June 15: No one is replaceable

Roger and I had an interesting conversation - surprising considering how tired we all were. We were talking about missing Josh this year and his job as an intern as an able bodied seaman on a NOAA ship. Josh was astonished at how easy that work is, compared with what we do. It got me to thinking about how hard jobs are that make the person in the job conform to the shape of the job, rather than the job adjusting to accommodate the shape of the person. I think only the latter type of job requires and allows the person to be completely engaged. I began thinking then that when we need to advertise for crew, we should advertise as one of the rare jobs around where it is very important how each person actually contributes. We can't replace Josh. We can't replace Hugh. Who they are as individuals was important to how our "fishing machine" worked. With them on to other pursuits, we now have Patrick and Maeve, which makes it a different "fishing machine" because what each person contributes is important. We all swap around and do different jobs, but we are not interchangeable and we are not replaceable. I think that's a very good thing about this work. It's part of what I love.

I thought about starting with: What kind of day is it when having your boat fall off the fork lift is not the most notable thing that happened. It was even more important to me that our beloved fork lift driver (who had just given me a pair of rabbit slippers for my birthday) said that he was glad that if he was going to drop someone's boat, it was mine. I know that doesn't sound good, but it is. He meant it in the best way and right after he said it, he realized the other way it sounded. And no harm was done - it's a good boat, and a good outboard. This is a photo of Big Brad and his Giant Forklift. It's a Gehl and one of those is on my shopping lift. They are really handy and Brad is always helping us anything he can and he is a maestro on the forklift.

Today was another very long and hot day in town. (Roger agreed to go fold clothes to get out of the sun for a while.) I find town days stressful - just being around all that bustle and buzz is hard, contributing to it makes it even harder. I started pointing toward home after about 7 or 8 hours, but we persevered for another 4, with the last hour spent waiting for the clothes to finish drying. That was a long hour. Each year we have to re-learn which dryer doesn't have heat. We must remember to use that dryer only for our delicates...

Much progress today; the boats are almost ready to launch. We talked about making a checklist - I'm going to ask the crew to help me put one together. Especially for new crew, it's hard to figure out how to help. This crew wants to help and they aren't afraid of working. They just don't always know what to do or how to do it. And honestly, I'm always afraid that I'm going to forget to put the plug in the boats. Checklist. Here are Roger and Jeff, just putting the Grayling together - and without a roller, lights, or radio, that one is pretty simple.

One of the first and somehow particularly encouraging accomplishments was to repaint the numbers. Patrick and Jake picked out the colors (they were going for orange and blue, but settled for yellow and black) and I love the yellow. They did the beautiful paint job you can see here. The Grayling is the only boat that didn't get one. Maybe we need to do something for it so we can easily recognize the boats in our "fleet." I think this is a beautiful photo - Patrick took it and many of the others here, when I asked him to chronicle our efforts.

The checklist will be long - it involves the many steps of getting the outboard on and going, getting the powerpack for the hydraulic roller running with confidence and both the powerpack and the rollers placed. We found one anchor not yet tied off, which would be quite a surprise to the person who throws the anchor out of the boat only to see it drop irretrievably into the depths followed by... now what? It's crucial to have a way to stop in a boat. (And speaking of having a way to stop... the Red Truck now has brakes. Yay! Just front brakes, but they will do. It doesn't stop fast, but that's OK because I usually drive slowly, and now everyone else will too.) Roger did a lot of work with the intricacies of lights, radio, antenna on the Ambi.

Jeff spent a lot of time with the powerpack for the Bathtub, but it may be beyond hope - perhaps no compression. Roy thought we might have to consign it parts, which he said with a straight face, looking right at it. I'm not sure which parts he was thinking were salvageable... but he is known for his miracles.

And this one is Trevor and Jake (in the tube top he wears on his head, as a beanie, a scarf, a ninja hat, a headband, and a Lawrence of Arabia type thing) trying to keep the steering arm on the Yamaha that powers the Bathtub.

The final big event today goes to Trevor... who got a job on a boat fishing for Peter Pan out of Nornak just a few miles away. They'll fish in the Naknek district on a very big boat - Trevor, a very big person, says he gets a queen-sized bed, a nice change after the tiny bunk he squeezed into on Mario's boat last year. He doesn't know much about his crew this year, but there are four people on the crew and two are a father and his 19 year old son.

Tomorrow: back to town to finish off the last things on the boats (and pay more attention to what Evan and Chris are doing, and get pictures of them)... and bring them down the beach, ready to fish two tides a day, starting Monday!

PS - I woke up this morning remembering Evan grinding faithfully on the welds that needed to be repaired on the new boat. I so wish I'd gotten a photo of that. What we get pictures of is so much a function of when we have the camera handy. But we have more grinding to do today and I think the experienced man should tackle it... When I asked Chris what he did yesterday, he said, "Nothing." Uh huh. Trevor remembered that he did laundry. Uh huh.