June 15: Happy Father's Day

We started so optimistically today! I received a text from Roy saying he got the Ambi started. When the crew mounted the fuel pumps yesterday, the Ambi still didn't work but it wasn't clear why. Roy and Jerry worked on it this morning and found that some water had frozen in a carburetor over the winter, pushing a plug partway out and causing a fuel leak. As with so many mechanical problems around here, this one too was solved with a hammer. But it's not just any hammer applied in just any way, so I'm very glad Roy made the time to fix it.

We were already pretty sure the Yamaha would go. We had had it shipped down to Seattle so the outboard people could either tell us that we should give up on it and buy something new, or fix it. They emphatically said it could be fixed and it's not hard to get parts for it, even though it's a 1989. Roy's advice was not to trust it and to get something new. But that's expensive advice, and I thought maybe the outboard people knew something about this outboard that Roy didn't know - after all, he can't know everything. But apparently, he did know this thing, as the story below will show. He's not big on "I told you so," but that might be because I'll volunteer, "You were right," when I realize that.

We were so confident it would all work that I contacted Gabe, the beach boss, before we even got to town to find out if we would have a chance of launching today. He said he already had 15 skiffs in line before us, so if we could stand by, he would try. That was OK with me, but David is much more confident in our abilities with our trailer, which the Ambi was already on. So as soon as we got to town, David, Jeff, and Rohan attached the trailer to the truck and drove down to the Nornak dock (a fish camp that we don't fish for). They backed it down and launched it uneventfully. Courage pays off! Roger and Jake expected an equally easy launch of the New Boat and then they would head back to camp and start working on the hutch to keep our gas cans out of the rain. The best laid plans...

While David and crew were launching the Ambi, the rest of us stayed at AGS, Roger and Jake doing last minute things on the New Boat, and AJ and I finishing up the painting on the Janice. Here is the Janice, with her new coat almost finished... and even more important than that, you can see my nephew Everest on the ladder.

And here is a better picture of him, showing his simultaneous smile and scary All State football grimace. I think that gives a pretty good clue about him.

Hannah is also part of the Harry's crew this year and here she is, just having crawled out of the cabin where she was trying to reassemble the floor. I think Harry had been working in the bilge, and I also think he is teaching both Ev and Hannah how to do mechanical things. I figure in a few days, I'll be able to go to her for help with our mechanical problems.

And here is the captain of the Janice himself, Harry. I do realize that very little of the painting we did would actually do much to help them fish, but I figure it would feel better to them every time they approached the boat... that was worth a few paint stains, I think.

Gabe said the beach gang was moving boats quickly enough that they would be able to get the New Boat in so when David came back with the trailer to take the New Boat (after anchoring the Ambi just away from the Nornak dock), we decided to go with Plan B and have AGS launch us.

This is NOT the New Boat. This is one of the drift boats, a big one. The beach gang's strategy is to bring down one of the big boats with their giant trailer and launch it while a skiff, which has been brought down by forklift, is waiting in the wings. Then they launch the skiff - or sometimes two skiffs - while the trailer is going back for the next big boat. It's an efficient system.

Here is a skiff waiting in the wings, in this case, our New Boat. And here is the crew, saying "Happy Father's Day" to their fathers. I took another photo farther up the hill where they all waved and smiled. But Jeff was off doing something else, so when he joined the group, I asked them to do it again, this time on the dock. They didn't want to wave and Roger did an excellent imitation of an 11 year old boy, "Awww, don't make us do that when the Beach Gang is watching." I thought it was perfect!

Look back up to the launch of the big boat and compare it to the launch of our skiff. That's the difference. We are zippier and more maneuverable, but we are a lot smaller, we hold a lot less and we are much less comfortable.

David and Rohan have climbed down off the dock and here they go, headed down to meet up with the Ambi. The plan was that Jeff would run the Ambi home while David and Rohan ran the New Boat and AJ would follow along the beach on the four-wheeler in case either skiff had trouble. But the New Boat had trouble even before it reached the Ambi. It what!!?? After sending it south to be worked on and after all the acrobatics to get the missing part... it doesn't work??!!

Roger went down to join Jeff's efforts to see if there was some easy thing that we just missed. There wasn't much for AJ to do, so he befriended a four-legged observer and apparently was doing tricks for him. Rohan caught a picture of it.

Finally, Roger and Jeff surrendered and the Ambi towed the New Boat back with Jeff at the helm. Sigh. Gabe courteously lifted it out of the water for us and Roger worked on it a little more. Roy came over to see if he could do anything to help us - it sounded like an ignition problem to him... and it sounds to me like a new outboard is in my very near future. Even Roy was unable to persuade it to work. It is fascinating to watch him work. You know how a doctor will listen through the stethoscope and be able to interpret the meaning of what she hears? Or probe at your neck and tell you that you have a thyroid problem? Roy can do the same thing with engines. I see him touch it just so and cock his head slightly while concentrating on the constellation of symptoms... but even with all his magic, the skiff remains on the dock, choking away.

When David and Rohan came back, David started to climb up the ladder and decided to leave his phone with Rohan. Not wanting to climb back down the ladder, he just dropped it to him (something he knows I would have shrieked at him not to do - if someone misses, you can't just go and pick it up)... and Rohan missed it, though it did bounce off something hard before falling entirely out of the boat and into the water. Kerplunk. So we had to wait around until the tide went down enough to see if it could be found, and then if it would work. The waiting wasn't so bad because we were wrestling with the Yamaha outboard then anyway. And here are two of today's miracles: (a) David found the phone and (b) it still worked even though it had been in brakish water and icky mud for 4 hours... with a cracked screen. Go Samsung!

We were all relieved when it was finally time to go home. While we were in camp, we got the last of our barge shipment, which David put to good use on the trip home.