July 2: I have a great crew

Yesterday, I hurt myself at the end of the tide. I believe the power roller is leaking hydraulic fluid onto the deck of the Ambi. The positive thing is that thanks to Roy, we are using food grade oil. The negative things are 1) there's something wrong with the roller and 2) it's slippery. My feet went out from under me and I went down hard, right on one of the ribs on the deck of the boat, traumatizing my tailbone. That hurt. But I don't think it hurt as much as Roger got hurt last year, when we were in rough weather and he was trying to settle the brailers in the bow as we were leaving the beach from a delivery through some rough surf. In his case, the Ambi caught the surf and was tossed up, just as Roger was coming down, right on the rail. His tailbone was cracked; I'm pretty sure mine was only bruised. He just kept working through the season, which I admired and appreciated at the time. Now, with my much milder injury, I don't know how he did it. I start to bend over to pick up a line... nope, no, no, no, nope. Someone else will need to do that. I lift one leg to transfer to the other boat and nope... let's try the other leg... nope... OK, belly roll... owww owww owww... don't want to do that again. Let's see, can I start the power pack for the roller using just my arms and shoulders? And nothing that is connected to my tailbone? How about pushing in the Bathtub at the end of the tide? Waahhh waahhh.

I keep thinking, "Suck it up, you big baby!" But my crew is so kind - Roger, Rohan, and AJ - all thinking of how to minimize me having to... well, having to do anything, really, since it turns out that just about every muscle in my body seems to be connected to my tailbone. That isn't to say that David, Sarah, Jake, and Jeff are unkind - they are just in another boat and don't have as much opportunity to help. But I'm sure they would given the chance.

We had another early morning set, with more fish on that morning tide than the previous morning tide. We're all waiting for the "bump" they say is coming, according to the test fishery at Port Moller. It's really important to be able to sleep whenever, wherever, no matter what because the opportunities for sleep come around fishing periods. They are no respecters of time of day or anticipated length of time. But my body doesn't always cooperate, and judging by comments from other crew members, I'm not always alone. So I just couldn't sleep before the 4 am set, nor after it while we were waiting for the tide to turn. But finally, I slept for a good four hours in the afternoon waking up to hear that we had an extension so we wouldn't have to pull our nets until 1 am on July 4 (yay!), and then we all headed out for the evening pick. Those few hours of sleep were particularly welcome once we realized that the weather was a bit rough and the tide brought us almost 5000 lbs.

One of the many reasons we love the Bathtub is because it slides so easily across the mud. We didn't realize this until about 5 years ago, but we've been making up for our earlier ignorance ever since. When it's fully loaded with salmon, we bring the ranger out to pull the fish in. When there are just a few salmon at the end of the tide, we can usually push it in by hand.

This photo shows Jake (at the bow) and Jeff (at the stern) pushing the Bathtub. Other crew members were also pushing, out of the camera's field. This photo was taken at about 10:30 pm, with the sun setting behind us.

While I was wrapping up the final delivery (moving very gingerly to hook up the final bag), David and the crew were re-positioning the stairs. (They had twisted slightly in the earlier big tides.) It wasn't until after I was back at the cabin that I realized I should have had photos of the process. David was using the boom truck to lift up the stairs at the bottom, while Roger either walked down them and shoveled away at the cliff so they could rest flat, or heaved them around at the top. Ungh! I was too distracted by the development of the beautiful sunset to think about pointing the camera elsewhere, like toward the action. Instead you can see the McClain's skiff in the sunset and the Hakinnens in the background bringing in their final fish for the tide.

Rohan went in early to make us some batter-fried Dolly Varden (the same as Arctic Char, I think) for dinner.

I couldn't resist one last shot of the sunset, this time, with Alex's chairs looking out at it.