June 18: Rohan's birthday, Sarah arrives!

Despite the two excellent events of the day - Rohan's birthday and Sarah's arrival, it was a very hard day. It has been raining hard for a long time now so that we see standing water on the tundra and the deep truck tracks on the beach are filling with water... and holding it. That's on the beach that's no stranger to water. Little springs are spouting out of the bluff and it's sloughing off, depositing yet more sticky clay onto the wet part of the beach, eventually to be distributed to the muddy part of the beach to give us a work out as we slog between the beach and the outside sites.

I was the first one up and, as is my habit, I walked over to the cliff to see what had happened with the previous tide. Even though we took pains to prepare this time, lots had happened. The rowboat was gone, even though we flipped it over and leaned it against the cliff and I could see that as we had anticipated the night before because of where the Grayling was anchored, it had water in it and was wallowing, though it wasn't swamping and the tide was falling... so I thought it would be OK. Besides, we didn't have a rowboat and the water was too deep to get out to it, so I decided not to disturb the crew. That was the first mistake of the day. (It seemed pretty early for a mistake, but that was the kind of day it turned into.) Even though they couldn't have reached it staying dry, it may have made sense to wade out and get wet, or at least watch it closely and be ready to wade out and get wet... or bring down the old rowboat... or something that one of them might have thought of. In any event, it was a mistake not to involve them immediately.

I began to head north, in the direction the tide would have taken the rowboat, noticing that the Williams' skiff that had been tucked up against the cliff by their cabin... with the anchor out! had dragged that anchor all the way down the beach to come to rest about 1500' away from where they had anchored it. I realized that we were lucky it didn't hook onto our stairs on the way past, and take them with it. Walking in the direction of the stuff we needed to retrieve, I realized that I needed a vehicle so that if I found the rowboat and its accessories (like seats and paddles) I could bring it home. So recognizing my second mistake of the first 15 minutes I was up, I turned around and started walking south, toward the four-wheeler.

I rode past the Grayling again and it still seemed like it would make it, though it was struggling. So the third mistake of the morning was to still not rouse the crew on the second pass.

However, I found lost rowboat pieces, paddles first. I immediately tried to remember what was wrong with our old rowboat in case the lost rowboat was well and truly lost but happily, the lost rowboat was just a little beyond the Williams' skiff with only one leak that I could see (from a loosened bolt that, we discovered, could just be tightened). The coffee can in the photo is the bailer I borrowed from the Williams. Towing the rowboat back to our stairs, I scanned the base of the cliff, all tumbled in broken bits of tundra, for the two seats that hadn't stayed with the rowboat... and it felt a little like a miracle when I found them - in the lee of the Williams' skiff, as if it had been protecting them. Now that we had all the pieces, it was a matter of putting it all back together.

It was on the trip bringing the rowboat back that I finally recognized that I was wrong to assume that the Grayling would be OK since the tide was falling. It needed the crew's help. The outboard wasn't submerged but it was getting splashed a-plenty. I called David and he was right on it.

When the Williams saw the crew trying to get out to the anchor, they came running to help. (I don't think it's possible to have better neighbors!) Since the tide was falling, the easiest solution was to pull the boat in to shore. David couldn't reach the anchor, so he ended up cutting the anchor line and the crew retrieved the anchor later. Roger checked the outboard, draining the carburetors and the fuel lines and couldn't find any water, burgeoning our hopes that it hadn't swamped.

The crew all went into town to pick up Sarah and do various town errands, like check mail, get water, move fish around in the freezer, unplug the New Boat - Roy called a few times to let us know that it was getting full of rain water. They weren't back in time to help move out the Grayling, but it was still blowing hard and we had to get it out of the swamp zone. So I moved it out a little bit - but the surf and the length of the anchor line didn't let me go far and it was still somewhat in the swamp zone, so I climbed in with a bucket and got ready to bail if it started taking water, with the plan of getting out after it was out of danger and before the water outside the boat got too deep for me. I don't know whether my weight counterbalancing the outboard helped it not swamp, but it worked out OK and I got back in without getting wet.

We went out to fish just after the crew got back, to try to fish the flood. The tide was too high to walk to the boats and it was very rough: strong winds, high tide, and high waves. Roger and I first rowed out to the Grayling, with middling confidence the outboard would start. That was too much confidence. So we tried to row on to the Bathtub, but it was up current and up wind from us and that was too much for us, so we turned around and rowed back to shore. Then we went over toward the Williams' site which is up wind and up current of the Bathtub, with the idea of pulling out on their running line and when we were about at the same depth as the Bathtub, paddle downwind and with the current toward it. But the tide was too high and we couldn't see the running line, so we decided just to paddle from there without benefit of the running line. We did see it as we paddled and skidded along in the rowboat, right over it.

It was a good plan, but we hadn't given ourselves enough room to get out deep enough and we were going to miss it. This photo shows Roger and me in the rowboat, down current and downwind from the Bathtub. We did put on a burst of effort to try to get there. We were so close... but it felt like we were standing still.