Alright, here we go!
I've included way too many pictures in this giant post so I made them all small. You should be able to click on a picture to make it full screen, then scroll through pictures from there.
There are always lots of little things to finish up around the farm before leaving for the summer - like installing the new birthday mirrors on the truck!
Ariel finished up school with the Calyx kids including a final performance of songs re-written to be about our animals (salmon, elk, bat) and a masked performance.
Andy made a sneaky surprise going away present by starting a bath garden around the well-house!
Elias and Ariel built a couple more micro-barns with locking doors for puting away the waterfowl at night.
Andy got acquainted with her new charges and practiced her morning and evening routines. Ariel and Elias resisted the urge to help as she wrestled goats and chased geese and ducks.
Brother Daniel took over Tim's job with JBC as an electrical apprentice for the summer.
Finally we were at home in the bay! Tim got busy switching out the starter before the captain came aboard. It took a few extensions and a few hours, but eventually all the bolts came out and went back in with only a few broken tools.
When we weren't playing "rock pole" down on the beach, there was plenty of work to do around the yard, like building new stairs up to the roof of our Connex and deck of our boat.
Elias and our neighbor-captain, Kim, designed and built the stairs (I think you can see who's doing the designing and who's doing the building).
Tim and Ariel and the captains removed the old stairs and fastened in the new ones.
Joe spliced lines to hook up the awesome new fish slide Ariel got busy sewing the night before leaving for the bay.
Finally we hit the water and could get to work. The first order of business was safety briefing for the greenhorn - which meant Ariel and Elias got to do survival suit races. We still need a re-match to settle who's faster.
As we headed south to the Ugashik fishing grounds, we passed walruses cavorting about in the water all around us. We also saw beluga whales, though no narwhals.
We made the long drive south to Ugashik, then spent TWO WEEKS sitting in a very small boat, all four of us, with nothing to do, waiting for the fish. Every day at noon, we listened to the announcements to hear if we had a opening to fish. After the announcer tortured us with phrases like "excruciatingly low fish counts", Tim, Elias, and Ariel would play a round of three-hand "disappointment cribbage", which gave two people something else to be disappointed about and one person a little morale boost. The rest of the day was then spent slowly going mad and debating whether it was better to sleep as much as possible or resist napping to sleep better at night. From 10pm to midnight, we had the great excitement of listening to "Late-Line" where all the fisherman call in to the radio to share witty insights or answer puzzler questions.
One day, Tim and Elias hitched a ride to shore on another boat to go for a walk. Ariel and Joe watched the boat and had showers while waiting for their return. Tim brought Ariel flowers from shore as a consolation prize for staying aboard.
Ariel loved the flowers but desperately still wanted to do her own cavorting about on shore so set about with a convoluted plan that involved getting the boat cook (Elias) to make cookies out of brownie mix for another boat captain (Quinn) and our boat captain (Joe) and the deck boss (Tim) to bribe everyone into letting her go to shore. Elias got some of the cookies he made and to also go to shore as bribe for helping in this lengthy process. On shore, Ariel and Elias got to be blessed as part of the blessing of the fleet, got to mail a letter to Andy back at the property, and got a long walk down the road to "town" for a can of spam and microwavable hamburger for Tim and a fresh apple to split on the walk back.
Other crews took to swimming to shore to play football for entertainment. Late one night someone streaked down the length of the sandbar during Late-Line while all the boats cheered or booed.
We managed to score some veggies off a tender for a small fortune, but somehow we had forgotten to pack more than one serving of frozen broccoli each per week, so the veggies were well worth the fortune and Elias made use of them with tasty food to keep our morale in check.
Alice sent up fake tattoos and we took bets on if any of them would last until the fish came in. One night we rafted up with another boat and the young crew members (another woman!!) got together to make "pizza" out of pancake mix, spaghetti sauce, cheese, and whatever "toppings" we could find.
Tim set Elias up with the drill and vikky knife to spend a day witting a new cribbage peg (a bust, but good project) and we all fought over who got to do the dishes each night just to have something to do! Ariel tried staying in bed making paper cranes until the announcement one day, but even paper is in short supply and can't be wasted. They made for a happy little flock of new friends for a while.
When life is so busy and complicated and fast, and commutes are long and errands are all over town, it is hard to imagine how maddeningly frustrating it is to do nothing, go nowhere, see no one new... day after day with no known end, especially when other people are making money.
Even with the stress of confined spaces, we kept laughing as Joe told stories and Ariel hid her imaginary "nose hair" from him every morning.
Finally the announcement came! Time to fish! We flaked out the net and manned our stations to get the season going.
With clear skies and sockeye stocked seas, our greenhorn turned red bleeding fish while Tim and Ariel turned green with their usual bout of start-of-season seasickness.
Seagulls surrounded our boats looking for cast-off gills or seal-bitten fish. Two seagulls were interested enough to let Ariel pet their bellies mid-flight and try to land on her hand which really helped distract from the sea sickness.
With our talented and hard working team aboard the f/v Whiskey Creek, we spent a week pulling in about ten thousand pounds of fish a day. We were lucky enough to only have to "round haul" one shackle (a quarter of the net) during the season - pulling the net full of fish in by hand and piling it on deck to be tediously untangled as we run for the tender line.
With big days came long nights waiting to unload fish, but long nights also meant beautiful sunsets and watching the boat lights on the water
Between sets, waiting to pick the gear as the net soaks up fish or while running between sets, Ariel took refuge in the art corner and worked on interpretive portraits of the crew.
For our last set of the season, we went out with a bang; pulling in a full boat-load (about ten thousand pounds) in a single set in only a few hours - most of the time spent picking the gear hauling it onto the boat.
Tim ran the hydraulics and picked fish, Ariel and Elias took turns bleeding fish and helping pick.
After the one bad day, Tim (and Ariel) recovered from seasickness and resumed loving fishing.
Ariel is crippled by the sun and has to wear bonnets, balaclavas, glasses, and handkerchiefs as well as the sunscreen to survive on the water
We headed for Naknek to call it a season and all return to the rest of the world. We gave the boat one last thorough cleaning and said our goodbyes.
Celebrating civilization in the Anchorage airport.
