June 17: Three courses, fishing season style

Working backwards for the past couple of days, the crew is napping before the next tide. We just finished our three-course dinner: egg batter pan-fried flounder, sauteed king cheeks, and grilled king salmon. We're planning to be out there at 10:30 for tonight's tide, fishing our second commercial tide in yet another glorious sunset (if we're still out there at 11:41, anyway). We would have started at 10:45, an hour before high water, but we still need to do a little work with the hydraulic systems on the boats. More on that, later. And that's about all I can do backward.

So, backing up two days, here is the sunset for Saturday night (how do I not take a picture of this?) and right after it, a photo through my (smudged) bedroom window of the still light sky about three hours later at 2:20 am. That is my sister's cabin and beyond it, the cannery that's about a mile from our place.

We got up early the next morning to pick up Josh from the airport and later, to drop Trevor to his new boat. It turned out that one of the other deck hands is someone we picked up hitch hiking - helping him in his effort to find a job.

We had only a little work left to do to be able to get the Bathtub in the water, but we also know that things take a long time - and we still had work to do on the Ambi and the New Boat. (We're still waiting for parts for the Evinrude 25 that we use to power the Grayling.)

As is often the case, we were jumped ahead in line to drop into the water - probably because the boat that was slated for that slot wasn't quite ready. We get into the water pretty quickly because it requires only a fork lift to pick up a skiff and take it down the hill instead of the big trailer. So even though we were working on moving the Ambi toward its launch, we stood by for the Bathtub launch and not long after, Luka, Rohan, and I ran it the couple of miles down the beach, with Josh meeting us there with the truck to take us back to continue the process of getting the Ambi ready.

When we have the chance to get on the launch schedule early, we do it unless we aren't ready in a big way. When we're waiting in line to get launched, a lot of things can happen to keep us from getting in - the wind might come up, the crane could break down. Once we're in the water, many obstacles to fishing are eliminated.

The Bathtub wasn't 100% ready - we were trying to figure out how to fit a new 24" wide power pack for the hydraulics into the space that barely fit the old 18" power pack. Can't be done. Roger solved it - trade the Ambi's power pack, a twin to the Bathtub's and bolted onto straps that have room for something larger, for the Bathtub's new power pack, which is larger and won't fit anywhere else. We didn't have time to make the switch before it launched, but we knew we could do that later. Roger and Jeff then quickly tackled the Ambi, drilling new holes to secure the new power pack with a different footprint - they said they thought they might be candidates for a pit crew, as fast as they were moving. But then the noon bell rang and most activity around camp stops. We wait.

When we arrived with the Bathtub, the tide was falling and we were able to anchor it in a great spot for adding the power roller and power pack later in the tide. Knowing that we'd be bringing down the Ambi on the rising tide, we assembled the FoldaBote. Rohan is on his back in the bow spreading the cotter pins while Luka and Josh secure the stern piece.

When we got back to AGS, we found Jeff and Roger in an ongoing effort with the power packs. Here is Jeff, taking the starter off the Bathtub's old power pack, hoping it will replace the dead starter on the New Boat's power pack. (It didn't fit. Dang.)

The heat finally got to Roger who decided he needed to accessorize to protect himself from the hot Alaska sun.

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It was 3 pm and the Ambi was on the list to launch early in the evening tide. We needed to come back for an 8:30 pm launch, early in the flood. The rollers and power packs were ready for both boats, so we took the Bathtub's with us to install on the beach.

It's Josh and Roger, and Jeff and Rohan. It fit!

We have 12-16 brailers for all the skiffs. These are box-shaped bags made out of sturdy material with four handles. We stand them up in the skiff by hooking the handles onto "brailer hooks" that are welded onto the boat. We fill them with fish (most of ours will hold about 1000 lbs), remove them from the brailer hooks and attach them to the buyer's giant forklift. They weigh it and then put it in slush ice on their 2 1/2 ton truck. When the brailers are very full, it is sometimes difficult and less often impossible to remove the handles from the brailer hooks by hand. The answer to this is to get more slack. Several years ago, we brought up a spool of bungee cord, but never had the time to put them on the bags... until yesterday. As Jeff said, a bungee party!

The idea is to duplicate the handles, but with a stretchy material. That way the bungees can be busy stretching to hold up the bags while we thread the pelican lines through the handles. We'll try to get some photos of that tomorrow.

We returned to town just before another skiff's launch and then it was our turn. Here is the Ambi in the slings and being raised by the big crane before it is lowered over the side of the dock. The piling was wet at the 3' mark - those skiffs don't need a lot of water to run.

Here it is, in the water and waiting. In the bow are three replacement buoys for the inside buoys for the outside sites. This way we can reach the corkline even in a very strong current that pulls the buoys under water, and we can reach it from either end of the net. There are two nets in the boat, ready to be set. And in the stern, starboard corner, check out the brand new powerpack. Oh yeah.

I piloted us away from the dock - and that went smoothly. It is a really nice outboard. Our Yamaha 60 will probably remain my favorite of all time because it is so faithfully reliable, but I am relaxing into a willingness to trust the Honda 90. People with actual competence at fixing things like outboards might not value reliability as much as I do, but it's the key quality for me. After getting away from the dock, Rohan took over piloting. He ran it to get us out of the river and into the bay.

And then Luka took over and took us home.

After arriving back at camp, we went in, dropped off Rohan, picked up the row boat, and motored out to the inside site, where we knew that at 9 am the next morning, we would set the first net of the season, from the skiff, during high water.

While we were out there, we decided to get completely ready for the next morning's set, so we were out about 45 minutes longer. And then, we rowed in.