Well the salmon fishing is going pretty strong here. Lot’s of fish. Well be hauling up to 10,000 tons of frozen salmon back to Seattle later this month.
But first, we need to shuttle it from Nakned and Dillingham to Dutch Harbor. Some will go to Asia, but we will collect two barges worth of refer containers and haul it down to Seattle.
The weather continues to hold and seas have been calm with light winds. It’s often sunny now, but chilly.
So, now here’s a little story that I wrote up weeks ago, but haven’t been able to get a good connection to upload- this is from Anchorage:
26-6-07
The sun is shining, and there are light winds. The sea is rippled and there is a slow rolling. She has none of the menace that I saw when I was last in the Aleutians, but there is still a calm indifference.
We left Anchorage at high tide in the afternoon yesterday. The loading was complete near high tide, so we pulled off the dock and made fast the moment the shore gang stepped off.
That means I wasn’t able to return to the assist tug dock and get internet access, so this posting may take a few weeks to be uploaded.
Getting off at high tide is critical, because the tidal range can be 28 feet there. As you can see in this picture, our barge lies dry at low tide.
Another consequence of the tide, is that there is a large mud flat reaching out to deeper water. The dock where we tied up has an extremely long walkway to reach it.
The walkway is so long, the crew of the assists tugs use a four wheeler to haul supplies back and forth.One of them generously offered to tote our provisions for us. So, we loaded up about 12 boxes of groceries into a trailer and hitched it to the four wheeler. All was fine until he got to the last part. This section is articulated, and bends down to the floating dock at low tide and is nearly level at high tide. But it was low tide and the ramp was at a good 30 degree angle. He stopped and gave the goods a good survey, and all secure he started slowly down the ramp.
Then he went faster. And faster. I thought, I hope he knows what he’s doing and is in control. Faster. And his hands wobbling, the first sense that this is wrong. Faster. At the bottom of the ramp, no longer accelerating but sliding, the brakes locked - sideways to our boat now…crash….I rushed to the scene, carefully, almost sliding down the ramp myself….I expected to see him dead, or broken horribly. But he was sitting up, and looking dizzy. The trailer and four wheeler was resting upside down on the gunwales, and he somehow missed being underneath it, or falling between the boat and the dock.
The driver is the guy sitting on the bulwarks. He is smiling here, but I am sure he is in pain now that the adrenaline has worn off.
Luckily, there is always heavy machinery lying about to take care of things.
On the upside, all the provisions where now on the dock. I spent the next 2 hours cleaning off the groceries, as two jugs of detergent were smashed.
On a side note, I wanted to take pictures of the salmon fisherman fishing shoulder to shoulder in the river between our dock and the barge, but never got the chance. However, I just now noticed that they are in the shot of the barge - here is a closeup:
Most of the rivers and streams in Alaska I have seen all look like this. I would love to have a go, but we are working cargo the moment we land till the moment we leave.
