I thought I remembered longer offseasons

It just keeps going faster and faster.  The oldest is off to college. We've been to visit her and she is alive and busy building her new life.  The youngest is almost taller than I am and enjoying high school. Their mother took a position at Western Washington University and I have already started on next years salmon stuff. It's time to rebuild the salmon seine. This will probably be the last net  I build for myself. I know It's going well when everybody complains about the mess in the driveway.  Anyway, it's a little hard to believe but, I have been playing on boats since I was 15 and I'll be 60 next month.  It's gone by entirely too quickly. I think when my oldest is done with college I'll hang up my rain gear for good.

Take a Breath

Salmon is just about over with for this year. It was an odd year, to say the least. The salmon never really hit the beach and ran. It was very spotty and inconsistent, at the start. They would show up at Surgeon Head one day and then three days later at Cape Kuliuk. They would be gone for a couple of days and then show up at Rocky Point.  It took a while, but we finally got the fish "dialed in" and the ball rolling in the correct direction.
The skiff performed flawlessly.  Better than I had expected. One float switch failed, but it was a backup anyway. I'm still having an issue with my refrigeration (high condenser head pressure), but I'll make some changes in the condenser bypass piping size which should give me more adjust-ability.
Having my kids, as crew, was a big learning experience. It was a lot like herding cats. The pluses far outweighed any inconveniences. They were, without question, the best deck I've had in recent years. No drug or alcohol problems, they didn't care how many sets we made or how much we caught in each haul. They could work in weather and they could handle any power-block speed I threw at them. The coolest part is, they're only going to get better and I have them for the next three years!

Catch Up, Again

The Salmon season is over for another year and, as usual, I have neglected to post on a regular schedule.  I left my laptop at home this year, figuring I could post with my phone.  Haha, not! So, I'll try and reconstruct the season from memory.
Our first outing was strait to the "Mainland" and Bird Bluffs searching for Sockeye.  The fishing is pretty good and things are going, relatively, smoothly.  I have switched to a different processor, (Trident Seafoods), after about 15 or 20 years with APS.  I don't remember the dates for sure.  Anyway, on the second day I slip and hit the back of my head on the pipe rail. Nice concussion and I'm out for about ten days.  Great!
Our skiffman had rotator cuff surgery in  January and he's having a little difficulty also. Off to town to recuperate and regroup. Once I felt up to working again we headed out. Second day out and the skiffman's shoulder is going  haywire on him, so back into town we go. He was worried he had reinjured the rotator cuff, but the MRI showed a nice repair, still intact. After the third time he had a problem we decided it might be better if he sat out the season. After the last shoulder incident everything went just fine for the rest of the season. The best of stories.  No breakdowns and steady fishing.  Enough to put a smile on a guys face. I'll put a little more detail in later posts.

4G!

The impossible has happened.  AT&T has finally gotten the new cell tower and network up and running. It's nice to be able to access everything I've been paying for these last couple of years.
I got into Kodiak last night, with my son, to get ready for salmon. My other kid won't be here for five more days, so its likely I'll not be ready for the first opener. I still have to put the skiff in the water and put the seine on the back deck. There is always something to do.
I'm using my phone to post as I left my heavy laptop at home. Six lbs was just too much to haul around in my briefcase when I traveled and there's just no room on the boat to set it up and leave it. I'm hoping to get a tablet soon. Way more better for a boat this size.

Home!

Just got home last night and I'm starting to settle in for a couple of weeks. Cod season in Kodiak is almost over. The jig fleet will finish off the entire quota next week sometime. Almost 8,000,000 lbs. of fish for the jig boats this year! That's gotta be some kind of record.
    I went up the first of March.  I don't know what possessed me to do that.  Money probably.  The weather was bad most of the time and when it wasn't, the "calm" didn't last very long. One day I tried to drive up Piller mountain, which overlooks Kodiak.  I got about half way up and that was it!  The snow hadn't been plowed any further.  Not out of neglect, but neccessity.  The snow was higher than the top of the car. I would show pictures, but I deleted them all by mistake.  Ya gotta be smarter than the tool!  I spent most of March huddled inside the boat doing small projects in the engine room. Had I really been motivated I could have done them in a couple of weeks.
   My regular cod crew were just finishing up the pot season when the captain decided to do all his Halibut IFQ's right after pot season.  There went my crew for jig.  I moped around for about a week thinking about just going home and coming back when salmon started, but I was pretty sure my reception, when I got home, would be even chillier than the weather in Kodiak. Not good, so I poked around and picked up a couple of green kids to fish cod with and they turned out just fine.  We had a pretty good time and caught a few fish too.

It's that time of year, again!

The skiff is done and ready for shipment.  Off to Tacoma or Seattle with it and also a new bale of web for the seine.  I'm running into difficulties finding a ride north for the skiff.  All the tenders headed up are stopping in Sitka for herring and can't have a skiff sitting on deck.  They'll need every square inch of deck space they have.  Horizon doesn't carry skiffs anymore, so I don't know who to go to.

Ah, Samson Tug & Barge will take it to Kodiak for the paltry sum of three thousand one hundred dollars, one way, please.  Anyway, I just got home from delivering the skiff and web.  I went a little overboard on the skiff bridle and painter line.  Inch and a half Blue Steel Dynema, hahaha. I don't think I have to ever worry about breaking it. Not even sure what the breaking strength is, pretty darn big though. Here are the pictures:

Wish I knew what the breaking strength on the Dynema is.

Loaded up and ready to head for Seattle.

They're just about to touch down on the flat.  I was real happy about how balanced the lifting bridle was. I was surprised at how much the skiff weighed 6,020 lbs.  Wow, fat boy.










And there we are, touch down and delivered!  Now, if they can just make sure it arrives intact.

The weather outside is frightful

Brutal is a good word for what's happening, weather-wise, in Kodiak right now.
Sub-zero temps and high winds seem to be the norm.  Lost two boats the other day.  One grounding and a roll-over.  Had it not been for the Coast Guard, 11 people could have been lost.  The margin of error when trying to make a living on the water is pretty skinny to begin with.  But try it in the winter, in these kind of conditions and, well, there isn't one. Any small failure or anomaly can and will kill you, or try it's best to do so.  This is the grounded boat as she sits in Jute Bay on the Mainland.  It happens pretty fast. without much warning, and usually in the middle of the night.  When the doodoo hit the fan, these people had to do everything exactly right and so did the CG or it would have been a far different result.  Man, that is a scary picture!

The Skiff

Well, I'm still working on the instrument console wiring and installation of the console onto the engine cover.  I'm very lucky NW Diesel Power is letting me camp in their shop. Dry and warm suits me just fine.  Sooner or later I must finish up. One thing bears mentioning,  I was installing the downsounder in the console and I broke off the data pin plugin.  It stuck out too far and pressed against the back wall of the console.  Never saw that one coming. I think I'm to the point where I can bring the skiff home and finish up.  This is what we came up with for the instrument panel and positioning it in the skiff.

Halibut - 2011

After a lousy salmon experience, Halibut was a dream.  I do my IFQs in the fall, so I have Halibut to distribute after the season closes down in November.  I have been doing them on the Viking Star with my friend's (Thorvold Olsen) crew.  What can I say,  We went out for a day, had a good day fishing and came in with all the "But" I was allowed this year.  Perfect!

There was a Salmon season in there somewhere?

I would love to avoid it, but that's not how I do things.  Salmon season 2011 is one I would like to forget.  It stunk from the start of day two clear through the whole season.  Day one was good.  We were on the "Mainland" chasing early Reds.  We had a pretty good day and then the liquid line on the refrigeration system ruptured in the fish hold.  That allowed a significant amount of seawater to enter the the refrigerant lines, compressor, condenser, and chiller tubes.  Needless to say, none of those things like salt water.  It took 30 seconds to do over $30 thousand dollars worth of damage and shut us down for the entire month of June. Not my idea of a good time. After that incident, the salmon season turned into a series of personnel problems.  I got through them and managed to learn a little bit.  That is all I'm going to say about the 2011 Salmon season.  It's over, I survived, Amen!

Smaller Pink Salmon returns.

The fall and winter weather is a big factor in the survival of Pink Salmon smolt.  If it freezes too early and stays cold, there is poor survival.  The same, if there is too much rain or not enough water in the streams.  The scientists are touting a 30 year ocean cycle shift to colder winters and I think they are right.  While this bodes ill for the Pinks, the other species, especially the Sockeye, will do better. I hope.