Snettisham 2010-1

Snettisham 2010 - 1: Pimp My Boat
April 10 - May 9

Taku

Looking up Taku Inlet (Taku Glacier between the points and Devil's Paw visible above the ice field)

I felt like I was just recovering from last summer. It was March and the late winter sunshine gleaming off the snow-capped Coast Mountains down the channel were just starting to look appealing as I pulled into work some mornings. I started to think about boat maintenance and whether it was all worth it. For better or for worse, those thoughts were forcibly put on hold while I spent nearly a month jet-setting around the continent (New Orleans, Manzanillo (Mexico), Washington, D.C.). When I returned in late April, I finally began work, though operating more from habit and inertia than enthusiasm.

As for the work, there was much to do. Having plowed and pounded through a few seasons of ocean fun, the Ronquil had a bit of deferred maintenance that I was determined to face. Two days before I left for Washington, D.C., I made my annual first trip to Western Auto, quite pleased that I beat the spring weekend rush, and managed to purchase everything on my long, well-prepared list--the way that trip went, I might only have to return for bits of hardware here and there! The next day I tightened down the port railing with some new hardware (which had partially detached itself from the hull). That victory was followed by frustration when I discovered through some confusion that the latches that hold up the folding metal hatch beneath the center window (between the dashboards) were riveted on. So were the boards on which the two seats rest. So much for simply unscrewing them and replacing the screws! I pried the most offending latch off with a screwdriver, breaking it in the process, and pulled up a few of the loose rivets on the seat boards before calling it quits. The serious work started a few days after I returned from Washington, already the latter half of April. The first section below describes the boat maintenance agonies and successes, followed by a quick report on the first trip to Snettisham of the summer.

4/17 - Saturday
One of the main tasks of the spring was to replace the two seats. The vinyl on both had long since split, allowing the foam inside to soak up copious rain and remain wet through dry periods. More importantly, the metal braces holding up the back of the passenger seat had collapsed late last summer and no longer offered support. But to do that, I had to remove the existing seats, and I knew nothing about boat seats. Somehow the brackets on which they were attached were attached to the boards beneath then, but how!? There was no way to access the bracket under the seat, so how could I unscrew it? It was clear that the whole board needed to come off. Which was not as easy as it sounds! Each board had one or two diagonal braces holding them down that originate from the side of the boat. These were relatively easy to unscrew. The boards themselves sit on flanges that flare out from the metal box that supports the seat. The rivets that secured the boards to the flanges were quite a bit more difficult to remove. I managed to pry many of them out (since several were loose to begin with), but some of them were still quite secure. My dad came down with an electric drill and showed me how to simply drill the heads off to pry up the boards, which worked pretty well. Beneath the seat boards I found scraps of 1" or so styrofoam that seemed to be collapsing downward and not fully filling the space. When I pulled the styrofoam out I found at the bottom of each well a 2" piece of solid foam, saturated with water and broken into several pieces; there was no bottom to the seat boxes (i.e., they were open to the bilge), so I think these pieces were meant to be floor boards that kept the styrofoam out of the bilge, but which had failed over time.

I threw the seat boards with their seats attached over the side of the boat, then hopped down after them and used a hammer and a couple of crow bars to wrench the seats and brackets off. The brackets were screwed in to the boards, but I still couldn't figure out how anyone could access the head of the screw to screw them in once the seat was attached to them (or, conversely, no way to attach the seat once the bracket is screwed into the board). Like the brackets (which were actually swivels, of course), the screws were horribly rusted. I decided that I also wanted to replace the seat boards, as they were chipped and rotten and generally unattractive. In even worse shape was the hatch cover in the bow over the anchor compartment, which was so rotten that hardware ripped right out of it and I spent most of last summer without a handle to lift it up. So I removed its hinges and took it off the boat. That day I also pried off the other non-functional latch from the center hatch.

4/18 - Sunday
At 10:00 am I went up to my parent's house with my three boards to replace where my dad had a nice new piece of marine plywood (who knew that such a thing existed!?). I traced each board out with a sharpie, struggling to figure out where the actual lines should be between the rotten holes in the edge of the boards. The lines followed the curves of the boat and were not entirely straight. The edges were also beveled, especially in the bow piece where it rests against the narrowing hull. I cut the pieces, then took them back down the driveway to the boat to see if they fit, a process I repeated many times. Each time I came back my dad used his planer, grinding the anchor hatch piece down repeatedly until it fit perfectly. In the end I had three beautiful boards; I couldn't have done it without my dad's help.

That afternoon I decided I'd better go ahead and get my boat to the welder, and I figured the sooner the better with all the spring maintenance going on around town. One of the horizontal braces that support the main floorboard had broken loose entirely, another was half loose, and there were some other issues with the aluminum structure. But in order to get to the welder, I needed to switch trailers. I'd purchased a new trailer last fall, but not until after I'd pulled the boat, so the Ronquil still sat on its older trailer which had failed sufficiently last summer that I was unwilling to drive it farther that the harbor. I was nervous about it, so I enlisted Chris's company to drive with me to Douglas Harbor. The launching went well, but that was only the beginning. We left the boat tied to the dock and returned to the house, swapping one trailer for the other. Back at the harbor, I couldn't help but notice that someone from the harbormaster's office was there, and there were no other boats around to distract him. I'd several times been diverted from picking up a launch permit this year and hadn't worried about it, since launching seemed a distant post-maintenance event. I knew it was a risk to launch on a weekend without a permit, but I really wanted to get the boat to the welders the next day and didn't want to mess with the trailer after work (and you can't buy a launch permit on the weekends). So we backed down with the trailer and were soon approached by the harbor guy. "I notice that you don't have a permit" he said, amiably enough. I asked if he wanted to hear my story and he agreed. So I explained the unexpectedness of the launch and its purpose, that I always get a permit (which he would see if my old trailer was there), and so on. He let me go with the promise that I'd buy a permit the next day; he took my name down (after which he said he recognized my boat from hanging out down at my dad's slip in Aurora Harbor), but I don't think he ever checked up on it.

So we pulled the boat up to the trailer, but the hull scraped against the bottom of it--it was clear that it would need to be adjusted so the boat would ride higher. We tied the boat back up and pulled the trailer back onto the parking lot. This was not unexpected (though I'd had some hope that it wouldn’t be necessary) and I'd brought along wrenches and sockets. Chris and I managed to raise the skids as high as they would go by moving bolts (it took a bit of effort), trying to keep them symmetrical as we went. This time when we tried it, the Ronquil scooted right up and sat squarely and evenly on the skids. Perfect. I headed up the ramp, not hearing Chris yelling at me until I reached the top and saw him running after the truck. One of the trailer wheels was flat. Half way between the water and the parking lot, I slowly pulled into a parking spot ahead and we assessed the situation. Back home I thought I had a spare tire from the other trailer, so we unhitched the boat, discovering that it was incredibly stern heavy and would have plowed into the ground if we didn't hold the bow down. Puzzled, we loaded the bow with several log rounds that were lying around to weight it down. Back at home we found the spare tire, grabbed my floor jack, and returned. We jacked up the trailer, then Chris valiantly took control and removed the tire. I put the new tire on, thankful that it fit, and Chris began the process of securing it. During this time I kept wondering where the nozzle to fill the tire with air might be...unfortunately, I didn't bring this up to Chris until after he'd finished the job. Turns out we put the tire on backwards. No, that's not true. I put the tire on backwards, the only thing I'd actually contributed to the job. After some grumbling, we decided the best bet was to go ahead and switch it there, so Chris did the job over again. We pumped it up with a bicycle pump and headed home, arriving three hours after we started. Driving home, I kept looking back to see how beautifully the boat was riding, high off the trailer, straight, and comfortable. It made me realize how poorly my trailer was fairing for years! This made up for some of the frustrations of the afternoon. Back at home we found the boat very easy to wheel around with the stern so heavy and, once in place, loaded the bow down with rocks to keep it upright.

4/19 - Monday
It turns out that you can also move the post that the nose of the boat nudges up against at the front of the trailer, which allows you to adjust the position of the boat depending on its length and weight (I learned this from my dad). I came home from lunch on Monday and loosened the U-bolts that held the post in place, nudging it forward with a hammer a little over a foot, or as far as it would go before it ran into the trailer lights. I inched the boat forward with the winch until it nearly nudged the post again and, presto, I was suddenly unable to pull the stern down or lift the bow up with all my strength. I hitched it up and headed out to Simpco Welding where I dropped it off with an explanation of the problem and my bilge pump so they could also create a mount for the pump and the float switch. A few weeks earlier I'd assembled all the parts of a brand new bilge pump system (scrapping both the old pump and the float switch), but hadn't figured out how I'd attach them to the boat.

That night I sanded the three new boards and gave the bottom sides and edges their first coat of paint. On Tuesday I put on a second coat of paint, then flipped them and painted the tops on Wednesday and Thursday nights.

4/23 - Friday
I knew I wasn't going to make it out on the boat that following weekend, but I had hopes that with a weekend of work I might make it out the next weekend. On Friday I took an early lunch and picked up the boat, paying a ridiculously small fee for the work. Along with the repairs, I was pleased to see two handsome, sturdy platforms for the bilge pump system. At home I applied new weather-stripping to the center windshield (which swings open) to soften the seam and reduce vibrations. It was a lovely sunny spring day and I went back to work (the paying kind) in high spirits with the intent to leave at 2:30 to continue working on the boat. It turned out to be a particularly bad afternoon at work, and I didn't make it out the door until four, though I did send all my staff home a little early. That afternoon I sanded down the remaining boards in the bow (which I discovered are also rotting, but will last at least another season) and the bench seat toward the stern of the boat with my little power sander before putting on a coat of paint. Inside I put a final coat of paint on the three new pieces.

4/24 - Saturday
Saturday morning I had a program with the Raptor Center at the tram, so I was late getting started on the boat. It was a lovely day, a good day to work on engines. First I hoisted the battery back onto the boat and hooked it up just long enough to tilt the main engine down so I could work on it. Then I took the covers off both engines and cleaned the insides (which looked pretty good). Before the day got too far underway, I put a second coat of paint on the boat, grateful that the dew had evaporated without affecting the first coat (which was still tacky that morning). I changed the spark plugs on both engines, cutting myself painfully in the process, lubricated them, and sprayed them down with WD-40. Before I put the covers back on, I lubricated their rubber seals. I also took apart the propellers to lubricate the shafts and changed the lower unit gear oil on both engines (possibly my least favorite spring maintenance task). Finally, I removed the annoying glove compartment lid that had long since ceased to function but was still attached by strong metal wires.

4/25/10 - Sunday
The next day I was baffled to find that I'd had the two bench seats backwards in my mind and what I thought was the top was actually the bottom. This was troublesome on two counts: 1) I wanted three coats of paint on the top of them (where there were now only two) and 2) I'd been rather sloppy when painting the top, allowing more drips to accumulate on the bottom (now the top) than I would have otherwise. So, I took them back inside, sanded down some of the drips, and put on another coat of paint. Later, I put them in place on the boat and marked the holes to be drilled with a sharpie. Then I cleaned out the anchor hatch and carefully replaced the line and spare prop inside. Looking for something satisfying to finish, I decided to attach a latch handle to the new anchor hatch piece, but soon discovered that the latch had to be inset into the wood, so I borrowed a chisel from my mother (all my tools are at Snettisham), chiseled it out, then took it back inside to paint the newly exposed wood (giving it a second coat before bed). I also painted a few of the board edges around the bench seat in the back of the boat that I'd glossed over before.

That afternoon I headed to Western Auto and bought a grease gun and hardware to attach the anchor hatch and the new bench seats to the boat. I'd never used a grease gun before, but it worked perfectly with the first zerk I tried on the kicker. The next ones didn't work as well. In the end I determined that I have two different zerks on the kicker--why I can't imagine. The manual is very clear that a grease gun is the method to use on these fittings, and their location makes sense, but they are shaped differently (they have no head to lock the gun into place). I consulted both Dru and my dad, but they could offer no insight; in the end, I managed to coerce the grease gun into locking into the two zerks on the main engine, but not the two remaining pairs on the kicker. It's still a mystery.

4/26/10 - Monday
And then it was Monday again. At lunch I came home in the hopes of attaching the anchor hatch to the bow. I had an assemblage of bolts and screws--some purchased for the occasion, others left from removing them earlier--and brought out Chris's cordless drill to make holes (mine is broken). The battery was dead. So was the other battery. Thankfully, I'd found both an old electric drill and, in quite a separate place, its chuck. After several trips up and down off the bow, I finally thought I was ready, and drilled the holes. First I screwed the hinges to the bow. Unfortunately, when I screwed the hinges to the hatch I ran into the edge of the metal brace that supports it. This forced the hatch an eighth or a quarter inch toward the stern...and, consequently, the hatch no longer closed unless I stomped on it (not that I would know that...). I had similar problems with securing the latch, which I overcame by using short screws that were originally on the hinges for the two holes over the metal brace (and reused bolts for the other two).

That evening I removed the bolts from the right hinge and the hatch slid back into place. I replaced the screws that had forced the board down with shorter screws that didn't pass through the board, but they were too narrow and loose in the holes to function. Then I replaced the battery case on the stern bench and put the battery inside. Inside the house I opened up the big package on my front porch--new seats from Tempress! I'd expected to buy seats from Western Auto but the only one I liked there did not have a partner and ordering was two weeks out. Instead I found a similar chair from the same brand online and, though shipping was free, paid extra for expedited shipping (still hoping to make it out that weekend). I had elicited the help of an employee at Western Auto about securing seats and he'd explained that one could turn the swivel so the top and bottom were 90 degrees apart (making sort of an eight-sided star shape) and then slide bolts into the swivel and through pre-drilled holes (after screwing the seat to the swivel). It made sense, though the folks that had first secured my seats somehow managed to screw the swivels in. In any event, the first thing to do was secure the swivels to the seats, which was easily accomplished. I enjoyed sitting on them on the living room floor and swiveling around. Finally, I drilled the holes for the bolts to secure the bench seats back into place on the boat.

4/27/10 - Tuesday
I headed back to Western Auto at lunch for more hardware. I bought larger washers for the bench seats (since it looked like there was room for them), bolts and nuts for the seat swivels (checked against in-store swivels to make sure they fit), the largest washers I could find to fit those bolts (on advice from the guy who talked to me about seats), and wider screws to fit in the existing holes for the hinge that might catch better. In preparation for securing the bench seats I refilled the wells with foam. To replace the bottom pieces that I believe acted as floorboards to prevent the smaller pieces from falling into the bilge, I dug out the remaining sheet of hard pink styrofoam that I'd purchased to insulate my fireplace two winters ago. I cut two pieces that fit precisely into the well and functioned perfectly as floorboards, then started filling in with the old styrofoam. Surprisingly, with a few pieces of pink styrofoam through in, the existing pieces filled the space fully.

4/28 - Wednesday
The next day at lunch I brought the bench seats and seats with their swivels out to the boat to mark where the seats should go. As expected, this was a difficult decision. I'd noticed when I took them off that the two seats were not positioned symmetrically in either direction. I could see why once I started playing with the driver's seats--the wheel is far to the left of the console and the seat needs to be far enough forward that the captain can comfortably hold the wheel. I weighed these issues against aesthetics, and came to a compromise that was both attractive and functional for both people, leaving plenty of leg room for the passenger. Marking the spots was pretty difficult, as the sharpie I had couldn't get at the right angle underneath the seat to make obvious marks. I eventually used a calligraphy pen, with which I was somewhat more successful, but only in making faint marks on at most three of the corners. After work I had a better idea and made paper cutouts of the bottom of the swivel, placing them square in relation to the edge of the bench seats to match the scrawls I'd made, and tracing them out. Then I marked holes and drilled them. When I first placed the seats and swivels on the benches I panicked for a moment, as there wasn't enough room beneath the seat to straighten the bolt enough to drop it down the hole (there's less than an inch of room). I quickly realized that the solution was to hang the bolts in the swivels before placing them on the boards and ease them straight down. With some finagling, I managed to get all four bolts down on both swivels. Then came the endless task of tightening them down, round and around both seats, tightening and tightening and tightening until I was satisfied that they were all secure. They looked great and I carried them out to the boat to bolt them down.

First I had to carefully place the benches down in place, as the bottom of the bolts dug into the styrofoam and couldn't slide once they were settled. The holes I'd drilled in the boards lined up perfectly with the existing holes in the metal flange, but were too small for the bolts I'd purchased, so I couldn't actually put any of them in. I'd really thought that this moment would be satisfying after all the work I'd put in to replace the boards and seats, but it was all too frustrating to enjoy. I couldn't find the right bolts to secure the diagonal braces, I couldn't bolt the bench to the flanges, I scratched the paint on the benches moving the braces around, one of the seats got stuck in the folded down position so I couldn't even sit in it, etc.

4/29 - Thursday
The next day I started securing the bolts. First I found the original bolts for the diagonal braces in the glove compartment of the boat and quickly secured those. Then I drilled all the holes in the edge of the bench wider until the bolts slid down; somehow I managed to come up two bolts short for all the holes (sixteen in all). Then I started securing them, using larger washers when I could and smaller ones when they didn't fit. For some reason, only about half of the nuts I'd bought worked. They all looked identical, but some wound up only half a turn or so and froze, while the next would spin all the way up effortlessly. And this was consistent across bolts. Thankfully I'd previously purchased a number of nuts of the same size and managed to find enough for all but two of the bolts. I also found additional bolts that fit the holes and filled those in. The holes under the front of the seats were inaccessable from above, so I drilled up through the bottom of the flange and the bolts eventually dropped in neatly. In the end, I managed to secure all bolts but two, which were missing nuts. Before me was a stack of likely looking nuts, none of which worked. I removed the final two bolts to take with me to the hardware store to make sure that whatever nut I bought would fit.

4/30 - Friday
I worked hard on Friday and managed to leave work a little after 2:30 after finishing a number of tasks that needed completion by the end of April. On the way home I went by Harri's Plumbing in search of two matching sliding latches to replace the ones I'd ripped off the center hatch of the boat (Western Auto did not have two alike in the size I needed). These I found and then went on to the hardware section where I bought screws for the latches, screws for the

bilge pump and float switch (which I'd brought along for sizing), and nuts for the two final bolts of the benches. It turns out that there are, apparently, two sizes of size 10 bolts....or something like that. In any event, there were two bins for bolts that fit size 10 bolts (which is what I had), one of which fit and one of which didn't. Huh. I bought extras.

At home I finished bolting in the benches and everything worked swimmingly, the seats swiveling grandly. The latches I'd bought were identical to the old ones, so they matched the two still on the hatch and the holes lined up with the existing holes. Unfortunately, screwing through the thin metal did not hold the latches in place. I measured the space behind with my leatherman (1"), and went inside to see if I had a 1" board. I found one that was perfect and marked it to cut. Without a skill saw in town, I dug out my jig saw, but had to borrow a blade from my dad. It didn't fit, so I used a hand saw instead. Back on the boat with my little pieces, I placed them behind the metal that the latches attach to, but they weren't tight enough to allow the screws to bite. I had to brace them with a screwdriver and use larger screws than the ones I'd purchased for it. I wound up using the three extra screws I'd bought to mount the float switch, which bear the bulk of the load, using the smaller screws for the other holes. On the right side I had to drill larger holes for the bigger screws, in part to remove the remnants of rivets. Unfortunately, those two screws split the wood, so I wasn't sure it would hold long term. Once the latches were secure, I added some weather-stripping to the side of the hatch to reduce rattling (cutting off some of its width to fit) and also added a little piece of weather-stripping over all the holes in the consoles that the latches slide into, drilling holes in them afterwards. All in all it seemed tight and secure and rattle-free. I cleaned up the rubble that had built up on the boat and brought the entire contents of the glove compartment inside.

5/1 - Saturday
This was the first weekend that the boat would be ready; I'd been working so hard for weeks, and yet I couldn't muster any enthusiasm. And so my plans were tentative. Saturday morning I decided I wanted to give the boat a good scrubbing before launching. Lacking a bilge pump last season meant that water often sat in the boat well above the floorboards, leaving an oily residue over everything it touched. First I rinsed off the bow and anchor, then the cockpit (all of which was non-oily). Then I started scrubbing with dish washing detergent. I normally use simple green, but it had proven ineffective against this grease; at least the detergent I was using was supposed to be biodegradable. I scrubbed the sides of the boat, the back of the seat supports, the floorboard, then the walls and floor of the well where the gas cans reside. I took out the big gas can and scrubbed it, then I scrubbed the underside of the main floorboard. Working in the gas well I saw through a hole cut in the back that there was a lot of sand and such sitting in the bilge; I tried to take up the floorboard there, but one of the screws was buried deep and too stripped to grab, so instead I repeatedly sprayed the hose at pressure down the hole in various directions until the water eventually ran relatively clear. There was a lot of crud sitting down there! Between flushings I scrubbed the shelf on the back of the boat where the engines mount.

By the time I was through it was around noon and I found myself completely unmotivated to go out. Inside I put some of the emergency kit items in fresh ziplocs and brought a few things out to the boat and decided to try the next day.

5/2 - Sunday
Having not gone out the day before, I was obligated to try on Sunday. It seemed like everyone else had already been out a bunch of times, fishing and crabbing, and I was stuck doing maintenance. Perhaps I'd worn myself out getting the boat ready, but I still wasn't really in the mood. After walking Nigel I did a final bit of cleaning, swabbing out the compartment under the bow below the center hatch and the glove compartment. I hooked the boat up to my truck, then hooked up the gas line to the gas tank, which was about half full. I pumped the siphon, felt it get a little hard, and I hooked the garden hose up to the engine to gave it a try. No luck. So I pumped some more....and pumped and pumped and pumped and pumped, but never felt the gas go anywhere. I took a shower, then drove Chris's car to the gas station and bought another five gallons of gas in case having a full tank would help. It didn't. Just to check, I unscrewed the fuel filter and discovered that a tiny bit of gas was making it through, even to the engine, but apparently not enough. I unhooked the hose from the gas tank, and a metal ball fell out along with a washer and a spring, and part of the plastic mount remained on the gas tank. There would be no boating that day.

I found the spare siphon and hose in the garage, cleaned it, and took it outside, but decided I'd be better off buying a spare fitting and attaching it to the existing hose rather than changing the whole line.

5/3 - Monday
The next day I tried to find a spare fitting at Harri's Plumbing, but none of them seemed quite right. I went to Western Auto where I bought two fittings that looked identical to the one I had. Unfortunately, they turned out to be for a different sized hose. I went back and talked to an employee, and he showed me which one to buy. It seemed likely enough--it was the right make (Yamaha) and it was for the only other hose size, but the fitting looked different and I was dubious. He assured me it would work, so I went home. By that time I'd removed the gas line fitting from the engine, which fell apart in exactly the same way as the other end, so I bought two. With a little hot water to loosen up the hose, replacing the fittings was easy. Getting them to fit the tank and engine was another story. After some struggling I eventually forced the new fitting onto the gas tank securely. The engine was a little more trouble and I could not for the life of me get it on, try as I might. My mother came down to feed the hawks and caught me in despair. Couldn't anything just go right?!

She and I worked at it for more than an hour, and eventually got it to fit. We removed the engine cover to get a better handle on the engine side of the fitting and eventually wound up taking the whole flitting out, even removing the gas line from the inside of the engine to pull it all the way out. I learned a lot about that system. It was unbelievably stubborn, but we eventually got it to stick and put everything back together. I plan to never touch that fitting again unless I have to! Thanks to my mother for helping me through that--I certainly could not have done it without her. This time the siphon worked wonders and the boat started right up. Before working on the fuel line I'd also been struggling to screw holes in the mounts for the bilge pump system, but was not able to drill through the thick aluminum supports. She brought down a much sturdier drill and the bit went right through. Both pump and float switch mounted easily and we talked about how to attach the wires so they had the least chance of getting wet. I'd carefully spliced them, wrapped them in electrical tape, and doused them in several layers of liquid tape, but the less exposure the better!

5/4 - Tuesday
The next day I put the finishing touches on the boat, securing the bilge pump wires to the top of the pump with duct tape, running them to the battery, and hooking them up. I finished refitting the emergency kit and otherwise loading the boat with summer essentials. I was quite pleased with how neat and smart it looked, and how much room I had in the glove compartment. I'd thought to take it out for a shake down trip after work one day that week, but that never worked out and, because summer was getting on, I decided to take the plunge and head to Snettisham for an overnight that weekend.

5/8 - Back to the Homestead
I'd promised to show Rob a sea lion haulout this spring, so invited him along with Chris and I to the homestead for the night. Chris and I got to harbor at noon and launched the boat without incident. While I was parking the trailer, Rob showed up and we quickly finished loading the boat and were ready to go. I lowered the engine, pumped the siphon until it was firm, and turned the key. The engine chugged a couple of times, then stopped. I tried again. Nothing. The battery was dead. Just to be sure, I tightened the battery connections, but to no avail. I have to admit that I was a little proud of myself for not breaking down right there at the harbor in front of everyone. I was calm, assessing the situation, trying to determine if there was a way to solve it or whether I should bag the whole weekend. Charging the battery would be time consuming and a bit of trouble. I wonder if you can jump boat batteries? I wondered. So, I walked up to a guy who was pulling the boat he'd just driven around me (and who couldn't have been unaware of my troubles) and asked him if he'd ever jumped a boat. He said yes, but suggested that I should try getting a jump from the folks who were just then launching the boat (as he was on his way out). So I shamelessly said hello to the lady who was handling the lines on a boat being launched and asked if she could by any chance give me a jump. She told me to talk to her

husband at the truck, so I boldly asked him if he minded giving me a jump. He agreed, so I ran up to the truck to get my jumper cables, regretting that Nigel was following me with his gimpy leg. The other boat was launching on the other side of the dock, so we handed the Ronquil around and out to the outside of the other boat. I tied her on and we tried to see if the cables would reach. They were a bit short, so we pulled the Ronquil up a little farther, tied her off again, then I clamped the cables onto my battery and he did the same inside his cabin. Heart pounding, I turned the key and the engine started without a hitch. I thanked them profusely, told them that they were my heroes, and pushed off. Sometimes the engine dies when first put in gear, especially if it's not warmed up, so I drifted around for several minutes making sure that the engine didn't stop. Eventually I lowered the choke lever and put her in gear with no trouble, idling back to the dock. We quickly got the dog on board and took off, leaving-the-harbor beers in hand. Phew!

Chris enjoyed the new swivels seat as we headed south and Rob sat on the cooler in the back. It was a beautiful afternoon with a light westerly at our stern. A whale blew south of Grand Island and we passed one bait ball after another (evidenced by dense flocks of diving gulls and multiple eagles). In the Port we slowly cruised by the raucous sea lions, checking out several huge beach masters among the brawling melee. And finally we pulled up the homestead, anchoring the Ronquil where she went aground on a falling tide. All was well and I quickly began to put in the systems. We all trooped up to the water source and rolled the olive barrel into the creek after I cleaned its screens a little. It didn't lay quite low enough in the water, so Chris and I scooped out rocks with our feet until there was more of a hollow. We rolled it back in and added a few rocks to secure it and dam the area a bit, then turned on the valve. For the first time since setting up the water system, water immediately filled the pipe; we could feel and hear it all the way down and water was gushing out the open valve at the end. I closed the bottom valve, put new filters in the filter cartridges, and we had potable running water again. The only issue was a huge leak right behind the bottom valve where a bear had bit through it last summer. I'd wrapped it in duct tape and a hose clamp at the time, which reduced it to a drip, but the fix was no longer working and the leak was severe, but I left it for the next day. I then set up the gray water olive barrel, temporarily without filter bags inside.

To celebrate the homestead homecoming and a successful shake down trip/overwintering, we three sat in the sunshine on the deck (newly swept by Chris) and shared a bottle of champagne and a snack. Afterwards, we thought a fire sounded nice, so Rob set about gathering wood and getting a campfire going in the fire pit by the benches while Chris and I installed the stove pipe for the wood stove inside. I'd wanted to replace the horizontal stack with the insulated one that my parents gave me, but it didn't fit through the wall thimble, so we stuck to the original pieces. Once we were done, Rob had a fire going, so we gathered around. Rob impressibly drank a beer that had overwintered in the creek (we determined it was an Alaskan IPA from the cap). I turned on the propane and lit the pilots on the stove, then made dinner for everyone which we ate around the campfire. When we ran out of ready firewood, we went inside, lit a fire, and played gin rummy in the light of the new propane lamps that Chris and I installed last fall. They worked beautifully.

The next morning I wanted to fix the leak in the water system, so hiked to the top and shut the water off (or so I thought). I left the tap running to help drain it out, but it seemed to just keep coming. I finally unscrewed the first filter housing, but water continued to gush. I finally sent Rob up to check on it, who discovered new bear holes near the valve and guessed that a bear may have bumped the valve partially open (but I think it was my mistake). The holes are too close to the valve to simply cut out the bad section and splice the line, so the pipe had to be removed from the valve coupling. I made a feeble attempt to slice it off lengthwise, but quickly gave up, realizing that it would take considerably more time than I had.

In the meantime I'd spotted some interesting ducks at the water's edge just downriver and slowly hiked over to check them out. The stunning green and bronze head of the male gave him away as a green-winged teal, hanging out with three ladies or immature males. While spying on them I heard some rustling in the brush behind me and was delighted to see a black porcupine ambling along, stopping behind me to eat salmonberry leaves (see photo to right). When I took a step he spooked and took off at surprising speed and I discovered that the wary ducks had also fled when I turned my back. A little later we heard some rustling near the lodge and tried to track it down and Rob eventually spied the porcupine climbing the near-vertical forest floor behind the lodge. Having skipped a formal breakfast, we ate an early lunch of quesadillas on the deck and watched a whale in the inlet, occasionally lunging. Later we watched a beaver swim by headed up river. After lunch we outfitted a kayak with a lawn chair, rifle, hydrophone, and bow saw for Chris's annual mother's day photo and went out on the water for the shoot.

Leaving the harbor shot	Rob and Chris on the way	Sea lions
Putting the "lion" in "sea lion" (check out that guy in back!)	Frolicking lion	Smooch
Celebrating on the deck	Photo shoot	Pollen smoke