June 22: Happy Birthday, Sarah! Yay, it's raining!

I so wish Sarah and David were here for Sarah's birthday - hey, for my birthday too! We'll have to bake a cake for Sarah when she gets here. Or wait... would it be wrong to bake one on her birthday and eat it without her?

Today has been spent catching up with the blog and trying to catch up with email (me), catching up with resting (crew), and forgetting to attend the Blessing of the Fleet in town (dang!). The Evinrude crew is worried they won't be able to complete the surgery on the Evinrude because of the corrosion, so we are considering alternatives, like the Mercury 25 that's been hanging in my sister's cabin for many years now. We'll get that into town and see what we can do with it so that we can get the Grayling into service.

The wind continues to blow offshore - not our preferred wind, but OK. And it wasn't exactly calm today, but not a gale, either. There are many things to recommend the sunny weather we had for the first two weeks - one of those things is that it's easier to scamper between cabins. But still, I'll take our traditional Naknek weather, and so will my rain barrel. It gained a few inches today, but not enough to preserve my back up barrel.

We have an opening tomorrow, from 11 am for setnetters (and 11:30 am for drifters) to 6:30 pm. Not much has gone up either river yet (25K up the Naknek and 900 sockeye up the Kvichak) so it doesn't really seem as though the run has started in earnest. We'll have a better idea tomorrow.

Since the crew started arriving 10 days ago, today was the first day we weren't pushing to do something. I think everyone needed a break. And we needed Sarah to get us all started with a round of Catchphrase. Hurry up and get here, David and Sarah!