June 11 2016: Harry, Makenzie, and Hannah arrived... and the New Kid joins the Bathtub on the beach

The whole crew went into town today to bring down the New Kid, get the Ambi ready, and bring the white truck home (it was ready!). The tides have been high this week, and in a strange way. We have big tide changes here. For example, on June 5, we had a low of -2' at 10:45 PM, coming in to a high of 24.7' at 4:54 on the morning of June 6. Almost a 27' tide change. It does that in 6 hours, making for a fast tide. Those depths are measured at the mean low water mark. There's an imaginary line out there on the mud flats, well beyond our outside buoys, that is only just uncovered by water when the low tide is at 0'. That's the "mean low tide mark". When the water is 18' deep at that spot, that's the mean high tide level. From the perspective of the beach, we don't see water depth as much as we see how close it is to the buoys or the cliff. From year to year, a 20' high tide may be close to the cliff (like this year) or it may be nowhere near the cliff (like a few years ago when we never needed to move our equipment to higher ground). I think the difference relates to how deep the mud is in front of our cabins. More mud means more displacement of water, means the water comes higher up the beach.

The tides advance by about 45 minutes a day. Each day, we have two high tides, about 12 hours apart. If the morning tide is high at 8:23 AM on June 10, it'll be high almost an hour later the next day (9:10 AM). And if the PM tide is high at 8:12 PM on June 10, it'll be high almost an hour later the next day (9:19 PM). The other pattern that we count on is that usually, the AM tide is the higher of the two high tides. The tides build by maybe a foot a day over the course of a week or so, and then begin to be not quite as high, again, by maybe about a foot a day or so. There have been very few years when the tides have been high enough to reach the stairs after about 8 AM.

Here is an old-school tide book. It has a lot of information on just two pages. It tells us about the predicted high and low tide patterns for June and July 2016 in the Naknek River. All the high tides can be found in the second main column of the table and all the low tides in the third main column. The date and day are in the first main column. Focus in on the high tides column. There are two main sub-columns, one in regular font (the AM tides) and the other in bold font (the PM tides). You'll notice two numbers adjacent to each date in the AM sub-column of the high tide column. The first is the time of the high tide (also known as "high slack") and the height of the tide at that time. The low tide columns are organized the same way. Reading down the time sub-sub-column shows how the tides advance over the days by almost an hour (more like 45 minutes). Reading down the FT. sub-sub-column shows how the tides grow by a foot or so each day for about a week, and then start to shrink by about the same amount for about a week before they start to grow again. In the bolded PM FT column, the opposition pattern is happening. This is the gradual process of the higher AM tides coming an hour later each day until they become the more moderate PM tides while the PM tides also become an hour later each day and begin to rise more so that they eventually become those high AM tides.

For years and years, we used this type of tide book, needing only these two pages. The rest of the tide book has the other months of the year and other tide systems in Western Alaska (Bethel, Dillingham, Kodiak, Sand Point, Cold Bay, and Dutch Harbor). I eventually started using a Captn. Jack's Tide and Current Almanac that takes 120 pages to provide the same fundamental information. Plus, the Captn. Jack's costs $14.95 while the old school tide books are free. Why make the change?

Here is a photo of one page from the Captn. Jack's. It gives us the same high and low information, but, after we calibrate this year's tide book with this year's beach, we can also use it to provide a pretty good estimate of when the water will be coming off the first corks on the inside site or when the boats that are anchored in will go dry. However, it is very hard and very important to remember that this is just an estimate. It can't take into consideration things like the wind and the shifting mud. So I don't look at these numbers as if they are appointments; they live by Bristol Bay time. Maybe now, maybe an hour ago, maybe an hour from now. Usually it's +/- 30 minutes. Always go out to look.

The thing that's strange about this year's tide, in addition to a 20' high coming so close to the cliff, is that we've been having these very high tides not only during the very early hours of the morning, but during mid morning as well. That almost never happens, and yet this year, so far award-winning for weirdness, we've had a week of 'em. So if we want to go to town before noon, we need to walk to the Beach Access Road. In previous years, we've been able to have one person go down to pick up the truck and load us all in. But this year, we haven't been able to risk having the truck come back on the rising tide, so when we wanted to go in to get a boat, we had to either leave the truck here and take the truck in early enough to be ahead of the tide or walk the mile to the truck carrying all our gear (life jackets, rain gear, and boots). We drove in today ahead of the tide with the goal of bringing back the New Kid.

The beach gang had an easy time getting the New Kid into the water because none of the big boats were ready yet. I always suppose that they can squeeze a skiff in because we launch faster and we need less water. But they were able to launch the New Kid right away. The beach gang brings the skiff down either on some giant fork lifts, or they might lift the skiff onto their skiff trailer and drive it down. Once down on the dock, they'll work these slings around it doing some advanced mental computations to figure out how much bow is needed to balance the extra weight of the outboard. Once they get it right, they lift it up with the big crane, swing it out over the water, and lower it slowly and gently.

Once it's resting in the water, the operator (in this case David and crew: Inku, Matt, and David L) climbed down the ladder, followed by two of the beach gang, Bray and Mike. David's job is to start up the outboard engine, make sure he has forward and reverse, and make sure no water is pouring in from a forgotten plug or some other undetected catastrophe.

That's Bray in the yellow jacket standing on the port gunnel and Mike in the red hardhat standing in the middle of the boat. Inku is on the port side of the boat, David L is forward, and Matt is aft on the starboard side. David N is at the steering console. Once all systems seem to be running well, they work the slings forward, and the beach gang usually jumps to the ladder and climbs up while the boat backs out and motors away.

But apparently, David wanted to take Mike and Bray for a ride. Plus they were waiting for the rest of the crew to arrive, so he backed out and motored over to tie up at the barge that's tied up to the dock.

David, the excellent teacher that he is, took some time to explain the process to the crew. Oksanna arrived, ready to get into the boat, David L was tying off from inside the boat, and Matt had jumped out to help tie the boat up from on the barge. That guy who yells, "You kids get off my lawn," is not in the fishing industry. We tie up to each other's boats and climb across each other's boats all the time.

The boat crew is all here and ready. Jeff will take the four-wheeler down the beach, trying to stay abreast of the New Kid. This precaution isn't really needed any more, now that we have cell phones. But it seems too callous to send a skiff out with an outboard, an anchor, a bailing bucket, and a phone while the rest of us just go about our business. So we still send someone along with them on the beach.

Here they are, pulling away from the barge and on to the sites.

Trevor had been with us through the launch, but now it was time to let him go to his new boat. I hate that part. It feels like Trevor belongs with us, but he's a little like the Lone Ranger, just passing through on the way to his boat. However, he realized that he'd "forgotten" his backpack, so maybe we would get him back for one more night.

Though it had been raining off and on all day, the rain seemed to be lessening as the crew pulled away from the dock. David D and I stayed with the Ambi, seeing an opportunity to paint the deck with Deck Kote, an anti-slip paint. It needs a clean and dry surface that has been roughed up a bit with sanding. We did as well as our conditions permitted and put a coat of the anti-slip on strategic parts of the deck. In recent years, two of the Ambi crew have ended up with broken tail bones, one from slipping on the aluminum and falling squarely on a rib. I hoped to prevent another one if I could.

Then we headed back down the beach. As we pulled up, we saw the four-wheeler that brought Jeff down and the New Kid, tied up to the Bathtub. I didn't know what they had in mind for getting in, so Jeff and David D went up to get the fold-a-bote while I went to change into my waders. I later learned that they were tied up at the Bathtub preparing the nets for setting on Monday and learning knots.

David nosed the New Kid in to the beach to drop off the new crew and pick up Jeff and the row boat. They anchored at a depth it would be easy to reach on our way to setting the nets on Monday in 17' of water.

My new heater had arrived in Naknek while I was in Anchorage. This evening seemed like a good time for Jeff, Inku, and Matt to begin the installation process.

I thought I would document from the beginning. Here it is, inside its box.

This is the old one, pronounced by Roy to be a rusty old POS. I will defend this heater. It's done a great job for more than 30 years. Yes it's rusty and yes it's old, but until last year, it kept us warm. Note the first aid kit below.

The first thing we needed to do was turn off the propane to the cabin, then disconnect and remove the old heater. Here is Matt (recognizable from his man-bun) trying to see how it is connected.

Jeff has resorted looking at the installation instructions. I was counting on the new one being exactly the same as the old one, allowing us to just replace the rusty old pieces with the shiny new ones. But it was beginning to seem that it would be more complicated than I'd hoped. Starting with getting the old one off the wall and hanging the new one back on. These red sweat pants are how we can recognize Jeff from a distance. I was momentarily confused when I looked at one of the photos of the New Kid launch above. When I saw the red pants heading toward the New Boat, I thought it was Jeff because, well, who else has his sense of fashion? But then I remembered Oksanna's rain pants. So note to self: in the boat, red pants mean Oksanna. Otherwise, they mean Jeff.

They got the exhaust off the exterior wall and replaced the heater with this happy view! They did their best to replace the worn out parts with the new parts, but we were running into too many problems, leading us to the unhappy conclusion that we would need to start from scratch, get a few adapters from the hardware store, use all the new pieces, and follow the instructions. Meanwhile, the empty box sits in the middle of my cabin and I still have no heat. However, Roy made a cap to close off the pipe that sends propane to the heater so that at least I have my stove back. That's crucial for my tea and toast.

Harry, Makenzie, and Hannah flew in from Anchorage this evening. We had planned a bonfire with Phil and his friend Ron, and Harry and family. But the fishermen at Silver Bay were being feted at a special dinner that Phil didn't want to miss, and Harry and daughters were probably pretty tired and busy with all they had to do to complete their arrival. So we rain checked to tomorrow.