Captain's Blog 2024 - Part I
Part 1 of 3 from what I wrote during last summer's commercial salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska
Most of this is straight from my coffee-stained, mildewy journal on the boat. Some names have been changed because I live in a small town. Some non-fishing whininess has been jettisoned. Some places I’ve added explanations, especially to make my to-do lists a little less cryptic. Parts still may be cryptic. I’ve used a few to-do list items as excuses for more rambling, in italics. I hope this will also help me remember what I need to work on for next season.
6/5/24
Protect RSW overboard valve
replace water heater before running engine. CHECK COOLANTcheck steering station lines, top off
Before I bought the boat, the previous skipper had almost decided to replace the fuel tanks. Some of the fittings looked rusty enough, and some places where brass or steel fititngs had been threaded straight into the aluminum tanks, the aluminum had corroded too. Someone had covered some of that up with Splash-Zone (the duct tape of commercial fishing boats, a two-part epoxy, one part black, one part yellow, kneaded into a smooth olive-drab, which is applied and hardens like modeling clay). We weren’t sure why the splash zone had been applied. Had there been a leak? It didn’t leak anymore. Scraping and tapping with a screwdriver, the skipper deemed it good enough. We pumped the fuel back into the tanks and forgot about it.
Five seasons later, my third after having bought the boat, the starboard fuel sump wouldn’t drain. The sumps were about a 6” length of 6” clyender added to the bottom of the tank, making a low point where debris and trace amounts of water would settle out of the fuel. A ball valve allowed these contaminants to be drained, preferably at the beginning and end of each season. The ball valves were rusty, and hard to turn, to the point where I’d almost broken off the handles. A can of liquid wrench and a day or two to marinate did the trick. Sticking the short length of once-clear tubing into the neck of a quart Gatorade bottle, I eased the valve open, and watched the brownish water and sludge push through the tube into the bottle, until it went the pinkish clear of clean diesel. Closing the valve, I pulled the tube out of the Gatorade bottle and lifted the bottle to the light, seeing the bubble of water sunken to the bottom, along with most of the brownish sludge and black specks of who knows what-probably rubber disintegrated from the insides of the fuel lines. That yucky stuff would not be getting stirred up in the fuel tanks anymore, and would not be getting fed to the old Volvo 122-D.
But then the sump wouldn’t drain. I worked the valve back and forth, but not a drop came through the hose. “Fuck,” I said, the tympanic ring of the word dying in the dim lazarette. I stared, squatting where no one could see me. I shifted my sore butt to perch atop the rudder post with the other cheek. Then I had an idea. A dumb idea. But clever. Redneck smart. I could blow into the tub with my mouth, and maybe clear whatever had plugged it. I wiped the diesel wetness from the tip of the tube with an oil diaper. Then I hunched over, my head between my knees, and put my lips to the tube. I felt the slide of diesel between my dry lips and the old plastic, and reminded myself to maintain outward pressure from my mouth as I opened the valve, so as to not get a mouthful of diesel. I’d never siphoned gas, but I remembered a line from Ricky in Trailer Park Boys, on siphoning gas. “Unleaded tastes a little tangy, supreme is kinda sour, and diesel’s pretty good.” I needn’t have worried, because although I was able to blow into the hose, and hear the bubbles going into the tank, when I stopped blowing, nothing came out. Not another drop. I repeated it a few times, still nothing. So there was some serious gunk in the sump.
With the new fuel tank project came some new plumbing for the RSW (Refrigerated Sea Water) system as well. Since the overboard valve on the back deck, it needs to be guarded so it doesn’t get ripped off by the gillnet as we set it overboard. The steering lines also had to be removed and reattached to make way for the fuel tanks. The water heater cracked over the winter because I forgot to drain it. $750 dollar oopsie. Since the water is heated from the engine coolant running through it, I had to make sure the new water heater was in before running the engine so we didn’t blow up the engine too. While these projects weren’t too complicated, I had trouble trusting my new deckhand with any of them after spending two days traveling with him to the Bay.
The greenhorn couldn’t figure out how to change the alarm on his watch, so he changed the time instead. He was convinced that our plane was boarding in an hour and leaving in an hour and 45 minutes, when really it was leaving in 45 minutes and almost boarding.
I flew and shared a hotel room with the greenhorn. When we arrived in Anchorage the day before his watch snafu, he’d immediately left the gate and gone to baggage claim, even though both of us had checked our bags straight through. I had to call him to find out where he was, and after finding him, asked, “Are you getting any of your checked bags for tonight?”
“No,” he said.
“Then why did you come to baggage claim?”
“I don’t know.”
Ten youths just walked by carrying pallets. Unpacking my bag in the tophouse in the boatyard, I saw this and it took me back to all the times I hauled pallets as for a beach fire. The greenhorn stayed glued to his phone.
The Ranger seems shot. Leaf shackle on one side is gone, so the leaf is just resting against the frame. The other side is about to go And the frame rails that the shackles are attached to are about to go. The ball joints are done in the front, but only need to replace those if I need four-wheel drive. Then there’s the brakes I brought it in for. The rotor overheated so much it cracked. So need that, and pads and the caliper on that side. And the brake line. Maybe 3k to fix. I feel like I have no business owning anything more complicated than a cheap bike. Then there’s this boat.
The Ranger is a 1988 Ford Ranger that came with the boat. Almost every season, I’ve spent at least half a day working on it, when I’d rather be working on the boat. One season the brake lines went out, which was ok for a little while since it’s a manual. I could plan ahead and gear down and stop where I needed to (thankfully I never had to make a sudden stop). Trucks often have to be moved as the tractor hauls boats around the boatyard though, and one of the yard workers jumped in the Ranger to move it and the only way he could stop it in time was to steer it into a pile of nets. “How are the brakes?” I asked, since I hadn’t added brake fluid that day.
“There ain’t any,” he said.
One season I had to hitchike when I got a flat tire. The Ranger did come with three spare tires—but no spare wheel. So I carried one spare tire and the wheel with me and thankfully hitched a ride in a truck to the shop to get the new tire on. Was going to take a cab back, but the kid at the shop kindly gave me a ride.
Last season, on the way back from dropping my crew off at the airport, the truck started bogging down. I worried it might be the transmission since it had been slipping out of 5th occasionally, but the RPMs and gears seemed right. But then I smelled something hot, pulled over, and one of the front wheels was smoking. The brake caliper had seized onto the rotor. I drove it a little farther, to a place I could park it on a turn-off, and called a cab. I had to make my flight later that night and wound up leaving the truck there and calling the shop to go find it and tow it, which they did a week or so later.
This season, I called the shop, where it had been all winter after getting towed, and they told me I’d better come in and look at some things before they started work. The brake rotor had cracked from the heat, so it and the caliper would need replacing. Along with some cracked brake lines on the other side. They suggested getting a tire to match the other three, since by that time I had used the three spares that came with the truck. Three grand to do it all, they guessed. So I didn’t do any of it, and just drove it back to the boat. It’s a boatyard truck now.
6/6/24
D-Day. Started the engine. Still have a bit of a coolant leak. Like as bad as the beginning of last season, but now it’s leaking out of a beautiful new oil cooler. Got the new hot water heater in too and it’s leaking a little. But did not see any hydraulic leaks. Couple knicked hoses that should be replaced though. Jesse is going to give us the D. Gotta do computer work tomorrow.
The D stands for Dual Permit. Two Bristol Bay salmon drift-net permits can be fished on a single boat, so the boat can use 200 fathoms (1,200 feet) of net instead of the standard 150 fathoms. A third more net doesn’t seem like a ton, until you consider the drop in overhead costs from two boats to one. And the deckhand who holds the second permit gets paid an extra 10%. It just takes a little bit extra paperwork to get set up.
Drove the Ranger down and it feels just as good as usual. I guess I could drive it around this season since I have to. Could go fishing on Monday.
Mariah is in Seattle tonight with the kids. [I] saw a guy dragging his son and daughter (just guessing) through the yard today. The boy was animated about something and then bent down and scooped up some rocks and threw them as a car was passing. The dad got down to the kid’s level and had a face-to-face for a minute then.
Ran out Ralph’s and a truck and a van passed me and then I caught up to the van, stuck in the ditch. Or just the mud where the road was no more. The truck came back, a little Dakota, and towed it out with some old cork line, while the van guys deckhand and I pushed. Probably took 45 minutes. Van guy was named Anders on the Viking Spirit. Nice guy, he’s 31, also his 18th season. Said he likes to bike, did 100 miles a day for a few weeks before the season. Said to me, “You’re lookin’ good doin’ it,” probably five times, twice out the window as he drove by after we got him out, once going toward Ralph’s Hill, once coming back after he found a spot to turn around. I think I’ll be sore, since I haven’t run in almost a month, and I tried to pick up an E-350 by the bumper.
Ralph’s Road is where I run to get a break from the boatyard. It helps me clear my head and put my to-do list in perspective. It takes about ten minutes to run out of sight of almost all man-made stuff, besides the road itself. Seeing such unimpeded distance on the tundra helps remind me of how small all the problems of the boatyard are, especially just our 32-foot boat. There’s more to it than that.
6/7/24
Got the D paperwork started. Will have to Pay Johnson Diesel soon. And Drew probably. I need to talk to Silver Bay about a loan. I’m a little worried about incurring more debt and screwing up the house thing too. Did that paperwork today too. And the CDOC stuff. Hope it doesn’t take too long to get here. [Greenhorn] painted hydros, we got a couple new hoses. Talked to J Diesel about the leak, and Jimmy said he already had his guy come and redo it once, but he’ll do it again, because we can’t have it leaking any. Love those guys. But they do want to get paid. I’d better go plug in the truck.
6/8/24
Put RSW back together mainly. Maybe should put new zincs in. Talked to office about company credit card and if they could front any more money, and they said probably a little, but not more than $10k or so, which is what’s already the limit on the card. So I don’t know. Couldn’t find the leak in the bunk. Talked to Anya, she just bought a house with Robin in Bham. Need to test radios, check holds, banjos, bilge pumps, pic of Anya’s stuff, raingear inventory, sleeping bags, nets, test RSW, net lights, buoys, pikes, grapnel, sort tophouse, swap pulse pump for tophouse heater.
Anya fished with us in 2020 and 2021, but took a season off last year. I talked her into coming back for as long as she could this season, which was only two weeks between a friend’s wedding and one of her other jobs as a farmhand. She would arrive just before we splashed, and stay for two weeks until Mariah could swap her for the last three weeks.
6/9/24
Had my first “season’s over” dream last night. A nightmare at this date. Any date. Only memories of a few measly brailers unloaded, and working in the boatyard. How many years have I been having these dreams? At least 10 if not 15. This is my 18th year. My Bristol Bay career is an adult. It can vote. On this boat, years worth of time. Good enough to come back. Might have to be a little better than that from now on out. I’m an adult now. Getting the D again. I can’t believe Jim got the D for free for all those years. “Only had to pay into the Bay 1 year.” But he had an extra 1/3 of a net for free for a decade. Check on that D and CDOC tomorrow. Pics of Anya’s gear. Steering almost smooth.
6/10/24
Mariah called and was trying to get the kids to take a nap and Tephra sang me a song.
The gals at LFS asked if the cute little deckhand was mine. They said, “He’s so wholesome.”
I said, “We’ll see how wholesome he is by the end of the season. Not that I’m going to try and corrupt him.”
The gals also said he told them that he’s “greener than green.” So that’s good. Mariah said he didn’t have an ego But it seems like he has a little engineer ego. I was so much worse when I was his age though. Not as handy, not as wholesome, heaps of ego, and more sleeping in probably. Probably more talking back too. But also more experience.
Bled the heck out of the steering system, then realized I should just disconnect the ram again, because I already did that and knew the rudder itself was stiff as hell, so I talked to Chris about it and he thinks if I pull the rudder shaft then shave just a little off the inside of the UHMW sleeve. There was only one wrap of packing around the top of the post. Probably should have loosened the compression plate winters to let the packing and UHMW bounce back instead of getting too tight on the shaft. Want it just tight enough on the shaft, but not too tight to slide, or at least rotate…
6/11/24
· Ream rudder
· Tophouse heater
· Test generator
· Test bilge pumps
· Scrape and paint engine
· Wipe out bilge
· Call about winbdow
· Pay Johnson diesel
· Laundry
· Check on CDOC
· Patch cabin furnace duct w/foil tape
· Groceries
· Radio check
· RSW (patch garden hose)
· Bow leak double check
There’s been a small leak in the starboard bunk on rough days the past few seasons, but can’t recreate it with the garden hose to find the hole.
· Rain gear inventory
· Paint new fittings in laz and engine room
· Pull Denso from RSW
· Survival suit check (check coast guard sticker)
· Set up deck
· Net inventory
6/12/24
· Tophouse heater
· Generator
· Window
· Laundry
· CDOC
· Patch cabin furnace duct
· Groceries
· Radio check (group, 2 meter, VHF)
· RSW
· Bow leak
· Rain gear inventory
· Anya gear inventory
· Paint fittings, heat exchange, RSW, fuel, steering
· Survival suit check
· Set up deck
· Brailer taglines
· Nets
· Banjos
· Patch garden hose with emergency tape
· Pitzroy mount
· Check propane
· Chck head
· Check deck rivets
6/13/24
· CDOC
RSW log
Time Temp High Pressure Low Pressure
15:40 42 225 62
15:46 40 216 61
15:49 39 220 61
15:53 38 208 58
Compressor oil looked low at first but it’s ok if it shows in sight glass. Level rose from ¼ to ½ or more with running. High pressure shut off once, had to adjust Y-valve. Counter-clockwise to bring hi press down.
6/14/24
· CDOC
· Window
· Groceries – ask SBS
· Radios
· Bow leak (Greenhorn)
· Tophouse furnace
· Set up deck
· Nets
· Survival suits and flares
· Pitzroy mount
· Head
· Propane
· Deck rivets – replace loose ones with bolts (Greenhorn)
· Cover RSW outlet valve
· Deck hose pump plate (Greenhorn)
· Mark fuel tanks
· Seal clean out
· When freshwater runs out, take out, drain plugs and seal with silicone
· Protect steering station plumbing aft
6/15/24
· Window
· Groceries at Silver Bay? Yes and mail (Greenhorn)
· Ramcharger
· Radios
· Bow leak (Malcolm)
· Re-put deck together (Greenhorn)
· Tophouse furnace
· Nets – pull – check reel nets
· Survival suits
· Day bunk
· Head
· Propane
· Pitzroy mount
· Cover RSW outlet valve
· Seal clean-out
· Silicone freshwater plugs
· Protect aft helm plumbing
· Stow spare brailers
· Stow Mariah and Anya gear
· Move old fuel tanks out back
· Clean up scrap metal and hose
· Jerry rig-trolling valve
· 2-meter
6/16/24
· Pick up Dan and Jesse at 2 pm
· Edge protectors in tophouse
· Window
· Ramcharger
· Group and VHF check
· Head
· Propane, check big tanks
· Secure cooler, propane, net lights
· Pitzroy mount
· Seal clean-out
· Water plugs silicone
· Stow Mariah and Anya gear
· Reassemble bunk
· Clean up around blocks
· Trolling valve
· 2-meter
· Cover edges on tophouse dash
· Clean windows
· Vacuum
· Pike poles and grappelling hooks
· Gloves
6/17/24
· Check mail
· Test 2-meter, test group, VHF
· Window
· Seal clean-out
· Head
· Pitzroy mount
· Secure cooler
· Reassemble bunk
· Sort locker
· Pull up 8 more nets
· Trolling valve
· Tophouse bumpers
· Clean windows
· Vacuum
· Inverter
· Check pike poles
· Inventory gloves
· Test hammock
6/18/24
· Unscrew window frame
· Trolling valve
· Bleed hynautics
· Update Garmin
· Drum crossbar
· Check transmission bolts
· Secure aft engine bilge pump
6/20/24
Tomorrow will be for getting ship-shape, and getting the GPS back. Got Bristol Maps app with sat images of sand bars too. It’s pretty cool to see the currents in the different colors of water too. It might help us catch fish. Gotta have starlink for that, I think. But god, the more I see [The Greenhorn] glued to his phone propped on the table at every meal while he slurps his food. I really want to turn off starlink most of the time on the water. But he doesn’t go out and party. I guess I should be grateful that I don’t have my younger self as a deckhand.
Jesse says he forgot how primitive I am. And I feel good about that. I guess I forgot how particular he is because by the looks of his boat you’d think he was used to roughing it. Complaining about the sponges. Anya did too I guess. And Abi [Other former deckhand]. Maybe Anya will whip these boys into shape, make them a little less lame on their phones all the time. Now that I remember, Jesse does like to complain about stuff. I guess that’s what I’m doing.
6/19/24
· Trolling valve
· Garmin wiring
· Groceries
· Window
· Fuel barrels to dump
· Shower head mount
· Rewire racor water alarm
· Jump drill batteries (Greenhorn)
· Replace spotlight remote batteries
· Tophouse engine alarms
6/21/24
· Pick up Anya 4:20 pm
· Clear deck
· Fill deck up with nets
· Put nets 1 and 3 back in container
· Get Garmin
· Check spare web and twine
· Sort spare parts in bunk
· Label spare survival suit in conex
· Top off freshwater
· DRAIN PLUGS
· Cover and secure house battery
· Tighten rudder packing
Anya got here today, and we launch tomorrow morning around 4 am.
“If anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen out there.” -Captain Ron