Boredom!!!

The last couple of days have brought the first real boredom spells of the season. These are different than the normal 'what to do now?' feelings that can be easily solved by picking up a book or listening to some music. This is real boredom, existential boredom, you can feel it to the core and it isn't because you have a few idle hours, it's because the fishing has essentially dropped off, two of the three boats that are still fishing are the boys, Dale and Jake, the other is an exercise in patience. The first few days of the slow season were pretty cool, sort of like "hey cool! look I'm getting paid to do nothing!" Well that's a short lived sensation, now the feeling is more of an "oh my God, you couldn't pay me enough to do nothing for another day!" And the problem is there still is work to be done but it's so remedial, and all for a few pounds of fish. When there's nothing to be done but wait for a few fish, when they finally arrive the small tasks involved in dealing with them cleverly hide a mental days worth of work, and for some reason it really feels that way, boat herself is slow in the motions, everything literally takes longer, efficiency goes out the window because there is no pressing need to be quick and efficient. Time creeps, we all still get paid, but the real function, our job, the work we get paid to do is so slim. I can hardly fathom why these days are more difficult than the labour intensive, nose to the grindstone days when boats are actually fishing and need us around. This sort of experience speaks loudly for the mentally rewarding aspect of hard work, it feels good to work, when at the end of the day you are exhausted but know that the keep was earned; its hard to even describe what a day like today felt like. Not depressing, not exhausting, just going through the motions, and being bored to death of those motions, they aren't challenging or new, exciting or entertaining, thinking that I could find someone else to come up and replace me, that I could do just fine with the money I've already made. After floating around for hours this morning I finally experienced the moment I was hoping would relieve me from the mental doldrums. Nothing specific, just relief, a sudden comic take on the situation, it gave me a crazy little grin when icing a fish in a five gallon bucket, I was doing it, I was actually icing a fish in a five gallon bucket, and it was hilarious. Yesterday was similar to today, I think it's just a transition, an adjustment from one style tendering to another, it'll be easier in a day or two, once this pace becomes routine. We were sitting around drinking a beer before dinner tonight when Guy stated what's been on my mind all day.. "It's going to be a long three weeks here, boredom makes time crawl..." Now if only I can get down on my hands and knees and crawl with it...Despite the boat's boredom, spirits are high, we had an awesome dinner tonight at Mosey's, enchiladas with green sauce and a fish taco...Right now I'm sitting on the roof of the Beryl E. trying to pickup a wireless conection from Haines. We're anchored out, but I seem to be getting a weak signal...P.S. The boat in that picture above is the Karluk, Kelsey and Dwight arn't getting along very well...conflicting personalities I guess.

A little Ice...

The fair was kinda a dud for me, wasn't nearly as fun when none of my buddies were around. The sun is back out today, we just iced up and are going to head back out to the grounds. Icing up is always quite a comedy, a large amount of physical/mental effort for such a basic task, I'll try to paint the picture, bare with me. So pretend your standing on the deck of the Beryl E, your tied along side of the cannery, you have a mission. There are twelve empty totes on the deck, and before you leave the dock they need to be filled with ice. But how? You look up and see an aluminum box, it looks like a large funnel up on the cannery dock with an old piece of 12" pump tubbing hanging out the bottom of it. That tube has an even larger piece of stiff plastic corrugated drain piping that fits over it, and extends the overall length of tubing. Note: and this is important, the larger piece isn't actually attached to the first length of tube, it's just been slid over it, in order to extend it, and the only thing that holds it there are two string that run from the tube up to the dock . You can tell this is a jerry-rigged operation but can't quite decide what function it serves, however there is a feeling in your gut that this is an important contraption. Someone up on the dock hollers down at you, disrupting your moment of contemplation. They tell you to lift the plastic tube onto deck and position it in one of the empty totes. Well, the tube is hanging straight off the bottom of the box, and when you try to lift it onto deck, you realize that its too long to just pull aboard, its length gets hung up on the side of the boat and its too stiff to bend it much, you try to walk it down the side and pull it over but that sucker is just too dam stiff and heavy. Turns out the only way to get it on board is to put a strap around it, hook one of the deck cranes too it and lift, then push the hose towards the stern until it pops up over the railing and comes swinging back in your general direction. Well now the hose is hanging over the deck, attached to the crane, resting in a position where it looks like anything coming out the end of it will shoot into an empty tote, things are looking good. Step one complete. Next a forklift appears on the dock, races over to the aluminum box with a tote, raises it up, flips it and dumps its contents into the box, to your amazement, shaved ice starts shooting out of the tube and into the tote in front of you. Gravity powered icing! How ingenious right? However from your vantage point it's quite apparent that what came out the end of the tube was much less than what went into the box, in fact it appears the majority of your ice is still stuck in the box. The forklift driver is a step ahead of you and is already attacking the jammed ice with a wooden rod, trying to get it to slide down the tube. He succeeds, and the rest of the ice roars down the corrugated tubing, taking the hose and the human thats trying to hold it in place (you) on a wild ride. Well all the ice has arrived in the tote, but low and behold its still not full! Its pretty close to full, but you have been made aware that it is a cardinal sin to put a lid on a tote that isn't completely full, that makes you almost one twelfth of the way through icing. Waiting for the next tote to arrive, you contemplate your place in life, and when it arrives you holler up "just dump a little, I need to top this one off", well a full quarter of a tote is released into the box and comes zinging out your end, hits the nearly full tote of ice and flies everywhere. That didn't work so well, and el capitan is right there to tell you "Hey that didn't work so well, did it? Maybe next time we try to get some ice into the tote eh?" The good news, after running around the deck with a shovel collecting lose slivers of ice, scooping them into the tote, it's actually full, and you can slap the lid on. One down, eleven to go, adjust the crane a little, push the tube forward to the next tote, holler the all clear to the guys on the dock, and a rush of ice latter, there's about a half tote of ice in front of you. Things seem to be going smooth. You repeat this process until on the fourth tote an over-zealous forklift driver dumps the ice into the funnel in a sloppy fashion, and you catch a good chunk of it right in the small of your back, that ice never made it into the box, just out over the dock and down to the boat, right where it found you and your back patiently holding that dam tube in place. Your alright though, the ice was soft enough, just a good shot of adrenaline really, you get back to the icing and things are going smoothly, five or six closest totes have been filled. Now the tube isn't long enough to reach the remaining empties. Ah, now here comes an enlightening moment, you learn the purpose of that corrugated tube. Turns out it conveniently slides up and down the first, smaller tube, to extend or shorten the overall length of the ice tube-aparatus, thats easy right? Well no, not exactly, because the smaller tube has ridges on the outside of it, and the corrugated tube is, well, corrugated, further complicating this delicate operation is the crane pulling on the end of the tube, putting a a soft elbow into it. The guys on dock un-tie the lines that hold that corrugated piece of tubbing in place and kaboom, absolutely nothing happens. Thats only because the magical ingredient to this operation hasn't been added yet, and you probably guessed it, that ingredient is you. It's okay though, all you have to do is grab the end of that corrugated tubing and pull and twist and jerk and yank, as the corrugated tube grates down the smaller tube, giving you a little more range. It's low tide, and you really have to extend the tube a ways to get the ice to reach the totes on the far side of the boat, but after a brief wrestling match, the tube is longer and things are starting to come together. You adjust the cranes again, until the position of the tube looks good to you, and you give the guys on dock the nod. As ice is dumped into the box, you hear the noise like ice is crashing down the tube, but strange, nothing comes out. The ice got stuck in the nearly horizontal end of the tube, but no worries, you just drop the tube with the crane and start beating on it with a shovel till the ice that's lodged in there breaks lose and sloughs out onto the deck, where you can shovel it into the tote. You decide to extend the tube a bit more, ease off on the crane and try again, hoping for better results. The forklift driver raises the next tote and dumps the ice. You hear a load noise...oh, this is bad, the corrugated tube, the extender, it has slipped off the first tube and now lies on deck! You over extended the ice tube! Disaster!! Ice flies everywhere and you have shovel it all up before coaxing the tubes back together and trying again...

That encompasses just about every incident I've had with the icing game up there at the cannery. Now I've got it down pretty well, and with several exceptions it goes pretty smoothly. There is still comedy in it, ice is a precious resource aboard and it cracks me up when people get worked up over it.. Im not sure if anyone else will follow that story or find it entertaining, but I'm going to write a few others that tackle other equally enjoyable duties aboard...

As of July 23rd...

Yea haw, today is day 30 of our 60 day contract, just relaxing on anchor now, reading, writing this, drinking coffee. I saw Harry two days ago. Had the night off in Haines, we went out to the 'Fog Cutter' and the Pioneer Bar, or P-bar as it's called. The fog cutter was quite, we had a beer, caught up, then wandered up to the P-bar, a band was just setting up, a lively crowd energized with booze and chatter crowded the place. I met a few of Harry's friends including a lady from Melbourne, AU. I chatted with her for a while, asked her about her favorite spots in Australia. Told her Jake and I traveled around down there a bit, but never made it to Melbourne. I told her Byron was my favorite, she said she liked it, but it was getting a little too trendy, then she said "but...there's a little place outside Byron, called Nimbin" she was grinning and gave Nimbin two thumbs up. I cracked up a bit, told her I'd been, what a wild little town. Also met some guys from the East coast who were river guides out here, one works at the mexican restaurant that we frequent. He recognized me as 'the kid from Mosey's'...Moseys is the best, the food isn't soaked in grease and cheese, but still has all the flavor, and presentation to boot. This guy works there when he's not on river trips. The owners of the place, Martha and Thad stewart, are old time river guides who fell in love with Haines when they were visiting and ended up relocating and opening up the restaurant. Anyways, had a good time listening to the music, chatting with interesting people.
Harry was telling me that Kelsey and Dwight were in Haines a couple days ago. Apparently they were having a few drinks out at Harry's and were riding around on his little 80cc motobike. D-wight was doing about thirty, trying to shift into fourth, and failed to notice a closed gate right in front of him. I guess he put a good gash in his head but was pretty lucky, the clinic wanted to put a couple stitches on him but he declined because it was going to be a hundred bucks a stitch or so. I saw him last night when the Karluk pulled into anchorage, we hollered back and forth at each other for a while and he says he's fine.
Turns out one of my friends from Big Sky, Tony, is working as a crew member on the gillnetter "Legacy," the legacy is in the Karluk's fleet. Kelso recognized him from the mountain. He worked in the lifty department with us. He'd been there a couple years, and had the best job, snowboarding around all day giving breaks to lifties. I road-tripped down to Brighton, Utah with him and a couple others for a weekend a couple of winters ago but haven't seen him since Big Sky. I told Guy, so we swung by the Legacy this morning and said hello. Next weekend is the State fair in Haines, so we made some tentative planes to meet up for that. With any luck the Karluk (with Kelsey, Dwight and Ron) will be there as well, we'll see.

Sunshine!

It got HOT up here over the past two days. Yesterday afternoon we ran the boat from the cannery down to the fishing grounds through glassy waters reflecting a clear sky. There were a few cotton candy'esc clouds clumped around the mountains, everything else was bright blue. The fishing was slow and Jacob and Dale rafted thier boats, the Brown Sugar and the Armada, off of the Beyrl E. We drifted about, and rigged up the buoy swing, taking advatage of the picking booms and a bouyball, jumping off the top of the wheelhouse, flying over the deck and out over the side, up and away before letting go and plunging into the sea. Good air, a few flips (and some stinging flops.) Jacob and Dale's girlfriends/crewmembers eventually gave it a go and I'm sure their screams were heard for miles. Everyone had good fun. Afterwards Jacob had to pick two hours worth of weeds and logs out of his net, compliments of an untimely tide rip. Aparently the tide (and the heaps of things it carries) didn't stop to enjoy the weather with the rest of us. That night we anchored in William-Henry bay for the evening and ate a salmon/rice/salad dinner, that combintation never seems to get old. The next morning brought more sun, I woke up early, crawled out of bed, scrambled up the latter from the foscle onto deck and bee lined for the galley for a cup of coffe. What a morning, I sat around in one of thoes blue coleman fold up chairs on the back deck drinking coffee, soaking up some sun, and reading 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac and a few snippets out of the Philosophy book Tom and Anita sent me for my birthday. The first part on logical fallacies wasn't very good, but then I really got into the philosophy of politics, society, religion etc..
I've been playing the guitar, getting better, but its slow going, I mainly just play around with some blues scales that John Sample taught me and jam a handful of chords. If I have any money left after this fall I'll likely get myself some lessons up in Bellingham. Also I don't want to beat a dead horse here,(or an alive one for that matter) but Guy, Ann, and Myself would like to see the whites of anyone's eyes who can possibly make it up here, Tom/Anita, Mom/Dad, Janey/Larry (any combination, or all of you at the same time). Any time between now and the 20th or so of August works. Guy serves as our fleet manager so we have some flexibility on our end, plus our boss on the dock owns a local hotel in Haines, I don't know if any rooms are available but we can definitly check...
Thats all for now...hope all is well, Adios!

Alaska

Hey all, I guess the pictures will have to wait for now, the library computer isn't set up for picture uplaoding. All is well, just thought I'd get on and start a blog, can't put much time in now, the boat is leaving town in a little over an hour. Fishing has been poor, Jacob and Dale are pretty even with thier catches, both are about to break the 10,000 mark. I went out with Dale the other day and made a couple sets...I'm hooked (gilled?). Yeah they're both enjoying it, this place truley is grogeous, it's like fishing in the middle of a national park, glaciers, rainforests, whales, eagles and the like are regular sights. The sun is great when it comes out, but the drizzle and mist make the place seem complete...huge snowfalls over the winter still cap most of the mountains.
Jacob's boat the Brown Sugar doesn't fit him very well, he cant standup in it, and has to sloutch in the captains seat, its a great looking little boat. The previous owner prioritized the working systems on board over the creature comforts so it is a little spartan on the interior but very clean and fishes like a champ. Someone on the dock informed Jake and I that it doesn't matter who runs her, she always seems to be loaded...it might be for sale...=]
Yesterday when we were pumping out the hold there was a live fish still swimming around after all the others were pumped out. It was a Chum. It survived being caught in a gillnet, stored in a brailerbag, a transfer onto the Beryl E, and the 32 degree water in our hatch all the way to the cannery. I decided it could be the one that got away and gave hime a heave-hoe over the side. Anyways I need to get back to the boat, hopefully I can find some wireless and post a few pictures one of these days, goodbye for now....Adam