July 4: Morning pick

We were up at 1 AM for the flood pick through. The weather has calmed down!! And fishing has slowed down. (Actually, it may be more accurate to think that the fish of the last two tides were here because of the weather and the normally scheduled fish haven't arrived yet.) We came in at 3:30 AM, right about at high water. David brought us in in the Bathtub so that we stepped off the skiff onto the stairs. That was weird.

We went back out for the ebb pick at 5:30 AM and found the nets mostly empty. We were in by 8:30 AM and we go again at 1 PM.

The main reason I'm giving up a few minutes of sleep to write this post is because I forget to say something really important yesterday. This crew has been terrific. We're all in it together. We're all getting beat up by the rough weather, fixing broken things, freezing with crew mates in a little skiff for three hours, and building up massive sleep debt. But I have some context - I know it's like this sometimes, and not most of the time. They just kept plugging away, trying to see how to be helpful, trying to see what needs to be done next. I was the most aware of this when I saw Oksanna and Davey trudging toward me after some difficult task after hours of other difficult tasks. And they were just ready for the next assignment. When David offered them to opportunity to take a tide off, they just said they didn't need it... but OK. We'll cycle people out over the next few tides to get a good period of sleep.