June 28: Inside almost all day long

Desperate to finish that Seattle report, I worked on it from early morning until almost time to go set the nets. My valiant crew invited me to stay in and try to get it done, so I did... and I finished it. (Yay!!)

But Sarah and Rohan took some photos so I would know what I missed. The first thing I missed was the half hour wait for the water to reach the boats. That is surprising because in past years, when the tide book says that there is 7' of water at the mean low water mark, we hope it's only to our waists at our outside buoys. But this season, 7' of water at the mean low water mark is totally dry at our outside buoys. But it was a pretty day. And here is Josh, checking things over before the water arrives. That is a prudent move.

Sarah is now looking up the beach toward town. The first (dry) boat is our neighbors, the Hakkinens, and beyond them is the Ambi, also waiting for water. And the way we stack the nets into the Ambi - with all the weight in the stern, we need a few inches of water to be able to move it. The Bathtub is a different story. It is so flat on the bottom that all it needs is for the mud to be wet to be able to move it. It's our future hovercraft.

Once they were able to get the nets into the water, they got some fish. David was running the Ambi and he decided to load it up instead of delivering after a few thousand pounds. There was nothing wrong with doing that since the weather was mild, but it does make it a little harder to maneuver the boat and when we're delivering to the beach, we hit the sand a little sooner.

And here is the Bathtub in its pre-hovercraft form, being pushed in for the final delivery of the tide. This is the easiest part of pushing, going through the water.

But soon the water runs out and the boat is gliding across the mud, though I'm not sure "glide" is the verb the crew pushing it would use. Actually, I'm not even sure why they were pushing it since they knew they would bring the ranger out to drag it back to the outside site for the next opener tomorrow.

It's the end of the day now. We just finished dinner. The crew was leaving to take the ranger and the truck to higher ground... and the ranger wouldn't start. Not a total crisis because at least it isn't out on the mud flats on an incoming tide. There was some pressure because once the tide does come it, it would surely cover the ranger. And we're likely to need it tomorrow. We tried jumping it off the white truck and jumping it from the battery charger and generator. Finally, David started to tow it with Jeff steering the ranger from behind and trying to compression start it. It took a while, but that worked. So he drove it to the higher ground, turned it off and tried to start it again - they diagnosed it as a starter problem. Call to the mechanic first thing in the morning and hope he will make a house call.

Meanwhile, tomorrow we'll head in to town, charge up the new ranger and carry it down the beach on the propane truck. We'll hope that they get the friendly ranger back in service so we can just keep the new ranger parked high and not use it. It is a very expensive proposition to use it. Because of the corrosiveness of salty mud, even if they are driven into the mud only once, it's an expensive operation to clean them out at the end of the season. So, we'll try not to have to use it. But I want to have it here in case we need it to rescue the friendly ranger if it does somehow get stranded out on the mud flats with the tide pressing down.