June 16: Almost in the water

My brother Harry arrived today! He gets here and gets immediately down to business. He hopes to be fishing by the middle of next week. I hope he won't have any major headaches as he heads toward that goal. And Trevor landed a job on a boat today. I think he put up a sign yesterday - maybe the day before. That captain got a really good hand, which is a good thing because his own hand was injured crab fishing. He knows both of Trevor's previous captains. This is a small world up here.

Sunday will be a big day at the airport. Makenzie, Harry's daughter (though I really think of her as my niece) will come in at noon on Sunday with their other deckhand and family friend, Daniel. And Josh will be coming to us at 7 am, bringing the last permit with him. I will be happier to see Josh than the permit, but more relieved to see the permit. Whew!

It's looking pretty darned sure that we'll fish on Monday and get two of the boats in the water by noon or a little after on Sunday. We spent the day getting sunburns and getting the boats ready. It's so great to work with people who finish their task and come ask for another one. This whole crew is like that and even though it's sometimes difficult to keep everyone busy, we sure are effective when it works. It's been like that ... well, really since Jeff and Trevor arrived.

Rohan just gave me some of the pictures he's taken since he arrived and I wanted to post a few of them, even though they aren't all from today.

This is Jeff, sitting amidst maybe about half of our canned groceries - before the new shelves were created. I think Rohan then turned his camera around and caught Trevor behind the roast beef hash.

He also did a great job documenting equipment. Here is a good photo of our ranger.

I think this was from his very first day, the first day we were out looking for anchors that made it through the winter, and replacing the ones that didn't. You can see the treads that make it possible to go through the mud without getting stuck. Not sinking in is accomplished by spreading the load out across all that surface area of the treads, and then using the metal angle iron to grab and pull instead of spinning away on top of the mud. This photo also shows the tops of a couple of screw anchors - the eye. One of those screw anchors is actually our turning bar - a screw anchor that we chopped the blade off of. We have two other rangers - one we call the "Killer ranger" (as opposed to this one, the "Friendly ranger"). The Killer Ranger has made an attempt on the health and welfare of several of my loved ones; the Friendly Ranger has not. We also have a new ranger and we don't yet know quite what it's made of.

Today, we worked under the handicap of baked brains. It was SO HOT! Luka said he thought he had a mini heat stroke. I think we all wanted to be done after a few hours, but we really had to get more done first, though it got harder and harder the dumber we all became. Happily, no one complained and everyone persevered. It seemed like a million little and not-so-little things. I'm so glad for Roger's and Jeff's growing expertise. They are getting so much practice at tracking down the point of corrosion or re-stringing a sprung pull cord. And of course Roy. He is a hunted man at this time of the season - everyone is trying to get into the water and he knows all these boats and has a vast range of knowledge about all the parts that go, knowledge extended by a lively and practical creativity. Somehow, between all the other demands for his attention, he manages to give us the help we need to keep us going. I imagine most people feel that way. There are way too few of him.

What did we do today?

* repair the steering arm on the Yamaha on the Bathtub and then get that outboard going. Here are Jeff and Roger in action.

* get the New Boat's Yamaha running. They ran into a problem with this one - the outboard would only go down, not up. This would be a real crisis out here because the tide goes out from under the boats and they are sitting on the mud. If the outboard were stuck in a down position, it would be very hard on that outboard. But Roy showed Roger and Jeff where to look for the problem that caused the lack of upward mobility (?) and at the same time, showed them how to hotwire that function. As they were chasing the corrosion problem down, Luka just pushed the lever to raise it... and it rose. We'll take it!

Here is Roger getting the New Boat's Yamaha running. Nothing is simple. To get an outboard running, it is necessary to supply it with water for cooling. That can be done by filling a tote with water and running the outboard in that, or by using a pair of "rabbit ears" that attaches to a hose and clamps over the water intake part of the outboard. We have the hose and we have the rabbit ears... but depending on where the boat is located, it can be very hard to find a spigot we can use. Fire hose spigots abound, but we don't have an adapter so it will work with our garden hose... until now. Roger found the rare part in the mud and Trevor got the adapters needed to complete the fit to the garden hose. Happy days! This will make the process so much easier in the future.

* get the New Boat's power pack running (still on the to-do list).

* remove the Pacer pump and its associated hydraulics to try to lighten up that corner of the stern (still to-do).

* Ambi: change the fuel filter; get the cracks welded; get the power pack un-seized; get the steering un-seized (involved PB Blaster, a block of wood, and a hammer); replace the prop

* get the nets loaded into the boats that will launch before Monday. Fix the ends of all the nets so the new buoys don't raise them out of the water.

Here are Rohan and Roger, inside the Bathtub, stacking the nets to be laid out on Monday morning at 9 am, while Luka and Jeff are getting the next net ready for them.

* get the back up nets into the truck and down the beach

* keep track of the billion things and pieces - like the old prop and its accessories, all the net bags, the tools borrowed from the stockroom, and the things still to do

* paint the numbers on all the boats

* prepare tie-off lines for all the boats

* Make sure the anchor lines and anchors are all tied to what they need to be tied to (one year, David tossed an anchor out of the boat, noticing right away but still too late that it wasn't tied to anything)

And that's only the things my sunbaked brain can remember.

We arranged to get launched at the end of the morning tide on Sunday. Whether the Ambi can launch depends on the welding it needs being done. We'll be launched at the end of the tide when there's enough water for us, but not enough any more for the drift boats. While we were working on our boats today, some of the drift boats were being launched. Rohan had a really good picture showing how this is done.

This is the Junebug. The beach gang moves the drift boat from its stands or its blocks onto the trailer, attaches the trailer to the front of a 2 1/2 ton truck and pushes it backwards down the hill onto the dock into the waiting slings of the crane that then lowers it into the water. When it's our boats, they'll just lift it up with giant fork lifts and carry it down to the dock to the slings.

Once we get into the water, assuming all systems are "go," we'll run together down to the sites and maybe take a few minutes to replace the old buoys with the new ones on the inside ends of the outside sites. Because they have two attachment points - one in the front and one in the back, when the current is running strong and pulling the buoy under water against the anchor, that pressure will force the top of the buoy up, exposing the net for us to pick up. When we used the other style of buoy, when the current pulled the buoy down, it also pulled the net down because they were both attached to the bottom of the buoy. We've made it a little easier for ourselves, but now we have a different problem to solve. When the net is raised out of the water, it is easier for us to pull onto the boat, but it doesn't fish as well as when it's in the water, so we've created extending taglines for all the ends, hoping that only those lines will be pulled up out of the water. We'll find out how well that works.

I think last time I wrote, I described deep water sets as dreadful experiences, and they usually are for us. But I think it's because the only time we're in that situation is when it is stormy with a fast tide, which means it's usually at night. So we'll try something new: a deep water set on what will probably be another sunny day without an outrageously fast current. That's our plan for Monday morning at 9 am. It will be an hour before high water, meaning there will be a lot of water (19 or 20 feet), but it will be beginning to slack. We hope to get some practice that we won't end up needing. And maybe a few fish.