As we came in from the morning (afternoon?) flood pick, I was luxuriating in my dry feet. For two tides in a row, my feet have been dry. It occurred to me that although there is much to recommend the big blessings, like a great tide or being able to come up fishing at all, those small blessings are so much more delicious to count. The fit so snugly between life's many and varied challenges, nice little cushions between life's bone-jarring events. Dry feet on a cold day definitely falls into that category. Two tides in a row? Heavenly. Add to that not swamping the boat when we delivered our fish and it feels like a banquet of blessings.
Related to that, here is a photo of my accessories closet, Alaska style. You'll
notice two somewhat goofy but decidedly warm hats, three pairs of poly propylene glove liners, a pair of wool socks, and a pair of Sorel boot liners. Most of these had been drenched and were here to dry. The dog-ear hat was just mildew-y, not that that stopped me putting it on my head for the warmth it offered. I foolishly went out to the boat this morning with the idea that it was warmer now. And it was. Right up until I felt the wind blow. Not so warm. So I dug this hat out of the dry box where it had stayed over the winter. It smelled like mildew, but my head was cold. We had an adventure on last night's tide, but I'm happy to say that it didn't involve swamping. David and I went out in the little foldaboat at about 2 am to bring in the Ambi to pick everyone up. The wind had died down a lot from the previous tide (which seems like a week ago). But our plan was to come in by the running line, collect everyone, and pull out on the running line until the water was deep enough to confidently put the outboard down. It's more important to get ourselves out good and deep when the wind is strong and the waves are high because even if the water is waist deep, when a big wave stands the skiff on its stern, the bottom of the outboard extends much deeper in the water than when the water is still. However, the running line (or pull out line) is a nice, controlled way of getting the boat deep enough to run, regardless of weather.
We have that little outboard on the foldaboat and David is able to use the force when he operates outboards. He was confident that we could just run over the neighbor's net, lifting the outboard out of the water when crossing it, to avoid tangling the prop with the web. It worked. But I still worried when it was time to pass over our net. I was sure we had anchored the Ambi on the other side of our inside site, so I was confused when we didn't have to lift the outboard to skate over the corks and the web. Hmmmm.
When we got to the beach, we understood. The beach crew had gone to the running line, and found only about 30' of running line, with a mangled end. Rope forensics experts that we are, we recognized the work of a truck crossing over the running line, lifted up by the incoming tide. Caught, pulled, and cut. Dang. After the running line lets go, the next thing that happens is that the current pulls the net and running line, still affixed to the outside anchor, so it flags down current from its remaining anchorage point. Indeed, there was our flagging net. Of course, it was pitch black out.
We knew it would be quite difficult to fix it in this current, in this high tide, in the dark. The most reasonable thing for us to do was to pick it up and reset it on the falling tide. But we didn't have to pick it up immediately.
So we picked through our outside site first, then decided to pick through the flagging net, even though we'd be going sideways to do it. (Since it was dark, this wasn't likely to be as disorienting as it could have been.) Then, staying on the end of the net, Hugh pulled in the extra running line that continued down current. With all that tucked into the boat, we decided to motor into the current and onto the net and running line so that Sarah would pull the running line into the Ambi's middle bin while Evan and Hugh pulled the net into the front bin, up to the buoy. It worked smoothly. David made the excellent suggestion of storing it all in the Grayling, which we did.
We then came in for the rest of the flood and waited till part way through the ebb (and light) to go back out... about 6 am. After picking the few ebb fish and delivering, we were able to reset and repair the running line (yet another splice in the poor old line), and then reset the net - as it turns out, for the last time this season.
Today at noon we got the announcement that as of 6 am today 1.1 million sockeye had made it up the Naknek river to spawn (these are the salmon we'll see the bears catching on the falls at Katmai) and 2 million have made it up the Kvichak, with another 150,000 below the tower but beyond the reach of nets. (These are the salmon or the ancestors of the salmon that are imperiled by the proposed Pebble Mine project.) Because both systems have reached their minimum escapement goals, fishing has been extended for set nets until Monday, July 18 when the fall fishing schedule starts. That schedule is from 9 am Monday until 9 am Friday. So we'll fish continuously until Thursday night's tide, on July 21. Then we'll pick up, pack up, and go visit the bears (with me hoping they don't come to visit us first).
Jake mentioned that he saw bear tracks by our wash down faucet - they had to have been made between 4:20 am when we came in from the flood pick and 6 am when we went back out for the ebb. The crew was saying the front part of the print was the size of Jeff's foot - Jeff said it was the size of his head. I think we have the company of a large bear. It is my hope that we don't get to discover the details of this particular creature.
It is the end of the day now. We're trying to go to bed, but the sunset isn't letting us. How can we be expected to close our eyes when this is out there for us to appreciate. The skiffs are our Grayling on the left and the Hakkinen's skiff on the right. David plans to take the Grayling in tomorrow to have it lifted out and put up for the season. This is definitely not my favorite part of the season. But it's hard to beat the sunsets. And as much as I appreciate the cozy small blessings, dry feet can seem like quite a small pleasure compared to the glory of a sunset. This last one is from Sarah. She was taking photos of the irresistible sunset too,
and then turned around to go back to the cabin she and David are sharing with Jake and Evan. The plywood was getting ready to give up and we had planned to skin it over with tin. But we couldn't find any, so we went with flashing and it has since been called a number of things - beer can, space hut - I think this photo proves that it's the moon cabin.
No comments:
Post a Comment