July 16: Lucky Extremes

It is late and the Internet is spotty so this will be brief. Such a good day! Such a stressful day!

It started off hot again today, with beautiful blue skies and ended with pelting rain and thunder and lightning storm. Lucky for us, most of our work was in the beautiful blue sky part of the day. Here is the Grayling, moved down to the dock by forklift, just about ready to launch - in the bright sun.

When we went into town today, we brought with our gear in case we were able to bring the skiffs down to the sites. We still had the antenna to install in the Ambi, some grinding to do in the Bathtub, and its powerpack probably to replace. And drive to King Salmon to pick up my lovely niece who was scheduled to arrive today at 12:17. A pretty short list.

The roller and its powerpack hadn’t made it down to Roy by the time we arrived, so the first thing we did was ask one of the fork lift drivers to take it to him. Then we spread out to different assignments. Here is Evan grinding away the sharp edges from KC's welds yesterday - the edges that will catch the net.



Here are Jeff and Roger battling with the antenna and the radio. Roger was running after the Ambi with a soldering gun in hand to get the last bits connected on the antenna before it was launched. We decided that he might as well wait until we got it back to the cabin. We're not sure what Jeff is doing in this photo - I thought it looked like a yoga pose, but Chris thought it looked like he was about to put his foot in Roger's back and shove him overboard, "Goodbye, Roger!"


Chris and Jake are supervising as Patrick gasses up the New Boat - after all, he is the New Guy and pouring in gas can be tricky.







Then I headed down to the lower level where the Port Engineer's shop is (among many other interesting aspects of the plant, like the fish processing place, the boat launching place, the racks where they hold the nets, and the stock room). I was surprised to see Roy already working on the powerpack and astounded when he pulled the cord and it ran - purred, really. I continue to think Roy's capacity for making things works deserves to be called genius and I really mean it. I thought that this powerpack was beyond even him. But he didn't have it for more than 30 minutes and it was purring for him. It takes a village - with a gifted Port Engineer - to get us to the place where we can harvest these salmon.


With that, we could be ready to launch very shortly. With that confidence, I asked Guy (here in the crane) if we could get in line to launch, thinking he would put us in at the end of the tide in a few hours, launching the big drift boats first - they need a lot more water than we do. But he asked if we are ready now? My view is that unless the answer is a definite "no," when there's a chance to get into those slings, the answer is "yes" and we'll figure out the details later if we need to.

Knowing that the New Boat was all ready (forgetting that we had planned to put in a new picking light), I asked them to take that one first, buying a little time to get the roller and powerpack installed in the Bathtub, the antenna completed on the Ambi, and the nets into the boats as needed. Here is the New Boat in the water with Evan climbing down to crew it. Jeff is already at the helm. Turn the key and... nothing. What?? Nothing. I climbed down to see if maybe something was switched off... but nothing. One of the beach gang guys came down and diagnosed a dead battery. How enormously embarrassing. They were intending to slip our skiffs into a small slot and... a dead battery. Louie, one of the beach gang guys - the one I'm talking to in the photo above - ran to the stock room to get a replacement battery. It didn't have the attachments with the post and the wing nut for wires to attach to, which were integrated into the dead battery. So he had to run back to the stock room for those. Argh.

With a fresh battery, they started it up and headed out to the river to wait for the next boat. The next three launched and got out of the way without a hitch - Jake running the Grayling, Chris and Roger in the Bathtub, and Patrick and me in the Ambi. Maeve and Trevor went to King Salmon to get Makenzie. I'm so glad Maeve came to town with us, otherwise, I'm not sure how we would have managed. We all love having her here - not only is she keeping us fed well and rolling, she is funny and smart. Doesn't like to go fast, though. And Trevor got on his boat this afternoon, after coming back to town with me to help me get the nets that didn't make it to the boat. He will be on The Yukon fishing for Peter Pan out of Nornak. It is a huge boat - they could have dances on it!

The antenna wasn't quite finished in the Ambi, so its battery box wasn't closed and its powerpack wasn't bolted down. The wind had kicked up so even though we still had blue sky, it was a very rough ride. Patrick skippered it well. The other three boats were anchored to their buoys, and the Ambi was anchored closer in because it needed to receive nets (one of the steps that was abandoned in pursuit of an immediate launch). After the tide went out, Roger went out to finish up the radio, and we were able to drive the truck to the boat to load in the nets we'll be needing. The only thing is that by then we had been having intermittent thunder and lightning storms. Those are very rare here.

This has been a strange year so far - monster agate, ready with a little time to spare, weather that is hotter than usual and lightning storms - on the same day, and Patrick found a dead whole crab on the beach... we don't get crabs here.

Finishing up a few last minute things on the buoys, we discovered that the powerpack on the Bathtub lost one of its hoses and spilled hydraulic fluid all over the hull of the Bathtub (thank you Roy for providing us with food grade hydraulic fluid!!). And the Ambi's outboard will go down using the control on the throttle... but not up. That could be awkward. And we're not yet sure that the radio works. So we still have a little work to do, but if we had to fish tomorrow, we could. That is a great feeling. And on Monday, some time after 9 AM, we will. This is a terrific crew.