Snettisham 2010 - 7:  It Rained the Second Day
 July 7-9


Port Snettisham, looking toward Speel Arm

I'd taken Thursday and Friday off of work the week before in order to prep the cabins for staining as soon as the weather broke, workday or weekend.  I believed that I had two cabins stain-ready and two more that needed only moderate touching up before they'd be ready.  Early in the week the forecast called for sunny skies on Thursday and Friday, followed by a return to rain on Friday night.  I worked hard all Tuesday and Wednesday to leave the office as orderly as possibly while I was out.  The forecast was ideal--light winds from the NW Wednesday night, light winds from the SE on Friday to carry me home. I figured I could first touch up the two remaining cabins (either Wednesday night or Thursday morning) and let them dry while I manically stained the others.  It was just possible that I could get both the color coat and the clear coat on most, if not all the cabins if I worked hard. 

Preparing for the trip down was a simple affair, now that almost everything I needed was already at Snettisham.  I'd fueled the boat some days before and swung by the hardware store at lunch to pick up a few extra brushes and some spar urethane to stain the lodge porch.  After work I just had to gather some clothes, throw some bread, cheese, and salmon in the cooler, and head to the harbor.  Nigel and I got underway before 5:30.  The trip down was fairly nice, although the seas picked up between Taku Harbor and Snettisham so much that I had to slow down near the Seal Rocks so the following sea wouldn't slam us uncomfortably into the sea ahead.  Looking behind, I saw one whale blow north of the Seal Rocks.  It puzzles me how the seas build right outside the Port from either direction--I think I need to learn more about the relations between wind, tide, water depth, channel width, and the meeting of bodies of water in relation to the height of seas.  I certainly see some puzzling phenomena out there. 

I anchored up the boat at the homestead around 8:00 pm and went on an inspection tour of the premises, thinking in the back of my mind that I might do some cabin prep that night so I could stain all of them the next day.  My heart dropped when I saw Cottonwood's blotches of remaining stain and Mink's whole patches that still needed stripping.  By the time I caught sight of the streaks of stain on the back of Harbor Seal and the large areas of stain on its front I think I was sobbing.  No cabins were ready for staining and I quickly lost all will and energy.  I staggered back to the lodge in defeat, forced down some dinner, and slept on the couch.  I didn't even want to return to my cabin for the night. 

The next morning I allowed myself to sleep in in my discouragement--what difference would it make if I got an early start?  I was clearly never going to be able to stain anyway, certainly not to finish on this trip.  But I had recovered somewhat, and set to work stripping again, starting with Cottonwood.  I wondered how much difference it would make if little patches of stain remained, so I quickly stirred up a bucket of stain and brushed it over adjacent stained and cleaned areas.  The stained area showed up lighter, but not too obviously so.  I was hatching a plan to strip one last time, and then call it good, whatever stain remained.  So I set to work.  I did the whole back wall and the whole front of Cottonwood, slopping it on with a new bristle brush that I'd thankfully thought to purchase and using a scrub brush to agitate the persistent areas.  The other two walls only had stain in patches, so I used a bucket of water and a brush to wet the offending spots and followed that with the stripper.  That way I could target the remaining stain.  By wetting the whole wall with the hose, the stained areas blended in too well with the clean areas and I couldn't differentiate.  I followed this pattern for all four cabins, starting work on the next cabins in line on the walls that I didn't need to hose so I could leave the hose behind while the stripper worked its magic on the previous cabin, hauling it down when it was all rinsed off.  At 2:00 I'd applied the stripper to Hermit Thrush's front wall and finally stopped, walking back to the lodge to let it work.  On the way I heard some human sounds and looked through the bushes to see that my mother and aunt had arrived.  I hurried back to the freshet and pulled out three coronas, then went to meet them.  My aunt Vicki was in town for the week, so she and my mother brought the Kathy M down for the night.  They'd had a much calmer ride down than I had the night before under a gorgeous sunny sky, and stopped for one whale.  When we finished unloading and hauling the kayak up, they joined me while I rinsed off the cabin, then we had coronas on the deck in the sunshine and relaxed and chatted for a bit.  Vicki had helped haul the hemlock siding down two years ago on the Alaskan, so it was nice to show her the finished product inside. 

After our break, my mom and Vicki went for a kayak while I went back to cabin prep work.  Before they left, though, I employed them to watch me while I bleached the outside of the gable fascia board on the lodge porch.  Because it overhangs the porch itself, I can't access it from beneath, and even my long ladder won't reach from the deck below to lean against it.  I wanted to try with a step ladder for the lower ends, figuring I'd have to reach the rest from the roof, but didn't want to do either alone.  In the end, I managed to reach the whole area from the top of a step ladder with the assistance of the garden sprayer.  Then, as they headed out, I started spraying down Cottonwood with bleach-jomax solution to kill the mildew released from its stain shelter, but was forced to return to fetch my dog and remind him that he didn't need to follow the others out kayaking!  After I finished with Cottonwood, I returned to the lodge to rinse off the fascia with small buckets of water from the sink.  I threw more into thin air than I'd like to admit, but eventually managed to rinse it off sufficiently (I hope).  Vicki and my mom kayaked downriver, then turned around and headed up to the point.  They got back before I finished the second cabin and were kind enough to forgive me while I continued bleaching until dinner.  I thoroughly bleached the first two cabins, as I hadn't yet bleached them at all, but didn't do as complete a job on the other two, having been thoroughly bleached the week before.  I did the entire fronts of these latter two, but only touched up other areas that still had mildew spots or that I knew had still had stain on them when I bleached previously.  Looking at these areas, though, I became more or less convinced that the stripper killed the mildew too, as I saw no spots on areas that I'd just stripped that morning.  The wood, in fact, looked amazing, much better than it has in years.  I hadn't realized that those mildew spots would ever go away. 

While I'd been working, my mom and Vicki had watched an eagle dive into the river and....not get up again.  Thankfully, they soon saw it start to swim for shore where it stopped to rest and dry its wings with an impressive silvery fish in its talons.  Then it took off and flew right past them, landing in a tree just upriver from the lodge at the end of the boardwalk to the first cabin.  I watched it with them for a few moments before walking back to Cottonwood to fetch my camera, discovering that I could walk almost directly underneath it to get there.  The fish was trout sized, its silvery tail drooping down the spruce branch beneath the eagle. 

I made it back to the lodge at 6:10, content that all cabins were now stain ready.  I figured they would dry amply overnight and my plan was to rise very early in the morning and stain a few cabins before anyone else got up.  I made salmon fettuccini and salad for dinner and we drank wine, ate milk duds for dessert, and had a lovely visit.  Sometime after dinner I made a tour of the cabins, mopping up the water that had leaked in from all the wetting and rinsing and making sure that the beds had sheets and pillows for my guests.  When I got back, another eagle (or quite possibly the same one) had caught another similar fish and was sitting in the same tree.  She rested there a few minutes, then flew off downriver, not quite gaining enough elevation to make it into the nest the first time.  I got to bed around 11:00 and managed to set the alarm (which is water damaged from the previous week) for 5:00 am.  Morning came and I roused myself to get underway.  The night before I'd moved everything I thought I'd need from the lodge toward Harbor Seal, so I wouldn't have to go to the lodge to start work or wake my mother or Vicki walking past that area.  I managed to forget two items, however, and snuck to the lodge via the water line to avoid walking by their cabin (Cottonwood).  I picked up a piece of plastic to protect the front porches from dripping stain and a few other items, then hauled the stain to Harbor Seal and the ladder and painting supplies to Hermit Thrush.  Then I sat down.  I was having doubts.  I'd run my fingers along three cabins that morning, and none of them felt as dry as I would like.  None of them were wet in any obvious way, but there was a resistance to the wood that suggested damp.  The driest boards were those on the side and back walls of Hermit Thrush where I'd done little touch up and, hence, little rinsing the day before.  But even these didn't convince me.  I sat on the edge of my deck and contemplated my next move, wondering how detrimental it would be to apply stain to not-quite-dry wood.  I'd rinsed them all the final time after the sun had retreated behind the mountain, so they'd never had a chance to bake in the daytime heat.  The night was cool enough, and I'd risen too early for it to have warmed up yet.  I'd purchased water-based stain--which I didn't even know existed--that lasts twice as long as oil-based stain, but has had some failures since its introduction to Juneau.  User error?  Maybe it was applied to slightly damp boards?  I certainly didn't want this step to fail.  So I watched a squirrel bound through its territory on the other side of the creek and a little winter wren explore the base of the mighty tree nearby and pondered.  It turns out that I'd never really stopped to enjoy the foresty view from the edge of my cabin!  It drops down quickly into the creek's gully and then out to the river and shows off some lovely forest.  As I sat there, I felt a drop of water on my hand, then two more.  It was raining, and there'd be no staining that day.  At that point I was almost relieved.

And so I put everything away and headed back to the lodge.  It wasn't yet 6:00 am, but I didn't see any worth in going back to bed.  What other projects could I start on?!  Two came to mind--window trim and the back porch to the lodge.  I pulled out the sawhorses and set them on the deck, then measured and marked hemlock trim for the tops of all the windows and the bottom of the window behind the sink.  Then I went to study the area outside the back door of the lodge, discovering immediately that the area four feet from the door where the foundation should go was in the middle of large, thick, overlapping roots!  Digging there would involve chainsawing through several roots, one of which was probably ten inches or more in diameter.  That didn't appeal to me very much, so I decided it wouldn't be so bad to lay the "ground contact" pressure-treated (PT) lumber right there on the ground over the roots.   It looked like the ground wasn't far from level with the bottom of the door already if you added on the joists and stringer.  I also came up with a plan for the step down on the river side.  I measured the pre-cut stair stringers we'd attached to the deck and determined that the version with one less tread would be the correct height.  So, I decided to make the deck proper three feet wide, figuring that the last required foot would be the top tread to the stairs.  I thought this a very efficient plan and felt a little proud of myself for thinking of it.  I also did some measuring against the house and where the outer stringer would be and decided to use a 2x6 to support the joists against the lodge and 2x4s for joists--that is, if I could find 2x4s.  I had brought down 2x8s for the job, but they weren't as ideal due to their extra height and the root situation.  I went to the new stack of lumber and began searching for PT 2x4s.  I found one short piece, then eventually found the gem I was looking for (right where it should be with the other 2x4s)--it was a 12' piece leftover from lodge construction.  I drug this over along with a PT 2x6 and marked them for cutting.  I also marked a 4x4 I had on site for the stringer.  I didn't want to wake anyone with the generator/skill saw noise, so I did everything I could to get ready.  Finally at 8:00 I gave in, and started cutting.  My mother showed up a few minutes later (claiming she was already awake).  I finished the cuts while she put some water on to bring Vicki a cup of coffee.  Vicki came over as I was finishing and we sat around the lodge's living room and had Cafe Francais and a snack for breakfast. 

After drinks we chatted for a bit, then my mom helped me nail up the top of the window trim, which looks great.  The only one missing now is over one of the downriver windows where one of the hemlock panels above it sticks too far down--I'll have to bring my jig saw back.  I also discovered that I'd cut off the wrong side of the bottom trim for the window behind the sink, so the groove side stuck out instead of the tongue side.  I decided to recut it.  Then I showed my mother my ideas for the porch outside and we determined that the stair idea would not work, as the roots were going to get in the way of the bottom of the stair stringer on the way down, but couldn't be reduced in width with the current plan because the top tread was to be part of the 4x4' deck (which is the minimum size required in the City and Bureau of Juneau outside a door).  So, I changed plans and went back to a standard 4x4 deck, which required me to recut the two stringers.

My mother and Vicki needed to be back in town at 3:00 and hoped to stop by Taku Harbor on the way home, so we planned to lunch at 11:00 and have them underway at noon.  I made quesadillas with amazing hand made whole wheat tortillas that my uncle had sent, then we started packing up.  My mom washed the dishes and Vicki helped me stain the outside of the fascia board.  It hadn't rained since around 7:00, so I decided it was dry enough for one small section of wood that's exposed to the light.  This way I can mount my bat box the next time I come down, which I've been putting off for the sole purpose of staining the board it'll be mounted to.  In the end, they took off around 1:00 as my energy rapidly waned.  I laid down on the couch for 15 minutes of forced rest before cleaning the lodge, sweeping and reorganizing my cabin, and going back to work on the back deck.  With the 4' 2x6 tacked into the side of the lodge (with just enough room for joists and decking to reach the bottom of the door) I was able to play with the other stringer to determine where it needed to go.  The extra foot on the end of it with the change in deck plans caused some problems, as it ran into a difficult root.  The other end only needed 1.5 inches of elevation to be level, but the end toward the river needed a couple of inches more.  I went back to the lumber stack and pulled out a short piece of 2x4 and a short piece of 4x4.  These turned out to be exactly what were needed to level the stringer.  Unfortunately, the curve of the root prevented the 4x4 from sitting flat on the ground, so I wound up chopping a notch out of the root with an ax to make a flat surface for it.  With some manipulating, this worked perfectly and the two little supports I'd added made the stringer perfectly level.  I marked the location of the supports, then flipped the 4x4 and nailed them in.  I set the outside joists in place, made sure the box was square, then tacked them into both stringers.  I had a box.  At that point I realized that I'd made a tactical error in relation to the fact that there was no foundation holding the deck down.  It's important to remember that foundations hold things down as well as up!  The 4x4 support under the stringer didn't quite make it to the end of the stringer because the root rises up there, so stepping on that corner of the deck causes the other corner to come up!  I solved this temporarily by placing rocks under that corner.  I'll figure something more permanently later. 

At that point it was 3:00, so I finished packing up and brought the boat in, heading out with a gratuitous diet Dr. Pepper and a kit-kat bar (man was that good).  I fought against a chop heading out of Snettisham and was happy to put it behind me as I rounded Pt. Styleman.  I had to slow down a bit as the chop picked up between Grave Point and Point Arden, and was glad it was on the stern.  There was a pair of whales in the middle of Stephen's Passage north of the Seal Rocks, one at Limestone Inlet, one south of Grand Island, and one at Point Arden.  Vicki and my mom saw four whales at Limestone Inlet, one of which breach twice beautifully for them.

Eagle carrying away its fish