July 1: Deep water set

Deep water sets are very difficult. This one was just after midnight. The Fish and Game people try to give us openings so that set netters who fish in the traditional locations (along our beach, for example) can set nets on foot. But the tidebook is just an estimate, and Fish and Game can only estimate conditions when they decide on an opening for us. And the openings are very strict - the fines are steep if we "fish in closed waters" even if they'll be open waters in 2 minutes. The fine used to be $1500, the guilty gear, the fish in it, and a demerit on the guilty permit. With enough demerits in a few years, that permit must sit out a whole season.

When the wind is strong, pushing the tide along, it rises faster. I think I wasn't the only one taking water over the waders, but I ended up with a cold boot full. (The drysuit is in semi-retirement because of not being able to open the broken zipper at the end of the tide.) In deep water, the Ambi is very hard to control on foot and the big bow acts like a sail in the wind. Nevertheless, wet and bedraggled, we got it set. I had some untangling to do at the inside end of the net and told Chris to jump into the boat and drive it (how do these guys jump into a boat that is far over their heads, through water and in full gear?) Jeff and Evan also jumped in but I'm, uh... vertically challenged. They tried to haul me in, but I was packing a few extra pounds in my boots and I'm not sure whether they couldn't find something to grab and haul me in by, or were just too polite to do it. So I hung on the outside of the boat with Chris driving toward shore in the hopes that we would get in shallow enough water so that I could help with a little jump.

Then we went to check on everyone else. The Bathtub had successfully set and was heading to the inside site, but David and Sarah were in trouble trying to set out of the Grayling. The current had pushed them too fast, they couldn't catch the buoy, and the 25 HP outboard was no match for the wind and current, especially with the net filling up with fish.

We got to them and David, an excellent skiff pilot, jumped in and tried to save the set. Couldn't be done so we just roundhauled it, picked out the 1600 lbs or so from it and tried to reset it.

Argh.

In a deep water set, the 50' anchor lines allow the target buoy to sit 50' away from where it is needed to reach the end of the net. So we need either extra line or some way to hold the buoy or both. Also, the 50' of anchor line is a downright hazard to the outboard. We had the net stacked to set (it whips out of the boat fast, before the current has a chance to sweep us away from the target buoy), and were getting it attached to the buoy while David was maneuvering the boat so it would be pointing in the right direction. Don't forget that this is in very strong winds, a very fast current, bitter cold, new moon, and dead of night with the cloud cover blocking out any residual light from the sun. Oh, and a fog set it. Sheesh.

So I was gathering in the cable anchor lines, trying to keep them out of the prop as David positioned and we were ready to run so I let them out and clunk! We wrapped a buoy line.

Unwrapping a line is very difficult because it anchors us by the outboard, turning us stern to the weather, and to reach the wrap to untangle it, the outboard must be lifted out of the water. But lifting puts it too far away from the boat to just lean over and clear it. So we have to do some complicated positioning to keep legs in the boat, stretching upper body and arms to the end of the outboard to negotiate the line wrapped around the prop - in the wrong direction, of course, for easy removal. Did it. Started over and clunk! This time we got the anchor line. A harder problem to solve. This time David and I were both hanging out of the boat with crew members hanging on to us to keep us from falling all the way out. My gloves were full of water because of how far I had to reach to try to free the anchor line. We must have struggled with it for 30 minutes. At one point, David was ready to climb on the raised outboard like a horse to get closer to the prop. Aieee - if he fell, we wouldn't have any way to go retrieve him because we were caught by the anchor line. Finally, he suggested disconnecting the net, which was still in the boat, from the anchor line (great idea - I should have thought of it - David has an extraordinarily creative mind, even under stress. Mine tends to suggest "work harder; try again.") That gave us the slack we needed and we were free.

On the third try, we made it, needed to add only about 5' of extra line to connect the end of the net with the target buoy.

Soaking wet and cold. Still quite a bit of work to do, so we went through the remaining nets that the Bathtub crew hadn't covered yet and delivered at about high water.

We came in for an hour or so - I thought I would never be warm again and excused myself from the ebb pick (on the promise that they would call me if there were a lot of fish). We ended up with about 7500 lbs for the tide. I got a couple extra hours of sleep, time to start a big pot roast for the crew... and time to catch up on the blog. That also showed me that we can start sleeping out 2 crew members at a time for half a tide. No one is complaining, but they have to be tired. Hugh is the king of sleep - given a 15 minute period when he's not active, he'll fall asleep.