets to become someone's dinner, I think our part of the deal is to be there to help move them along their way to those dinner plates immediately, respectfully, and carefully. Part of that is being out there early in the tide, before the fish get beat up in the net and before the net turns inside out, dumping its contents. So as soon as we start tying down the leads, we fish the flood.

The effect of that, though, is that even when there aren't many fish, we have only 5 or 6 hours between tides, and maybe 1 1/2 hours between flood and ebb pick. If we're trying to finish preparations, one of those 5 or 6 hour windows is the logical time to do it, but that leaves only the other 5 or 6 hours for sleeping. And that wears on a person after a while.

But I think today will be the last day of preparations. Roger, Hugh, Chris, Jeff, and Trevor went into town to finish getting the New Boat ready. Yin also went in and, brave woman that she is, she took everyone's laundry.

The gas tank came in for its power roller (sans gas cap and hardware) ... and it's the right one! Roy suggested using a thread chaser to rethread the bolts... and they were given the wrong size, so they needed to get new size nuts (and it was dinner time), but that was the only snag. Roger installed the fuel filter earlier in the day and it works (yay). And now, assuming that is easy enough to get the new size nuts to hold on the gas tank, they'll wrap that up in time for Josh and Evan to bring the boat down to the site so we'll
have it for the first emergency period opening, which is Friday from 6 am to 6 pm. I hope I'll soon have a photo of the New Boat anchored out here in front of our sites. Meanwhile, here is a photo of my cabin: the crew Internet cafe. This is 1/2 of today's town contingent, Roger, Chris, and Hugh (without the head - sorry about that!) and the baked loaves of bread.

While they mechanically inclined were in town, I cooked ham and bean soup, baked bread and made cinnamon rolls, and the rest of the crew straightened up the crew cabin. Even the counters! It felt decadently cozy.

End of day update: no New Boat yet. They were launched at 9 or 9:30 tonight. At about 10, I began to worry and called the beach boss to see when they were launched. About a half hour ago, he told me. I took the four wheeler along the beach looking for them in the water and most of the way there, I was picking my way across the strip of rocky beach not covered by the incoming tide and called back to the cabin to see if they had slipped past me and already arrived at the cabin. Roger said no, but while we were talking, another call came in from the beach boss' phone - it was Josh. They couldn't get the New Boat started. That was a surprise as the town crew had had it running. So I proceeded on into AGS and found them tying up to the dock. I saw that the fittings on the fuel filter were loose and the hose clamps were falling off. I tightened up what I could (I feel like I've done a day's work when I can't get the gas smell off my hands)... and it still wouldn't start. Too bad I don't know what I'm doing. Roy.