June 27: Tides continue to build

And I mean that in both senses: the high tides keep getting higher, but since the crew now understands what "very high tide" means to our equipment, they practically got the ranger and the four-wheeler half way up the cliff. They were safe.

I got Josh up early (he is so good to me - even though he wants his sleep, he never complains or even gets grouchy) so we could go in and try to get the Grayling in the water. I hoped we could do it on the falling tide so it would be there for today's opener at 4. I thought we just needed to screw the lower unit into the Evinrude, pull the cord and we'd be ready. Alas - it was not to be. The fuel filter had a split in it. After many fruitless trips to Napa, coming back with multiple solutions that didn't work, we (Josh) just jury-rigged another filter that wasn't really designed to go there, but... good enough. That took...five hours. There must have been other problems, but I think I've mercifully repressed the rest of that morning. It was exceedingly frustrating, but finally, we (Josh) were successful. We had hoped to get the boat into the water before lunch - Josh would run it down to the sites and I would keep pace with him on the four wheeler on the beach. But by the time we finished, the water was gone, so we both rode home on the four wheeler. I felt my tightly knotted stress just begin to dissolve as we left town and approached the beach. Aahhhh.

We had little time before needing to gear up for the opener. I asked David to go back to town to bring down the Grayling right after we set the nets. Unfortunately, he arrived there just after dinner started, so that meant waiting for an hour before he could be set in the water. Luckily, David is far more patient than I am. That waiting would have rendered me irritable, but David was just his calm, even-tempered self. I was so happy and relieved when he finally got back.

Rohan was our boat's photographer today and he got shots I wouldn't have stopped to get. Go Rohan! This first one shows us running to make our first delivery to the beach. We are loaded pretty heavy (though on a calm day, that boat can hold more than twice as much... as long as no one sneezes) - this delivery ended up being 3000 lbs, but we were not concerned because the weather was calm and so delivery to the beach was easy.

This photo shows the fish accumulating at our feet from our next pass through the net.

Sarah also had some photos of her boat in action

This is Jeff, Josh, and David pulling the net with the fish into the boat. I'm not sure, but they may have been straining for the camera. But maybe I forget the challenges of fishing in the Bathtub. I prefer to put the fish in the brailers as we pick if possible. The Bathtub crew finds this difficult because their boat has so much less space. So their fish accumulate around their feet. This isn't ideal but it's OK unless the weather is rough, and then it can be dangerous because these fish will shift like water does and such an unstable load that shifts in the wrong direction at the wrong time can result in a swamped boat.

And here they are picking out the fish they just pulled in. It looks like only Jeff and David have fish, so Josh is holding the net open. When the current is running, the leads really want to be in front of the corks. But we insist on a cross pick, so we just struggle to hold the net open for each other. In my boat, we found many fish just lying in the basket so that when two people held the net open and the other two turned it inside out, usually, about half of the fish just fell out.

I again came in to work on my Seattle-work report once the fishing slowed down, but I can't resist coming to the cliff periodically to check on how they're doing. This time, I brought the camera. They were just wrapping up the tide, for a total of about 14,000 lbs.

I did take a small break today. I still had leftover egg whites from my birthday cake and leftover egg whites says "mousse" or "Pavlova" to me. Pavlova was a bit louder so I used the egg whites to make the meringue base, and David and Sarah brought the whipped cream and the kiwis.

We are having more glorious sunsets this summer than any others that I can remember. As I came out of my cabin to take this photo, I looked behind to the east and saw the blood red rising moon peeking out from the clouds, surprised by how much this moon rise looked like the sunset.