June 26: You put your hand where?

The morning started with looking over the cliff and seeing this. Uh... I guess we didn't get everything high enough. And what this photo doesn't show is the things that were swept farther down the beach, like pieces of wood we had collected, the little sleds for dragging fish in, the 200 lb bags of net...

Our little Skook was pushed down the beach and swamped. And behind Skook, you can see the ranger.

A closer look at the ranger. Thankfully, the effect of the tide eating the cliff out from under the back end of the ranger was that the front end of the ranger - the end with the engine in it - moved farther out of reach of the tide. However, it was a little tricky to get down.

This photo shows you just how high the tide came up the cliff. The next two night tides will be higher yet. I feel like I should sleep in a rubber raft.

Josh, Roger, and I returned to town in the morning to work on the remaining boats, hoping to get the boats ready to go before we had to be back for the afternoon opener. As the fishing builds, I'm becoming increasingly anxious about having half our capacity disabled up in town. So my job wasn't so much to work on the boats, but to arrange to get them in the water and handle whatever would come up.

Roy had managed to get the rod out of the lower unit of the Evinrude 25 and put in the water pump, so I thought that one was almost ready to go, and the starter for the power pack on the New Boat had come in. I hoped we could get at least the New Boat in the water before lunch. What was I thinking?

To get the rod out, Roy had to heat it and bang on it and finally saw it in half. The power of corrosion. So my first job was to go to Charlie's Sport Shop in King Salmon to get a replacement rod. They didn't have one and after about 4 phone calls, I found some all thread (rod that is threaded all the way down) at SeaMar Naknek. Yay! And while in King Salmon, I was able to replace the expired tabs on the boom truck and get the new tabs for the white truck. Even though I didn't have the necessary paperwork, nor cash, nor a checkbook, nor my ID. Ahhh, the benefits of a small town.

While working my way back from King Salmon, running errands on the way, I got a call from Josh. They had an injury and he was taking Roger to the clinic. Roger lost a fingernail and got some broken bones in the same fingertip. Aieee! They were working with the power pack. When they pulled the pull cord, they heard a puzzling chattering noise. Trying to discover the source of the noise, Josh asked Roger to put his hand on top of the power pack’s drum while Josh pulled on the cord. Roger felt nothing. So he reached under the drum to try to feel it there… but there’s no protection under the drum… and next stop, clinic.

Honestly, even though everyone I've mentioned the accident to grimaces as soon as I say that he put his hand under the drum (before I even say what the injury was), I wouldn't have known not to do that, either. He is OK.

He has a giant dressing on it, over which he puts a giant glove and then the same tide, proceeded to fish one-handed. The one-handed pick is something Josh perfected a few years ago after an injury of his own. Rohan took this photo from the Ambi as we were rafting up to the Bathtub (though in that weather, it was more like, "as we were ramming the Bathtub"). See Roger's big, floppy hand? Sarah is in the stern of the Bathtub with a bailing bucket in her hand, then the back of Luka's head, David in his shades, Jeff, holding the boats together, Roger waving his floppy hand and Josh looking worried about my landing. Did I scratch the paint?

It was our best tide yet, with a total of more than 12,000 lbs by the end of the tide. I find it very difficult to break myself away from the task of removing the fish from the net when we have this many, but I stopped to try to take a photo to show what it looks like to us.

It was a really windy day with very big rollers. Windy weather and lots of fish often come together. The problem is that when it's an onshore (southeast) wind, it is scary and dangerous (mostly to equipment) to deliver to the beach, especially if we have a load. Since the Jacqueline wasn't here yet (they need a lot of water to get to us, especially in rough weather), we decided to deliver to the beach, but after going through only one net so we wouldn't get into the surf break any lower in the water than we had to. After going through the other net, we saw the Jacqueline several sites away. We wanted to deliver to her, but we weren't sure she was coming our way. So we went to her. Directly into the wind and spray. We were all soaked by the time we got there. Here is Jeff, soaked in the bow.

When they take our fish into the Jacqueline, they drop it into their iced hold. Rohan got a photo of the fish floating in their hold.

Here is another of Jeff - just travelling between the sites. You can tell the man with experience. He holds on to the bow line. Anything can happen, including being lifted out of the boat. If Jeff is lifted out, he knows his best chance is to still be hanging on to the boat.

Many years ago when we fished for another fish company, we came to deliver to a tender on a dark and windy night. Climbing aboard the tender to complete the transaction, I had my back turned to the activity. When I turned back, I saw that one of the deckhands on the tender had fallen into the water as he took our anchor line and it was only because he hung on to it that we were able to find him and pull him out. It is a terrifying thought. Once he was back aboard the tender, they tossed him a life jacket and had him continue working. Not much energy to spare for sympathy.

I left the tide after high water, as the fishing winded down. I had a report overdue that had a hard deadline approaching more rapidly than I had energy to overtake. Rohan took this photo as the crew was walking in across the very reflective mud. But they weren't done - they still has the last fish to deliver.

Here are David, Josh, and Roger attaching the final brailer for the 11:30 pm sunset delivery. You can see the corks of the nets stacked into the boats ready for tomorrow's opener.

This looks like about an 800 lb brailer and David, still laughing at the end of a 12,000 lb tide.

Sarah showed me her camera with its very bright flash. Here we are with Roger and me sitting at the table and Jeff standing behind us. The tilt you can see on that food shelf is only about half due to perspective; the other half is related to the tilt of the cabin. When I look out the window of that cabin, the horizon is tilting. Hmmm.

And finally, an irresistible sunset photo by Rohan.