Sunday, November 9, 2014

Winter Boat Refit

Hello All,
Here I am again way behind on what I have been up to. The Salmon tendering season ended for me on the 20th of September. After the somewhat slow year we still managed to get 108 paid days in which was a few more than last year so the season ended with a bang with lots of coho"s caught. Right after I got home Mom and I went to the Alaska Pioneers Convention on Kodiak Island. The Alaska Pioneers is an organization where if you live here more than 30 years you can join. Members come from all over the state to meet once a year and share stories and visit for 3 days. Every year they choose a different city to host the event. Next year it will be held in Palmer, north of Anchorage.

After we returned I went to Homer where I have my boat and started working on a tent shop to cover it up for the winter. It has been in the boat yard for a year and a half and it was time to do something with it. After my return from the Pacific it needed some attention. I just finished covering the boat with a 40 foot tent shop, I put down a rough plywood floor and insulated the inside to contain heat produced by a 100,000 BTU diesel heater.I had a similar set up when I originally fixed up the boat in my drive way in Kenai. Fortunately the boat doesn't need all that much work so I hope to have it finished in April.

The repairs consist of refinishing all the teak on the boat, repaint decks and replace all vital mast rigging connections. I brought home the rudder and the smaller wood pieces so part of it will be refurbished here at Moms in the garage.

For the last 2 weeks I have been working on the boat and have been making good progress and so far there have been no surprises, most everything I did 8 years ago is still in really good shape.

It has been a lot of sanding and scraping so not to much fun but will look nice when finished.

I have been staying on the boat as I work on it so makes a little bit of a challenge to keep the work, sleep and eat all separated and to keep some kind of order.

Well thats what I have been up to in a nut shell, I will post pictures on here below.

Talk to you soon and I will do my best to keep you guys all up dated.

PEACE

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Salmon tendering Prince William Sound take two


Hello All,
It has been a very long time since I have wrote a blog so I thought I would let everyone know what I have been up to this spring and summer. After staying with mom all winter I thought I would go Salmon tendering this summer once again. The boat owner offered me the job in February and I thought I would try it for another summer season. The job offers me the winter off so this coming winter I will be working on Freestyle in Homer Alaska. I bought a tent shop that I am going to cover the boat with so I can work out of the weather. I plan to have the boat ready to relaunch the summer of 2015. I am looking forward to having my sailboat all ship shape and ready for a cruise around at some point.

I am in Cordova Alaska at the moment, we have had a week off from work waiting for the Pink Salmon run to open on our fishing grounds. We hope to be going back to work on Thursday. The season up to date has been as a whole poor for most of the fishermen. The Chum and Red runs in our area of the sound have been hit and miss. We haven't been effected to much by the weak runs just because so long as their out fishing we have to be there for tender support.

I was promoted to engineer / relief captain this year so I got a raise which is better for the bank account. We hired an extra person for deck work this year so with four of us it makes everyones job easier. There was only 3 of us last year with record runs so we were worn pretty thin by the end of the season.

The weather has treated us pretty well over the summer with many nice days in a row. With August right around the corner we will only hope it continues.

Thats about all I know for now in a nutshell. I posted 2 pics above. the second one is a black bear going for a swim.

PEACE