It was late August and I hadn't made much progress at the homestead since early July.  It's not that I'd been idle--the weeks between had seen the Icy Strait trip, Sweetheart Creek, a weekend up the Taku, and brought Chris and my family down to Snettisham on separate occasions.  But, needless to say, I was getting antsy.  The new deck construction had gone so well in the spring that at the time I thought I'd exceed my modest expectations for summer construction, but I hadn't even started my only other major task, the ceiling.  It was a task worthy of putting off, involving a lot of overhead work fighting with tongue and groove panels and I wasn't anxious at all to nail in all those soft finish nails.  I hoped to get back up the Taku the following weekend on one of the few high tides left in the summer, so was extremely anxious to make it down to Snettisham Friday after work to make some progress .

Thus I paid close and nervous attention to the forecast all week, which went from four to three to four to five foot seas by Friday morning predicted in Stephen's Passage.  One of my coworkers gave me her husband's number at the NOAA weather center in Juneau for more accurate predictions.  I chatted with him in the afternoon and he told me about a fishing boat's report that had bumped the forecast up from four to five feet.  Looking at the pressure differential between Five Fingers Lighthouse and the airport, he thought I'd definitely run into three foot seas through my stretch of water.  That wasn't terribly promising--three foot seas aren't dangerous for the most part, but they're pretty uncomfortable and makes going very slow, which was becoming more of an issue due to our rapidly diminishing daylight.  So I was pretty depressed toward the end of work.  I headed home, finished packing, then despondently checked with Chris to see if he was up for it.  Of course he was.  We loaded up, drove to the harbor, and carted our gear down to the boat.  I'd already fueled the boat and loaded up two pier blocks to use in constructing a porch for the back door of the lodge (the next project).  We left at 5:00 pm.  The channel was a little choppy all the way down and by the time we reached the end of Gastineau Channel we were clunking through two foot choppy seas and had slowed to little more than an idle.  It was breezy and the rain came down in droves and I was devastated at the prospect of losing one of the few weekends left of the summer, particularly as it meant that I'd have to give up a second Taku trip in order to try the next weekend.  With dusk coming on in a couple of hours and ugly seas ahead, I began to turn the boat around.  Moments later, however, the squall passed and Chris pointed out a light line in the water to the south which suggested better seas.  He was willing to buck the seas all the way down to Snettisham and so we turned around and entered Taku Inlet.

The seas moderated a bit, especially in the lee of Point Arden, then built again as we crossed to Grand.  We hit a few genuine three footers when we left the lee of Grand for Grave Point, but that was the last of it.   From Grave Point south the seas laid down to almost nothing and whales appeared, first in front of Taku Harbor, and then more as we continued, particularly around the entrance to Snettisham.  Just inside were at least two pairs, bringing my count to eleven.  It was a good sign that the Stephen's Passage group-up had started.  We arrived to a mist-laden homestead around 8:00 pm.  We had hot dogs and corn-on-the-cob for dinner and, exhausted, headed to bed relatively early, listening to the rain attack the roof all night.

The next morning I got up around 8:30 and made my way to the lodge to get ready.  The lodge smelled of propane, which I suspected might be an indication that the propane tank for the gas lights was low.  First I organized the stacks of panels I'd put on the top porch the last time, then when Chris arrived I headed out the back to replace the propane tank.  It's well-protected inside the bear-proof box, but its placement behind the propane tank for the range (which sits about twelve inches higher on two stacks of cedar panel scraps) makes it very awkward to work on and I could not tighten the fitting enough to stop it leaking.  Every time I turned on the tank I smelled gas.  My back ached from bending over and cranking on the wrench and my frustration was mounting.  I kept checking for leaks along the fittings for both tanks, but nothing else seemed to be a problem.  Chris came out to help and hold the flashlight for me, but I was almost too upset to speak.  In the end it was a simple fix.  I'd embarrassingly neglected to check the connection between the copper tubing and the regulator; when I finally drizzled some soapy water on it, big bubbles hissed out.  A little wrench work and the system was set up.

The ceiling had its own endless frustrations.  Chris and I went up and down the two step ladders ad nauseum and we both finally donned shoes to keep our feet from aching from the metal treads.  We followed a panel pattern on the ceiling that I'd come up with on a previous trip that avoided adjoining seams on consecutive rows and made use of four, eight, and twelve foot boards.  If only they all went up as easily as the four foot boards!  We placed the four footers on either end of rows that made use of an eight and a twelve footer and they went in so easily I was able to put them in myself.  The eight footers were a little more work.  The general scenario was this:  Chris and I set up our step ladders on either end of the where the board would go, placed the board on top, and climbed up ourselves.  We'd hold it in place against the ceiling while I pounded the groove at the end of the board around the tongue of the previous board with a rubber mallet.  If that worked, we'd put a single nail in to hold it in place and allow the board to pivot.  Once in a great while, the board would fit well and we could trade the mallet back and forth, quickly pounding it into position, but that was rare.  More often I'd leave the board in place and reposition the ladder in the center of the board where it crossed a seam.  Seams were the source of most of our problems, as the tongues of the neighboring boards were often at different levels, or perhaps one wasn't pounded as far over as the other.  Sometimes a lot of pounding would work, sometimes I'd have to pry one of the boards down to meet the other, and more often than not, all of this work would cause the single nail to pop out.  Then Chris would try to pound his end in while I held up the board and we'd start all over.  We frequently had to go back and forth several times before we got the entire board to line up and wrap abound the tongues correctly, moving the ladder between the middle and the end as needed.

The twelve footers were much worse.  They were long enough that we always had to move the ladders just to get started and required the paddles I'd created earlier in the summer--two 2x2s with a flat board on one end to help hold the panels up.  The twelve foot panels were so long that they'd sag in the middle and required support for us to work on the ends.  So we'd mount our ladders to hold the panel in place and I'd grab the paddle that I'd placed nearby and wedge the panel against the ceiling.  Then I'd come down and use the second paddle to hold the middle section up so Chris could pound one corner in and nail it.  Then I'd reposition the ladder in the middle (I think) and deal with the seam, then work on the end.  There was usually a lot of back and forth and many frustrating moments.  We came to loath the twelve footers.  They'd seemed like a good idea, both to vary the pattern and to take up more space with a single board, but it would have been far faster to use multiple small boards and we were happy enough when we ran out. 

I should take a moment to talk about the nailer.  One of my hesitations in taking on this project was the agonizing thought of trying to nail the boards in overhead by hand--those finish nails are ridiculously difficult to deal with.  Compressors had been tried the summer before and failed, so I didn't think a nailer was possible.  Thankfully, I chatted with my boss about the project on Thursday and he offered up his cordless Dewalt's finish nailer.  It was amazing.  Heavy to lug up and down the ladder, but amazing in its effectiveness and efficiency.  I don't know how we could have progressed without it.  The only downside was that poor Nigel didn't enjoy the percussive sound of the nail gun and fled as soon as the door was opened.  He spent some time down on the new deck as well as on a towel I put out for him on the covered deck.  He also did some wandering and disappeared for a long time in the afternoon (we think he was holed up on the porch of my cabin to avoid the noise).

So we slowly progressed, going between rows of three eights, to twelve-twelves, to eight-twelve-fours, to four-twelve-eights, back to three eights, and so on.  It was hard work.  We had boards and mallets fall on us, paddles crashed all over the place (thankfully not destroying either of the propane lights), and it seemed to move at an agonizingly slow pace.  The room became annoyingly cluttered as we moved the couch and other items around to facilitate the ladders.  After lunch we took a break from the ceiling and I began spontaneously to organize the items that had been stashed between the wall and the couch, including a basket of gloves and a box full of miscellaneous screws and nails.  I spent some time carefully combining like fasteners, transferring those in deteriorating paper bags to ziplocks or small plastic tubs.  I can't believe how many screws and nails I have down there!  When I was done I had a very tidy box of bags and boxes and had cleaned and organized all the other items stashed in that area.  Outside, I collected a box of pallet firewood and put it inside to stow later, then walked over to firewood staging ground and moved the stack of uncovered, larger rounds under the same tarp as the smaller rounds and the split firewood and secured the tarp for the winter.  Back inside, I sat down and rested a little while I developed a design for the rest of the ceiling to take into account the future trap door to the attic and the diminishing supply of twelve footers.

I have a nice, if modest, attic above the lodge.  I'd had the foresight to occupy it with a bunch of scraps of plywood for storage and floorboards.  Earlier in the day I'd cut a hold through the visqueen in the center of the room, choosing the area with the most head space (about three feet) and with access to the greatest area for storage.  I had to recalculate the lengths of boards to go around the opening and now needed to design a new pattern for the rest of the ceiling.  Because it had been pouring rain all day (steady, heavy rain, the remnants of a typhoon) I'd set up a board cutting station on the top porch where we cut boards that needed to be trimmed and also measured and cut the oddly-lengthed boards to go around the trap door opening.  Some time around 7:30 we got to work on the ceiling again.  Although I'd been realistic in my expectations, I was still a little disappointed by the progress and was grateful that things seemed to pick up speed later in the day.  We were hard at it and beginning to place boards along one edge of the attic opening when we struggled against a warped panel and I hit a wall.  It was 9:00 pm and I'd been working solid for twelve hours.  Now that we'd made it about half way across the ceiling, we returned the couch to its normal position, this time placing four stacks of short cedar panels under it to raise its height and improve the view out the picture window.  The ceiling looked amazing, though we'd periodically noticed that whole sections sagged alarmingly (mostly near the wall where the boards weren't always long enough to nail the ends to the joist).  Some of these we'd secured earlier in the day, pounding them up and nailing the heck out of them, others I fixed the next morning.  Once we'd cleaned up a little, I made pasta and vegetables for dinner and played a little gin with Chris before calling it a night.  Oddly, I was dealt one amazing hand after another and didn't seem able to lose, which is quite unlike me.

Nigel escaping the rain on the porch

Nigel exploring down the beach

Working on the second row

The next morning saw a break in the rain and everything was still.  I slept in a little, then started working around 9:30, continuing my efforts to organize the lodge.  Why I hadn't thought to use the attic before I don't know, other than that I had a weird, unconscious belief that I needed to wait until the ceiling was finished before it would be functional.  Now that I'd cut through the visqueen and stuck my head into the cool, spacious area, I was anxious to make use of it.  One of the most frustrating and depressing things about the lodge to me is the constant clutter, every wall lined with crap, often in disarray.  At least once a trip I give up searching for something that I know I have somewhere nearby because I can't bear to dig through the mess anymore to look for it.  So I was on a mission.  I unpacked a box of extra dishes that I'd had for years, organized the kitchen area and the kitchen tote (removing useful items I'd forgotten I had and replacing them with unused items, using an old frying pan to hold all the loose silverware, cleaning up the canned goods shelves, etc.), and organized everything along the wall between the kitchen and the front door.  I discovered that the paint cans and the food tin were rusting onto the floor, so I swept and cleaned underneath then and put down pieces of visqueen.  I sorted and organized my enormous box of miscellaneous crap along with the tool bucket, replacing the cardboard box with a tote and putting the majority of the rarely-used tools in another tote, leaving only the commonly used ones and small ones in the bucket.  In the process I found most of the things I'd been digging for all summer.  Those items that aren't used regularly I put aside for storage in the attic.  These included rolls of felt, a toilet seat, visqueen, flashing, hardware cloth, stove pipe, painting supplies, water jugs, steel connectors, joist hangers, and scraps of insulation.  It was immensely satisfying to store these tidily in the attic, leaving a much improved and neater lodge (see photo below of the sorting mess).

Chris came over in time to help me stow the large and awkward items upstairs, then we had a little breakfast and started back on the ceiling.  Finishing the ceiling was out of the question, so I proposed that we complete the rows on either side of the attic entrance and the first row all along the other side.  It went relatively well and, thankfully, the first long row (three eights) connected the two sides flawlessly.  I was pretty nervous working above the propane light on the back wall, but it made it through undamaged.  The ceiling panels looked lovely and, once again, brought the lodge a giant step closer to completion.  Please don't look too closely, though.  Too many of the seams between panels in the same row have awkward gaps, most of them isosceles triangles where I'd failed to cut the end of one of the boards square.  I hope that filling them with sealant some day will fix the problem, and you'd really have to be looking hard to notice. 

By this time is was early afternoon and time to pack up for a 3:30 departure.  When my chores were done, I kayaked out to the boat.  Ordinarily I like to fuel the boat and bail it while at anchor, but the tide was falling to a particularly awkward stage and I wanted to make sure we could get out.  I brought it to shore up the deep channel and suggested to Chris that we load the boat as hastily as possible, which we did, placing all the gear in the bow or on the stern bench to avoid the water.  The typhoon rains had filled the boat and water rose above the floorboards all the way forward to the steering console, which didn't help the weight issue.  (The tides were moderate that weekend and the boat never went aground to allow me to pull the plug and drain it.)  When Nigel was aboard I shoved off and we floated briefly before going aground again.  The wind was pushing us against shore and I was forced to jump out, flooding my xtratuffs while I pushed and pushed and pushed to no avail.  Desperate, I finally called Chris out and he too went in over his boots, but together we were able to push ourselves to deep water.  We motored beyond the drop-off, then stopped.  I refueled while Chris heroically did the majority of the bailing.  We stowed our gear more appropriately, emptied our boots, and took off.

The trip back was wonderfully calm.  We stopped at the Seal Rocks for a whale that was swimming through the kelp.  When he swam toward Admiralty we slowly made our way through the cut between the mainland and the rocks, noting that the kelp was pulled strongly north with the falling tide.  A lone common loon (not a common bird in Southeast!) dove near the rocks and I stopped for some photos.  Chris then spotted whale blows toward Admiralty, so we headed in that direction, passing a single whale on the way.  I either misjudged where the whales were or we never saw them again, but two more came up half way to Grand Island, so we turned in that direction.  After repositioning a couple of times, we shut down and drifted while the two whales dove separately.  Nearby a group of shorebirds worked over a large clump of flotsam and I quickly realized they were something unusual.  They took off as a group, whirling around, and as I watched them I realized that there were several flocks flying and more groups sitting on the water.  I took several unfocused photos and later verified my exciting suspicion--red-necked phalaropes, presumably on migration.  On that cheerful note we watched the whales a few more times, then finished our ride to Juneau.  Our wet feet were pretty chilled by the time we reached the dock, the shower a welcome relief.

Nigel and Chris taking it easy	The attic hole	Items stowed in the attic
A somewhat more tidy lodge	Water in the boat	Common loon at Seal Rocks
Whale	Whale	Red-necked phalaropes