Lots of repairs and maintenance lately. I put the prop guard on the new 200 HP Yamaha, so wanted to take the boat for a test drive. As I motored in front of Craig, I was turning the wheel, but the boat wasn’t turning. I slowed to a stop before I ran onto the reef. I did a few hard overs each way with the wheel, and got some steering back, but it wasn’t great.

I stopped in and asked Chet about it the next day. He said the helm fluid was probably low, and the seals back by the engine could be leaking. He gave me a run down of checking the fluid level, and how to check the steering ram for leaks. He sold me a bottle of the fluid I’d need, and a cap for the bottle of fluid with a nipple on it to make adding fluid to the reservoir easier. (I still spilled some, of course.)

I went home and tried to back out the plug in the reservoir with the biggest screwdriver I own here. The straight slot on the plug stripped out toot sweet.

I got the grinder out and put on a cutting wheel. I cut a new slot perpendicular to the stripped one like I saw the sidekick do on the Tool Time show (I’m serious-that’s where I saw it.) This time, I got a good bite with the screwdriver and the plug backed out.

I looked into the reservoir to look for metal shavings like Chet instructed. Not only were there no shavings, there was no fluid to be seen. I poured most of the quart into the reservoir until it was about full, and looked again. No shavings. I put some never seize lube on the plug threads and screwed the plug back in.

I worked the wheel back and forth and had good steerage now. I took a paper towel and wiped the steering ram. No oil showed. Might be the first helm oil check since it was installed,  and oil dibbled out  for the past 2 or 3 decades. Or a leak might just have started. Who knows. I learned something new and will need to add checking it to the maintenance schedule.

I learned the next day the leak was a recent event. Oil was leaking around the steering shaft at the helm.  Looks like a delicate job to tear apart the helm, install numerous o rings just right, be sure there’s no nick on the shaft to cause it to leak again, then put it all back together. Clearly a job I’m not the best for. Hopefully, Chet’s crew can fix it.

This morning I was heading to the community garage sale in Coffman Cove. First I stopped at the boat to replace a GFI outlet with a regular outlet that is powered by the inverter. The GFI outlet did not like the inverter current and would make noise by my ear all night.

Off I went to Coffman Cove. On the road to Klawock, the cab filled with mist out of the vents, and the windshield fogged. There was the smell of hot coolant. When I squeegeed the glass, it left behind a streaky film. I pulled over and googling confirmed what I thought: my heater core was leaking.

I went on to get fuel in Klawock, then returned to the Napa store in Craig to get a bypass kit. The salesman set me up instead with a 5/8 inch hose union and 2 hose clamps. I went to the grocery store next for potato salad ingredients.

I returned to the cabin and parked the truck to cool while I made the potato salad. After a couple more cups of coffee, I got to work. I cut the two hoses going to the heater core, and spliced the two with the union and clamps. I wired the union forward to take as much bend out of the hose as possible and hoped it was enough that the coolant wouldn’t be restricted.

I filled the coolant reservoir with water , then started the truck and drove it to town and back. The temperature gauge was normal so looks like it’s working.

Next I put a piece of wood under each side of the toilet paper holder in the bathroom. A full roll wouldn’t want to roll, and now there’s plenty of room.

Lastly, I trimmed around the windows to cover the gaps with the yellow expansion foam. I didn’t have more trim boards, so I used some one inch flexible electrical conduit around one window, and some old boat line for the other.

Pat and Sean get here tomorrow, and now I’m ready.

I heard from numerous people I’d be disappointed if I canned halibut. Too dry was the issue, as halibut don’t have the oil salmon do.

I tried it anyway. I added 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a Mama Lils pepper to each of 14 half pint jars. Then canned according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks cooperative extension guidelines.

Frickin delicious.

So I canned up 2 more cases, and think this will become a household favorite.

Took brother Joel and his son Clay out fishing and exploring this week. Clay is my last nephew who had not been here before.

We fished all week on the boat, anchoring each night. The tug has comfortable beds, enough space for 3 or 4 people, XM radio to listen to ball games, and ample cooking and bathroom facilities. So, nobody is in a hurry to get back to civilization, as we are already living quite comfortably.

We fished for king salmon each day, and I set my two-hook longline skate for halibut. From Sunday through Thursday, we fished all over the islands. We managed only two kings and no halibut. We’d hear of fish being caught elsewhere – we even saw what looked like a 30+ lb king caught right where we were fishing – but couldn’t buy one ourselves. I have to laugh at myself in retrospect, as this is not the first time this has happened to me. Even when I was a fishing guide out on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay, it would happen. I’d doubt myself, wondering what I was doing wrong. Was I fishing the wrong lures? Was I fishing too deep or too shallow? Should I be fishing another spot?

On Thursday, we fished in sight of the cabin. After catching only the two fish a few days earlier, it took me a second to recognize what the buzzing sound was as I was making coffee in the galley. Then I got it – it was the line being dragged out the reel! Out I piled onto the back deck, as I was closest to the fishing rods. When I grabbed the rod, it was doubled over but not pulsing, and I hoped it wasn’t just a bunch of kelp that had pulled the fishing line out of the downrigger release. But a second later, I felt the heavy fish pull, and knew we had one on. I handed the rod to my nephew now at my side and cranked up the downriggers and the other rod. I got the net out and was ready when he brought the nice king salmon to the boat. What a relief.

We’d planned to fish the rest of the day and go back to the cabin for a relaxing Friday, as the boys left on Saturday. We saw deer on most every smooth beach on the drag, including a nice buck in velvet on a point. Not sure what brought the deer out, but they all seemed happy for the sunshine, and several seemed to be running back and forth on the beach, just for fun. The boys had seen a black bear on the beach where we’d anchored the night before, so they’d seen the big mammals on the islands, except for a wolf. Even though the fishing had been slow, there were always new sights to see for them.

Then I got a message from my brother-in-law – there were fish where he was. He’d fished the same drag as we were at now earlier in the day, but had caught nothing and moved. The spot he moved to was a spot we’d fished a few days earlier, where there was lots of feed and whales and birds, but we couldn’t catch a fish. I wasn’t going to tell my crew and make them feel bad we weren’t catching more, but when my nephew asked me how my brother-in-law was doing, I told him. I told the boys we could still go to town today as they’d wanted, or we could run the two hours to the spot my brother-in-law was fishing, anchor there for the night, and fish their last day here instead of relaxing in town. “Let’s go fishing,” said Clay. That’s my nephew! We pulled in the gear and headed for greener pastures.

On the way to the new spot, I set out my two-hook halibut skate. I set it in the same spot Joe and I caught the two big halibut about 2 weeks ago. I had set there once or twice since and caught nothing. When we got to the salmon spot, we still had plenty of evening daylight left, so we put the lines out. There was tons of feed showing on the sounder. Whales were everywhere. Many surfacing uncomfortably close (for me) to the boat, but the boys seemed unconcerned and enjoyed the experience. Some of the whales were feeding at the surface. What a show. Bang. We got a nice king. So the fish might still be here. We got to our anchorage, hopeful we might get lucky the next day. The boys wanted to get home midday, so I guessed we’d fish til about 10 am, and then a two-hour ride home.

I was up early as usual. I pulled the anchor, and Joel and I set the salmon gear as we idled out of the anchorage. It was a little before 5 am. The sounder didn’t show as much feed as yesterday, and the whales were more dispersed (thankfully), but we were hopeful. It took about an hour and a half when we got the first fish on. And then another. And then another. By now it was 9:30 am. I said we can leave now and get home at noon, or do we want to try for our last fish for our daily limit? “Keep fishing,” said Clay. That’s my nephew!

Several boats were showing up. All friends of my in-laws and me. They’d heard through my brother-in-law and me that there were some fish here, and several had kids with them to see all the whales. Plus, it was a bluebird day, with calm winds and sunny skies. The best weather of our trip, for sure!

About 10:30, we got our last king salmon. We’d also caught 4 coho along the way. Joel had taken over fish cleaning duties after I showed him how when we caught the first fish of the trip, and he kept up with cleaning and chilling the fish all morning. We picked up the gear, and Joel cleaned the last king salmon as I headed for home. We stopped to check my skate. I think all of us were thinking this might be the day for a halibut, since all our luck seemed piled into this final day. We were not wrong! I got a harpoon into the halibut, stunned the fish on the head with the backside of the gaff, and for the first time, easily pulled it up over the swim step and through the stern door, rather than it taking two of us and all we were worth to haul it over the rail as I’d done the previous – what – 10 halibut I’ve caught off the tug? I’m a slow learner, but still learning. I cut the gill to bleed it and headed for home. What a day. And not yet noon.

We steamed back to the beautiful cleaning tables they have on a dock here in Craig. White cutting boards and high-pressure city water from garden hoses. I got Joel started on filleting the first halibut he’s ever tried, and he took right to it. I got to filleting and portioning the day’s catch of salmon, while Clay double rinsed the portions. We let them dry in a colander basket, then piled them into a clean bucket. And as if things could not get luckier, 3 of the 4 king salmon were white-fleshed king salmon – a delicacy – especially here in Southeast Alaska. It’s rare to see a white king salmon in these outer waters of Southeast Alaska, much less 75% of your catch!

After the fish butchering was done, we hauled all the fish, gear, clothes, and trash up the launch ramp dock. Clay said he’d stay with it to protect the fish from the birds, and Joel and I took the tug to the harbor. We found a transient moorage spot, tied up, walked the green mile to the harbor parking lot, then up the street to the harbor master office lot where the truck was parked. We drove the few miles to the launch ramp and picked up our belongings and Clay.

Back at the house, we got down to vac packing. Joel filled the bags with fish, Clay ran the vac packer, and I wrote the fish species and year on each package. I filled the freezer with fish, separating layers with the racks I used on the boat freezer, and then begged Brian for more freezer space as we had more fish than space. He, of course, said sure, and we ran the overflow over to his freezer.

Bad luck struck this morning as I went to pack fish boxes at 4:45 am: the fish had not frozen in the freezer overnight. The fish were plenty cold, but not frozen. That was puzzling. I have racks I made to separate layers of fresh fish going into the freezer so they freeze quickly. They’ve always frozen overnight. But not this time.

Luckily, there was plenty of frozen fish from the previous days’ catch in there, so it was only the last day’s catch that was not frozen. So, I mixed the frozen fish with the chilled fish, carefully weighed the fish so I could get the two box weights right at the 50 lb limit, and taped up each box. I sort of limit my friends’ and family’s take home of fish to one box each. I don’t even know if anyone has asked for more than that. I know it irks locals to see boxes upon boxes of fish leaving their waters with non-residents – many asking how much fish can a person eat in a year, are these fish being sold or bartered, etc – so I try to do my part to be modest.

We loaded up and headed out for the ferry about 6 am. We stopped for the obligatory coffee (Clay got chocolate milk) and donuts at Black Bear store and chit-chatted all the way to Hollis. The boys were soon checked in and said they were boarding the ferry. We said our goodbyes, and I headed home.

When I got back, I went over to get the fish in Brian’s freezer, now that I had room in mine. The fish from his freezer were frozen solid. Huh. When I got home and started filling the freezer, I noticed something: the plug for the freezer on the floor! A power source plug from a radio on a cabinet had fallen yesterday when I was moving things around, but I didn’t notice it had unplugged the freezer on its way to the floor. Mystery solved.

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Summer in Craig: Week 1

My friend Joe came in to take the boat with me from Juneau to Craig. I decided to try the summer in Craig with the boat, and I”m having eveyrone that’s coming to see me this summer come there.  Joe got stuck a day for weather, then another day on a jet mechanical. He showed up and off we went. We’ve known each other since we were in our early 20’s, when we met as Peace Corps volunteer trainees in Norman, Oklahoma at the little college they have there. I think we were there Boz’s senior year, but we didn’t make it to a ballgame. Seven of us trained together before 3 of us went to Sierra Leone and 5 to Liberia. Most of us have been family ever since.

The first day we headed less than a day’s run from Juneau and then up a bay. Nick told me it was a good place to try for shrimp. Joe was eager to see the trawl work. I would dehead the shrimp while we towed the net. We made 3 drags that evening, set the crab pot, and anchored for the night. In one of the drags we caught a tiny little octopus that we admired as it swam away. It was the size of my thumbnail.

The next morning, we made one more drag, pulled the pot, and headed south. We caught almost all coon stripe shrimp and I’m learning a little more every tow on how to fish the shrimp trawl. The second trawl with the smaller net and smaller doors, was much easier for me to set singlehandedly than the larger first net. There was a big king crab in the pot, but unfortunately the season for them didn’t open until June. We  We let the  tails sit for a day in the cooler as I recently learned this makes shelling them much easier.

As we ran down Stephens Passage and rounded the corner to Frederick Sound, I was missing seeing Paul in Petersburg. Kurt and I stopped in and had lunch with him last year. We anchored at the entrance to Eliza Harbor.

The next morning we tried shrimping in the northern end of Rocky Pass, waiting for the tide to rise to mid flood tide before heading down south through the pass.   No shrimp there. We ran the pass without incident, although we saw a big rock pile on the Kuiu side of Devils Elbow that doesn’t show on the chart, which I duly mentally noted for the next trip. We made it into Port

Protection in the evening. The skipper of The Loon kindly moved some boats around at the dock so we could tie up. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Maybe from television. We also got the sad news that Brian’s Aunt Mary had passed away. She was a good friend to Sara and I, and always with an open door and plenty to eat when we passed through Ketchikan.

We were off at 5 am the next morning to run El Capitan Passage. We were looking forward to shrimping when we came out of the pass, but when we got there, we found several commercial shrimpers pot fishing there. We tried one spot out of their way over what the chart indicated was mud, but caught a huge rock that we were barely able to get to the surface. We called it quits and headed for town.

We got in about 7 pm, and I sure appreciated having Joe with me to offload all the crap I had on board, including a futon for the container, a cart of groceries for Ellen, and a pile of Covid vaccine boxes from Dr Amy’s for packing fish. When we got to the container, we got the old broken futon out and the new one in, and Joe said he slept well on it.

We got out fishing the next day. I set a 2 hook skate on the way there. We fished all day and didn’t even catch a bomber. On the way back to the skate, we tried dragging the shrimp net over the mud bottom, and came up with a cod end full of sea cucumbers and sea squirts, but no shrimp.

We got to the skate, and when I started pulling it in hand over hand, I felt some weight on it, but nothing pulling back. When I got to the first hook, though, there was a nice halibut. We had to find the harpoon and I got a strike that wasn’t quite all the way through the gill, but I managed to get it on board.   The second hook had an even bigger halibut, but with a huge chomp precisely  taking out all the stomach area. The width of the mouth of whatever chomped it was about 2 feet!  We guessed either a shark or an orca. But the fish was still plenty good, and was already bled, and we didn’t lose all that much meat.

We measured the fish to get the estimated weight off the chart in the tidebook. The first fish was 92 lbs, and the second 188 lbs!  I thought maybe the tide book was wrong, so I looked it up online, and the tidebook was not wrong. We had a pile of fish. Joe learned how to clean halibut last year, and you’d think he was a seasoned professional fish processor. There was little flesh left on the bones when he was done.

By the time we got to town, Joe was just about done with the second fish. We stopped to let him finish so we could pitch the carcass outside of the harbor in deeper water. We took the fillets up to the truck in 3 buckets, then drove over to the launch ramp on False Island, where they have nice tables with white cutting board tops and running water with great pressure for cleaning. The bugs were out, so maybe that got us done a little faster. I skinned the fish while Joe portioned. We finished about 830 pm and headed for home. At home, we got to vac packing, and finished that about a half hour after midnight. What a day!

We got one more day of king salmon fishing in a different spot, and just nothing again, even though there was plenty of feed along the drag. When Kevin came over later and told us the fishing had dried up, that made us feel a little better, since Kevin is a high liner on king salmon with the sport rods.

On Joe’s last day, we drove across the island to Thorne Bay to get some rodholders I bought on the local facebook buy-sell-trade page. We then drove down to a bay I knew had sea asparagus to check it out. We were not disappointed. More asparagus than I’d ever seen in one place. We picked for less than an hour and got plenty for pickling.

We continuued on to Kasaan, as I’d never been there. We saw some of the beautiful totem poles, but only saw one person anywhere in town. People may have been to a memorial service in Hydaburg and/or gone to Juneau for Celebration.

Joe left on Monday, but his flight was cancelled to Hyder for weather, I guess. And looks like he’ll be there awhile as the weather is poor, with high winds and rain, the next couple days. I spent Monday picking through the sea asparagus. Joe’s bag was virtually clean. Mine had lots of grass and sea weed and snails. Kinda who each of us is.

I spent Tuesday pickling and canning the sea asparagus. We picked enough for 38 half pints, so I have sea asparagus for awhile. It was blowing 25 and pouring rain, so a great day for canning and listening to KRBD. I will try to send a case of the sea asparagus over to Joe if I can get it over there before he leaves.

Pickled Sea Asparagus

6.5 cups water + 6.5 cups 5% White Vinegar, brought to a boil

In each ½ pint jar:

Pinch of rosemary
Pinch of garlic powder
Boiling bath water canner for 10 min.

Funny. When I had the Dutch Master, my first commercial fishing vessel – a 1970’s era plywood commercial fishing vessel with pleny of rot here and there- I didn’t worry about through hull fittings. I didn’t even know where they were located in the bowels of the boat. I was in my 30’s and just learning about boats.

At 60, I have a fiberglass boat in great condition, and I’m still learning. I got one of the kids in the scout troop to help me with the through hull fittings while the boat was hauled out for bottom painting and zinc replacement. I had him hop down in the engine room and try to work the handles on the seacock valves while I sprayed lubricant into the through hull hole on the outside into the valve. Two valves never gave and remain seized open, but the valve for the intake to the raw water pump, thankfully, works. Perhaps it does because this valve is the easiest to access, and it’s used more regularly when you need to clean the sea strainer or change the water pump impeller when the boat is in the water.

The engine has never overheated. Always shown right in the middle of the temperature gauge. I noticed that the raw water pump water flow overboard was more like a dribble than a flow, but I didn’t worry because the temperature seemed fine.

After watching some you tubes on regular maintenance, I realized I’d never checked the sea strainer for the raw water pump, so I did that while the boat was out of the water. And wow, am I glad I did. The strainer was full of vegetation. I was surprised the engine has not overheated. Even though the strainer basket is small, it took a good while under the kitchen spray hose at home to get all the gunk out.

When we put the boat back in the water today and I got back to the harbor, I looked at the raw water pump flow exiting the boat now, and it was a thick, steady stream. Now I know what it should look like, and another boat lesson learned.

I started to try to look at the impeller, too, but the access point is not in a particularly easily accessible location and I stopped before I might do something that would prevent me from starting the engine, which I’d need to do when they put me back in the water. Now that I know I can close the seacock, I can work on it anytime, so don’t have to be out of the water. Hopefully it’ll be good another year.

Another good thing I found out today was my high water alarm works just fine. I installed it in the drive shaft alley last year. I forgot to turn the bilge breaker back on after the boat went back in the water, and as soon as I threw the breaker switch back on, the alarm sounded. It took a good while for the bilge pump to pump the water overboard, but eventually the water subsided and the alarm quit blaring. Glad to know it works and good practice to recognize the alarm sound.

I’ve been loading the boat for days now in preparation for the run to Craig. A futon for the Craig cabin, a small kayak for people to paddle around when we’re at anchor, a heavy door for the storage shed in Craig, and a dozen boxes for sending fish home with my family and friends coming up to visit this summer.

Joe drove down from Smithers this morning to take the Taquan Air flight from Hyder to Ketchikan, but that flight was cancelled due to poor weather in Ketchikan, so he didn’t catch the jet to Juneau from Ketchikan as planned today. Hopefully, he’ll get here tomorrow and we can leave the next day. Nice to have a breather til then.