June 9: Eddie drops in

Literally. That wasn't the only thing that happened today, but it was a good thing. He's a pilot and I think he spends more time in the air than on the ground. When he's in the neighborhood, he says hello by buzzing the cabin. When I came outside to say hello back, he was returning for a second pass. He was so low the the ground, I was surprised he didn't take out the clothesline. James Bond probably could have jumped aboard.



I took that opportunity to continue on over to the cliff to see how high the tide came after I got a picture of it at 8 (yep, I slept in my long johns so I could make myself get out of bed into the cold for the picture). The first photo is from a few steps down the stairs at 8 - the tide wasn't quite high yet, but almost. It wasn't as high as yesterday and had no wind behind it, but much higher than the same tide height last year. Anything left down there would have been in trouble. Looking down toward Pedersen Point in the second photo gives a better sense of the island effect of the high tide.


As I was looking over the cliff after being buzzed out of the cabin, Eddie came taxiing up in his plane. That guy is pretty busy - he was probably here for 5 minutes. During that time, someone stopped to see him, and his phone rang twice. I wanted to include this photo because I think it's a strange site to see a plane landed on the beach - though I think he does it all the time. Eddie is the one in the red shirt. He told me that the tides in Egegik have been higher than usual too - his place flooded.

Much later, I rounded up the cables needed to replace the frayed cables on the Ambi
and headed into town. This photo shows the impressive fray. There's a flexible metal rod inside that sheath of wire and plastic that moves in an out in response to the throttle (one of them) or the shifter (the other one). When the fray gets bad (and this is really bad), the metal rod stops moving, meaning that we can't shift or change the throttle.

I told Roy I wanted to try to replace the cables myself. I think he shuddered. And gently and as diplomatically as possible encouraged me not to lose any pieces (planning ahead). I decided to tackle the easy job first - get the thing running. Everything takes longer than you'd think. It's an outboard, so it needs water over its intake to cool it. That means finding the hose (check), the rabbit ears (check) and a water source. Uh oh. I did find a water source, but with the wrong kind of fitting. So that meant a trip to the hardware store to get an adapter. I'd already hooked up the battery and fuel tank yesterday. So once the water is running, then pump on the bulb, pull out the choke, lift the idle throttle and turn the key. Grind away. After a long time, it finally turned over and then ran nicely. It was raining.

Not able to put it off anymore, I started to investigate the cables, wishing for an instruction manual. I pulled out the little cotter pins and then pulled the brass-looking fitting out of the hole it was held into by the cotter pin... and immediately didn't know whether it had been in the near hole or the far hole. But I found a washer stuck to the back over the far hole so I figured that must be it. Confidence down one notch. Then I tried to wiggle the cable to see if it would pull right out. Nope. Investigated the new cable to see if it would tell me anything. Nothing I could understand. Then I considered the vastness of my ignorance and the importance of this functioning outboard... and the rain - and the fact that I didn't even know if I was doing damage by exposing everything to water... and decided I should just ask Roy to let me watch when he does it for me.

The reason I want to learn how to replace them myself is if it goes out during the season, it'll happen down here at the sites where Roy is not on call. So I asked him to call me about 30 minutes or so before he thinks he'll be ready to tackle it so I could attend Cable Replacement School... and came back to the cabin.


I left the truck down below in case he called, nervous that I would forget it was there and the tide would eat it. So as soon as I was pretty sure he wouldn't be starting on the cables this evening, I took the truck down to park it above the next tide. These birds - I think they're sandpipers - hang out on this little gravel patch at Monsen Creek, not far from where the beach access road empties out onto the beach. And then a little closer to the cabin, I saw a pretty good example of the clay that is washed onto the beach... and eventually out onto the mudflats by these high tides. The cliff continues to back up.