Snettisham 2011-1

I had grand, complicated plans. Consequently, the week leading up to this trip was full of scheming and decisions, credit cards and intense errands. My plan was to make two major improvements to the cabins--curtains for privacy and running, potable water. I'd already ordered all the water filters and filter housings, but that was about as far as I'd progressed since the last trip down. On Saturday I went around town looking for small bathroom vanities; I'd checked online, searching for quaint sinks, corner sinks, anything I thought would be suitable for a rustic cabin. In the end, my folks pointed out that a small vanity would be convenient (offering a little space for toothbrush and such on top that a pedestal sink lacks), economical, and would offer a handy cuddy to place the bucket underneath (since use will be minimal, and bears are an issue, I'd decided to simply have the sinks drain into a bucket for the moment; a gray water treatment system can come later). My first stop was Home Depot, where I was delighted to find first a white, then an oak vanity with sink that was right up my alley. I tried Don Abel, and they also had a pretty oak vanity, a little classier than the one at Home Depot. Valley Lumber was a bust. On the way home I stopped by Fred Meyer and was pleased to find an array of curtains that I believed would fit the cabin windows along with curtain rods and rod holders, exactly the style I was looking for. I found four attractive curtain patterns, one for each of the cabins, and all the necessary accessories.

On Monday I made another trip to Home Depot to look over their faucets again and called Don Abel to see what faucets they had in stock. I'd already mulled over the issue and settled on the style I wanted--oil rubbed bronze (for the classy, rustic look) in a bar faucet style so there was as much room as possible for someone to, for example, dip their heads under. Naturally, no one had such a thing in town, so I found a place on the internet with exactly what I was looking for, decent prices, and cheap one-day shipping. I bit the bullet and made the order, hoping it would arrive by Friday. Over the next few days I went back through town and bought it out of small, oak vanities (Home Depot had three, Don Abel had one). I also picked up the Ronquil from the shop (where the tilt was finally fixed), bought a new hose, a metal bucket (more on that later), colorful plastic buckets for all the vanities, and all the plumbing supplies necessary to bring water from the valves on the end of my black poly pipe through the filters and into the sinks. This involved a long, intense session at Cameron's Plumbing where a helpful employee and I worked through the whole system and pieced together nearly all the necessary pieces (bushings, nipples, CPVC pipe, couplings, tape thread, glue). It didn't help that the company I'd ordered the filters from sent me about six different styles of filter, two of which had differently sized inlet and outlet holes. Cameron's didn't have a few of the pieces, so I later stopped by Harri's Plumbing to fill in all the gaps, including water supply lines to connect the sink to the CPVC pipe. In the end I had a cluster of boxes in my garage for all sorts of fun tasks.

By the time Friday rolled around, I was exhausted and tense and preoccupied with the projects that had dominated my time, money, and thoughts all week. The last piece fell into place when my faucets showed up at the house at 2:30 in the afternoon. It was a sunny day and the harbor was busy. Chris and I had loaded all the vanities into the back of the boat for the ride over there, but needed to transfer a truck bed full of other boxes and sundry items while at the harbor. By the time we were finished, the boat was packed and there was very little space for moving around! As we were putting the last pieces in place, a Fish and Game employee came up and mentioned that there were some Coast Guard folks down the ramp who were checking to make sure everyone had their registration and such on board; I assured him we had everything in order, and appreciated the heads up. Suddenly, though, I realized that I hadn't seen my green emergency kit dry bag where most of the required safety equipment is stowed. I panicked, searched the boat, and came up empty handed. All I could think is that I must have taken it off the boat (where it normally lives all summer) to look at the manual when I couldn't get my kicker to start and never put it back. I found it hard to believe that it could be sitting there in the garage just a few feet from the pile of goods I'd just loaded and gone unnoticed, but it seemed the safest bet. Furious on top of the week's tension, I left the boat at the harbor with Chris and hurried home to find the bag in the garage as expected. Back at the harbor we launched just as the Coast Guard quit for the day; in the end, though, I wouldn't want to go on the water without that bag, so I appreciated the heads up that prompted me to notice it missing.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I really felt like I deserved a break, things were not to go smoothly from there. That evening had the best marine forecast all weekend, but it was far from pleasant out there. We beat against a southeasterly chop all down the channel, meekly hoping that it would let down farther south. The trip to Arden was unpleasant, but Arden itself was barely tolerable. The chop was erratic, not more than two feet high in most places, but abrupt, angry spray splashed us repeatedly as we banged and sloshed along at barely more than an idle. The sky was dark and it was sprinkling. A long and painful trip was ahead; I was exhausted and I began to consider turning around. If I could have teleported us back to the harbor, I think I would have, but I didn't relish the idea of backtracking all the way back to town. Then another splash would douse me and we were barely making headway. Each time I considered turning around I thought about all the energy I'd put into gathering the supplies stowed behind me, and what I'd do back at the harbor with the four vanities and all the boxes of supplies. I was disappointed that after all the hurdles I'd gone through to get everything ready, the weather resisted. I did actually turn around once, devastated, but looking back over my shoulder I couldn't convince myself that it was that bad, so I made a full circled and plunged on a little farther. Within a minute the seas improved and we picked up speed. Soon torrential rain began to fall--we'd run into a front, which I hoped was a sign that that worst would soon be over. The crossing to Grand was unpleasant, as our trajectory and the direction of the seas clashed in such a way that I got regular douses of salt spray in my face. I hoped the vanities were well enough protected. Chris had wrapped my rain jacket around the top of the Don Abel vanity to help protect it, as it had no cardboard box around it like the others.

We were able to rest a bit in the lee of Grand Island. A third whale (there'd been at least two at Arden) came up, his mist blowing away in the breeze. By the time we passed back into the open on our way to Grave Point, the rain had diminished and the seas let down and the rest of the trip was considerably better. A couple more whales showed up farther south near Seal Rocks, and another inside the Port by the south shore. There we were grateful to pick up speed and cruise the rest of the way to the homestead. One good thing about the late departure and the slow going was that the tide had come in higher than I expected, which made hauling our gear a little more bearable. I helped Chris with most of it before anchoring the boat, grateful for the working tilt. That night we were so exhausted that we had a little dinner and then slept in the lodge. I did manage to get the filters back in their housings before dinner, though, so at least we had potable running water in the lodge. I was further discouraged to find what appeared to be mouse dirt in the kitchen, something I hadn't seen since I mouse-proofed the lodge several years ago. There was so little of it that my first thought was that, if it was mouse dirt, the culprit was probably dead at the bottom of the bucket under the sink. I looked and, sure enough, there he was, dead. It was the icing on the cake for a disappointing evening. But, I was at the homestead, and the weekend was bound to get better.

The next morning I slept in. For the first time all week, plumbing the cabins didn't sound enticing. I was worn out. So I had a relaxing morning. I eventually got up, started a little fire, and puttered a little, unpacking our gear and gathering everything I needed to get the gray water system in place. I'd considered replacing the gray water barrel this spring, but decided I had plenty of other tasks to keep me occupied and it'd been working just fine as is. Chris helped while I installed new filter bags on the inlet and outlet hoses with zip ties (a single filter bag was so long I cut it in half), put the barrel back in place, and attached it to the inlet and outlet pipes. Then we had quesadillas for lunch, still waiting for the work bug to kick in. I made a short and vain attempt to figure out how to connect plumbing from the second sink into the existing line, then joined Chris for some Cafe Francais which was supposed to wake us up, but failed to have much of an affect. Eventually, we got to it. Each cabin is destined to have a set of three filters (one ten-micron and two one-micron filters in a line), so the first thing we did was get them all connected and add the pieces that connected to pipe on either end. I got out the box of fun and started sorting through it, setting up the first set of three on the table top. Unfortunately, we discovered that I'd forgotten that Cameron's Plumbing was out of one piece--the brass bushings that connect the 3/4" filter housings to the 1/2" CPVC pipe; the only bushing for that function we had was for the odd sized filter (1"). So I reconciled myself to only getting running water hooked up to one cabin. Nevertheless, we could get a lot of work accomplished toward the final goal. Chris and I sat on the couch wrapping bushings and nipples in thread tape and screwing everything together until we had four sets of three filter housing tops all ready to go.

So off we went to Cottonwood Cabin with a kettle of hot water, the filters, a screwdriver, hose clamps, a hack saw, a tin cup, CPVC pipe, and a box of various connectors. First we cut a short piece of black poly pipe to connect the existing valve to the filter system and attached it to both ends. Then we set up the vanity inside the cabin, decided on its placement, and figured out where the hole through the wall should be. It's always hard to drill the first hole through a pristine wall! I used the smallest hole saw I had, which was a little larger than necessary, and started the laborious task of drilling the hole. Turns out those boards are thicker than I remember! I was relieved to find that the brand new Makita battery (right out of the package) was charged up--otherwise I was out of luck! The drilling occurred in installations because it was so slow going; then, just after the drill bit made it through the outside of the wall, progress stopped entirely and I eventually realized that the width of the wall was greater than the width of the hole saw! So I went outside and drilled from the opposite direction, quickly finishing it off. If that seemed difficult, installing

the sink quickly overshadowed it. The instructions, as are typical of such devices, were woefully inadequate with misleading and wholly unhelpful graphics and major gaps in the textual instructions. It took us considerably longer than necessary to assemble it, especially the mechanism that opens and closes the drain. We wound up with an alarming number of leftover parts, but the sink seemed to function. From there we cut three pieces of CPVC pipe--a couple of feet horizontally from the filters, about 18" up, then a very short piece through the wall. When we were satisfied we glued all the joints together and hoped for the best.

Drying time was an hour, so we occupied ourselves with other tasks, including delivering vanities to all the other cabins. We also set up the sink in Mink Cabin, which was still puzzlingly frustrating but took considerably less time. After an hour we opened the valves at Cottonwood, turned on the tap, and heard it sputter and gurgle the air out followed by a nice flow of water. Running water in a cabin! There were a couple of leaks around the filters outside, but we left that for another day. Instead, I stayed in Cottonwood Cabin and installed one set of window curtains as an experiment. I was pleased to find that the pre-cut curtains I'd purchased fit the window nicely and that I'd apparently purchased everything necessary to outfit every cabin. We relaxed for a bit after that, then I got to work prepping the other cabins for water systems. Because the valve that feeds Harbor Seal and Hermit Thrush cabins was locked open last time, I hadn't been able to replace the single valve at each cabin with the double valve system that would accommodate a hose connection simultaneously with a sink connection. Now that the valve worked, I was able to turn it off and cut into the hose. I removed the existing valves and prepped them in the lodge (removing the attached poly pipe by soaking them in hot water), then returned to the cabins with boiling water and all the other accessories. In the meantime, Chris had attacked the vegetation that was growing up in our new, level, fire pit area. By the time I was done it was nearly 8:00 and time to quit.

As I started dinner back at the lodge, I continued to futz around with the sink drain plumbing. The pieces I had were puzzling—lots of plain, unflanged, unthreaded pipes which were, by all counts, supposed to connect to other pipe while making a seal. By taking apart the existing setup (which just connected one sink straight to the P-trap) I figured out that a combination of a washer and a female fitting apparently make a secure connection to another piece of pipe with a male, threaded end. Once I figured this out, I just had to cut a couple of inches off the connected pipe and fit them all together. I had just enough washers. After dinner (traditional Snettisham ravioli and Cesar salad), I finished securing everything. The only issue was that the new vertical pipe I installed that connected to the other sink came up a little short of the top of the P-trap. I didn’t have a longer pipe that worked, nor could I adjust the P-trap without cutting a new hole in the wall. However, by bending things a little I managed to make a good connection and, voila, I had a fully plumbed sink. It was very satisfying to hear the water (from both sinks) trickle into the olive barrel outside. Perhaps I’ve done everything wrong, but nothing leaked the rest of the weekend.

Setting up the filter housings

Splicing in a second valve at Harbor Seal

The fire pit area after it gets cleaned up

The next morning I rose earlier than I had the day before (8:00) and got back to work on the water systems. I first gathered all the parts I needed from the lodge, which led to me accidentally come across one of the bushings I needed to plumb a second cabin (overlooked among the dozens of brass fittings the day before). This was an encouraging find, so I gathered everything I needed and headed over there. Since the sink was already assembled, this project went quickly. I connected the valve to the filters via a short length of poly pipe, then drilled the hole through the wall where water line would come through, this time drilling the whole toward the edge of the vanity rather than right in the middle so it wouldn't interfere with the bucket as much. I also decided to try making the hole with multiple small holes using a standard drill bit (the biggest I had). While this may have taken a little longer than the hole saw, it was ultimately less frustrating and made a much smaller hole (the bit in the hole saw kept falling out and I couldn't figure out how to secure it, so this was a satisfactory alternative). It's not a very attractive or symmetric hole, but it does the job and probably won't let any mice in around it.

With the hole in place I cut the CPVC pipe, put everything in position, and glued it all together. While it dried I assembled the sink in Harbor Seal, which went much faster now that I had some experience (20 minutes); plus I used two parts I hadn't used on the others! Then I connected the filter housings and cut the hole in the wall. Since I could go no further without another bushing, I went back to Cottonwood and installed the rest of the curtains. They look fantastic--the addition of the sink and the curtains take that cabin to a whole new level. By then I was ready to test the sink in Mink, which worked great, and only yielded one small leak at the end of the filters. I tried to fix the leaks at Cottonwood, too, and was successful with two out of three, though in the process I created a new leak so there are still two slow drips--probably not enough to worry about, since the valve will be off whenever the cabins aren't occupied. These two major triumphs took most of the morning, so I broke and had lunch in the sunshine down on the benches. It was another gorgeous--if somewhat breezy--day, and Chris went for a kayak after lunch, resulting in a close encounter with a harbor seal that may have been snoozing underwater when his paddle came down! I stuck around the lodge for a bit doing a few more little tasks, including washing the outsides of all the windows. When they were dry I put up semi-translucent stickers that are supposed to be quite flashy to birds and dissuade them from flying into the windows, but more of less transparent from inside. Hopefully it'll help. We'd arrived to find two orange-crowned warblers dead on the front porch, even though the shade was stretched across the window on the inside. I wonder if they were quarreling with each other? I also raked the areas around the lodge, creating piles of dry twigs all along the paths.

And then I went back to water systems. Although I'd set up the filters at Harbor Seal, I still hadn't connected them to the poly pipe. So back I went with another kettle of boiling water, cutting a length of pipe along the way. Unfortunately, the pipe was extremely tough and persistently bent in a way that was quite contrary to what I needed to connect the valve to the filters along the side of the building. I wound up forcing it to straighten by sitting on it for several minutes, which barely made it tolerable. I think I'll need to use hooks to keep the filters close to the walls. Although I wasn't sure if the water was still hot enough, I decided to try to tackle Hermit Thrush's system too, so I cut another long piece of poly pipe and Chris helped me carry it up. It, too, was unhelpfully insistent on its bends. Chris helped me straighten it a little, and cutting it in half seemed to help (I'd been overly generous in my sizing). Eventually we had this, too, hooked up to the filters. I then even more efficiently put together the sink to Hermit Thrush's cabin and decided to call it a day on the water systems. I carried all the extra parts back to the lodge, grabbed a couple of diet cokes in the freshet, and met Chris out on the rocky point. We relaxed there in the sun for a bit. The rocks were alive with yellow cinquefoil flowers and while I lay down I could hear crows flying along the cliff below me.

Somewhat revived, I hurried onto the last few tasks for the day. First I grabbed the rake and, in about half an hour, raked all the trails around the cabins. Like creating flat and square areas in the wilderness, there is something profoundly satisfying about a well-trodden, tidy trail. After this we had one more little project. When I discovered how handy it was to be able to use a hose at the cabins last summer, I realized that I'd like to have one at the lodge too. Then it occurred to me that, if I had a hose set up, I could use it to divert cold water into an artificial freshet where we could cool beer and sodas closer to the lodge. I have no idea how this will turn out, but that's what we created. I shut off the water at the source, opened the sink faucet, and started getting the parts ready while it drained and while Chris started digging a hole about four feet from the edge of the back porch. When everything was ready, the water was still draining, so I got impatient and started cutting through the hose along the path to the outhouse. Water came geysering out, so I retreated for a few minutes until it diminished, then finished the cut, inserted a "T' coupling, and installed a valve. Then I realized that I had no idea where the fittings were that connected the valve to a hose. I'd had it hooked up last summer, and figured that I'd left it on one of the valves. However, all valves had been replaced and I was sure I would have noticed it when working with them. Puzzled, I hiked up the path to turn the water back on, returning via Hermit Thrush to inspect the valves and try to find the fittings. It finally dawned on me that I might have left it hooked up to the hose itself, which had been chewed and strewn about by a bear. Sure enough, I found the fitting on a piece of hose in the woods near the cabin.

Back at the lodge, I hooked the hose up, stashing the bulk of the coils behind a tree up the hill. In the meantime, Chris had dug a nice hole to house the ice bucket I'd bought and placed rocks in the bottom so the bucket wouldn't sit on wet dirt all the time. My idea is to let the hose drip into this bucket, constantly refreshing it with cold water from the creek. It might not work, but it's worth a try! By this time the afternoon was getting on, so we washed the dishes and packed up. It was about low tide, so the boat was only about 20 feet from shore and quickly went aground as I paddled in (there was not enough water to lower the engine). We quickly loaded the gear and Chris drug the kayak up the mud and beach to the porch and hurried back while I held the boat in just enough water to float. We took off downriver, eating hastily made sandwiches and beer, straight into the chop of Gilbert Bay. The unpleasant chop continued to Stephen's Passage where it became quite tolerable and we made the trip back in a little over an hour and a half. There were still about 30 lions at the haul-out and we counted 11 whales: one in Gilbert Bay, one around the corner in the entrance to the port, one near the sea lion haul-out, two near Point Amner, three outside the Port in Stephen's Passage, one south of Grand Island, one north of Grand Island, and one in Taku Inlet. One of the whales in Stephen's Passage surprised us while we were watching seven bald eagles and a flock of gulls circling a bait ball by lunging up in the middle of it. Back at the harbor we happily bypassed the launch ramp and chose a slip in the transient area. Although loading gear up and down the ramp is never fun, it sure beats launching the boat! It felt like summer was finally underway.

Filter system outside Mink	Curtains inside Cottonwood	Running water in Mink
Lunch on the benches	Cinquefoil blooming on the rocky point	Freshet Jr.

Looking downriver from the rocky point