It was the week before Memorial Day.  We'd just returned from a weekend working on the shed at Snettisham and neither of us wanted to think about planning something for the coming weekend. But, it was Memorial Day weekend, and I couldn't see us staying home (as luxurious as that sounded), so I started toying with some ideas.  Unfortunately, I wasn't very inspired.  But, it happened that my dad asked me if I had need for the Alaskan to take a load to Snettisham, as it needed purpose for a spring trip.  Lacking other ideas or inspiration, I thought I may as well do a day run on the Alaskan--maybe even stay on myself--and get a few items down there that are impossible or risky to take in the Ronquil (i.e., queen sized bed, leather recliner, windows for the shed).  Independently, it turns out my dad had had the same thought, and so a plan was hatched.  Instead of day trip, he thought he'd stay overnight, which opened up the possibility of inviting friends along, since the Alaskan has capacity for lots of people.  I was surprised yet again that at the last minute, people didn't firm plans for Memorial Day, and a group quickly formed.

On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I ran errands all around town collecting everything I could think of that I needed at Snettisham (resulting in long lunches and early exits from work).  I picked up clear coat to refresh the stain protection on the outsides of the cabins, garage floor paint to put another coat on the floors of the lodge and the cabins, more 8 and 16 penny nails to finish the shed, shims, and cedar siding to side the gable triangle on the front of the lodge.  I left work at 3:30 on Friday to start loading the boat and by 4:15 had everything except the bed and chair on board.  The windows were particularly painful (they are heavy beasts, and delicate); thankfully it was high tide.  Later that evening, Chris and I made two trips to the harbor and loaded the mattress, bed spring, and recliner in the well behind the after stateroom.

The next morning we made it to the Alaskan around 8:40, followed shortly by my parents, Torsten, Sarah, Rob, and Katie.  We loaded all the food and personal gear on, wrapped the mattress and chair in a tarp my parents had brought, and left Cailey with Jenny  while Chris and I went to fetch the Ronquil.  While the engine warmed up, we put all the broken glass from the bow into a cardboard box I'd brought, then we headed out and met the Alaskan right outside the harbor.  Unfortunately, the bottom of the box fell out when I picked it up to hand it over, so I had to pick it all up again, this time putting most of it in the bucket.  Finally I hopped on board and my mother let the line out to tow the skiff while my dad picked up speed.  Most of us spent most of the trip in the salon reading and chatting.  I figured out a few things on my camera and took its first real photos.  We passed a whale in the channel, but if there were others I didn't see or hear about them.  Cailey was right at home on the Alaskan, though she didn't want to step onto the side decks and into the wind and rain while we were underway.  Jenny was a little more anxious about it (her first time on a boat), but downstairs she felt well enough to play hard with Cailey.  My mom put out sandwich makings for lunch at about 11:30 and shortly after 1:00 we pulled into the homestead.  Unfortunately, the tide wasn't until 5:51, so we loaded only the essential gear onto the Ronquil and brought everyone to shore; I precariously stacked the cooler on the bow, which apparently seemed like a good platform to Cailey, who knocked it down and plunged into the water.  This time she was not such a graceful swimmer and frantically splashed her way over to the side where Chris and I pulled her on board.  Once on shore, we unloaded the gear and I drug the anchor up the beach so I could retrieve later as the tide rose.

Of course the boys were anxious to work, so before we'd lit a fire or otherwise settled in, the skiff was overturned and we were dragging her effortlessly toward the water.  We stopped a few feet shy of the log that drops down to the rocks (and commonly the high tide line), with her stern toward the river.  The girls took their gear to the cabins while Torsten and Chris rolled the engine down to the boat (on the dolly it had sat on all winter in the lodge) and I gathered all the tools we'd need to get the engine in place.  I was worried about this step, as the engine sits a couple of inches above the top of the transom, held in place with four bolts.  The boys managed to get the engine more or less in place pretty easily, but then we had to decide which of three holes through the boat to use.  I think we missed on the first try and had to do it again, everything complicated by the fact that the bolts didn't slide easily in place but had to be pounded and cajoled, and mostly screwed through.  We're still not 100% sure that we used the right holes (it was clear that more than one had been used at one time, so we couldn't just go with wear and washer indentations), but the height above the transom seemed about right, and everything worked.  We realized later that we should have used the clamps to secure the engine in place before bolting it down; as it was, the boys had to manhandle it around, tilting it and making small adjustments and holding it in place until the bolts were through.  Katie and Sarah seemed impressed with what we were doing, but we were just muddling our way through!  Soon enough the engine was secure.  We all hung out on the porch for a while and then it was late enough to start loading the gear.  Torsten and Rob went to try gold panning in the creek while Sarah, Chris, and I headed out to the Alaskan for the first load.  Katie was kind enough to watch Cailey in the lodge while we were out. 

On the first trip we loaded the chair onto the bow of the boat and the box spring, mattress, and cedar siding across the back.  Chris sat in the chair like a lord as we headed in.  We left Sarah on the beach for the second load, which consisted of the various hardware and such I'd purchased and the four windows.  We unloaded everything on the beach, released the dog (who by that time was quite worried about my departure), and she and I went out to anchor the boat, which wound up taking a ridiculous amount of time.  The anchor line and chain had become hopeless tangled while bunched together in the bow (thrown hastily in as we left for the first load).  It was so bad that I had to unshackle the anchor from the chain in order to sort it out.  When I tried to then throw the anchor over, the chain was knotted in two places so I had to sort that out too.  By the time it was all ready, we'd drifted half way to the Alaskan in the river current.  Cailey was reminding me that she'd want to curl up on a blanket later and that I'd forgotten her blanket on the Alaskan, so we went to get it.  She indicated this by trying to curl up on the anchor line to sleep!  I had to yell pretty loud to get my parents to notice me when I pulled up.  On the way back I had the blanket tucked next to the driver's seat behind the throttle and Cailey climbed up there and tried to lie down.  She was very tired, having played hard without a nap since early morning.

By the time I got back to the lodge, it was high tide and potential plans to take the riverboat for a cruise fizzled away.  We lit a fire and everyone hung out in the lodge while I put some pasta on.  While I was out, the boys had panned out a flake of gold and a bunch of magnetite bits which they put in a glass jar partially filled with water.  A magnet pressed against the glass on the bottom was able to hold up considerable mass, which made spiky towers when turned upside down.  Chris, Sarah, and Katie had moved the twin bed in Hermit Thrush down to Harbor Seal, carried the chair to the same cabin, and delivered the queen sized bed to Hermit Thrush.  I gather there were some amusing adventures in bed carrying, including the difficulty in getting the bed to fit underneath the big fallen tree.  Katie had also massaged kale into a fancy salad to go with the pasta.  That night we played a long game of Trigger, which Katie and Rob said was the most contentious game of it they'd ever played.  I guess we were all rather opinionated about it!  Sleeping in a queen sized bed that night was luxurious.

Mom and Jenny on the Alaskan	Flags on the Alaskan (Rob's photo)	Sarah and Jenny snuggling (Rob's photo)
Low tide arrival (Rob's photo)	Cailey sniffing around the meadow	Rob, Chris, and Torsten playing Trigger
Everyong in the lodge playing Trigger	Chris and Torsten	The riverboat in the meadow

In the morning I slept until about 8:00 and was surprised to find only Rob at the lodge when I got there.  I put the Katie's amazing cinnamon rolls in the oven and she later made mochas for several of us as we trickled in.  Not surprisingly, Torsten wanted to get to work chain sawing as soon as he came over.  I showed him the two limbs above the shed that I wanted cut, then we walked over to the two fallen trees below Hermit Thrush.  I was originally going to just have him buck it up into firewood, but on the way I told him about this other crazy dream/plan I had of using them to span the freshet gully and make a bridge.  After we looked at the logs, we walked down to the gully and found a very likely spot about 20 feet wide, and a plan was born.  He got to work and I got to thinking about what I needed to do before we left.  Katie did dishes and started cleaning up and I started work on the riverboat.  To leave it on the beach, I needed to have a functional bilge pump to pump rain water out.  The platform to which the pump and float switch were attached last year had pulled loose in the fall, so I'd brought along some 5200 sealant to put it back in place.  It was sprinkling, so I was concerned about it setting up; the directions were unspecific, but I thought I'd read that it was supposed to set up under water.  Sarah came down and helped me install it.  I toweled off the bottom of the skiff as well as I could, emptied the 5200 over the bottom of the plastic cutting board, and pressed it in place.  After sorting through the wires, I snapped in the pump and then searched fruitlessly for the tiny screw that secures the float switch, to no avail.  I had found it the day before and was sure I'd put it in the action packer, but neither Sarah nor I could find it.  My mother came to shore then with Jenny and she hung out while I found a replacement screw, secured the float switch, and attached the wires to the battery.  Amazingly, both nuts screwed down tight over the connectors, one of which had not done so last summer.  The pump was working perfectly.  I also went to check on the Ronquil and move her out to deeper water; based on the tide the day before, I thought it was going to be floating at our 1:00 departure time, but it was already getting dangerously close to the sandbars.  Unfortunately, I left it a little too long and she was high and dry when I got there (actually, just grounded, as it was still surrounded by water).  Change of plans!  But, once a boat is grounded, there's really nothing to do until it floats again on the tide.

And so we went to check on the boys (Chris and Rob had gone to help Torsten).  They'd cut two 24' lengths of log, but they were far too heavy to carry.  Torsten had found some line in the attic and they secured it to the log.  All of us got on the line, pivoted the bigger log, and started heaving.  We made a little progress and then got stuck.  Torsten then cut some branches into lengths and we laid them below the log like a corduroy road.  My mother headed back to the boat and Katie went to continue packing/cleaning while the rest of us rolled the log onto the branches and heaved that heavy log over to the gully.  It was pretty neat to see our teamwork and problem solving come together. 

Not surprisingly, the end of the log eventually tilted down into the gully and grounded itself.  Torsten lifted it from the bottom while the rest of us pulled a little at a time.  Unfortunately, once it was up on the bank, I suggested one little tug too  many and the other end wound up in the gully.  We tied a rope around it and looped it around a tree; Sarah kept tension on it while the rest of us lifted and rolled it back into place.  Then we  stuck a few makeshift stakes in the ground to keep it from rolling down.  The other log was skinnier and much easier.  We just manhandled it over in only a few concentrated pulls.  We wanted it on the upcreek side of the larger log, so eventually tied off the large log to prevent it from rolling down as we drug the other along the upper side of it.  Crossing the gully was relatively easy and, voila, we had a bridge!  All in all, I thought it was an impressive bit of teamwork. We worked pretty well together, listening to each other's suggestions and working through problems in a good natured manner--it was so pleasant compared to similar experiences I've had with other helpers.

The gully to bridge	The boys considering how to pull the log	Pulling the log
Torsten cutting branches over the shed	Laying rollers for the log	The logs in place over the gully
Mom, Rob, and Katie on the way to the Alaskan	Nigel's cottonwood tree	Waiting for the tide to rise

By this time we only had about half an hour until we were supposed to go, so I left Torsten to clean up some of the overhanging branches from the big fallen tree.  Sarah started packing up their cabin.  Back at the lodge, Katie had grated a bunch of cheese in preparation for quick quesadillas to feed the hungry workers right before we went to the Alaskan (I didn't want to send them on a four hour boat ride at noon with empty stomachs after manual labor).  I hastily made a bunch, which Chris and Rob ate, but Sarah and Torsten weren't there, so my mother (who'd just come back ashore) and I ate some and I put some aside to cook later for the others.  Thankfully, my mom told me that my dad was happy to wait until high tide so there wasn't an immediate rush.  I suggested that she take Rob and Katie, who were ready to go, and Chris and I would follow with Torsten and Sarah when the Ronquil floated, since they weren't ready yet.  That way we wouldn't lose any net time on the way back (we'd catch up to the Alaskan on the way).  So Rob, Katie, and my mother headed out to the Alaskan (which departed at 1:15) and I finished getting ready to go and fed Torsten (who'd used the bathing pool) and Sarah when they arrived. 

 The Ronquil floated surprisingly quickly and we were underway around 1:50.  When I grabbed Cailey's collar to help her in the boat, all her tags fell off into the river; thankfully I was able to find them all by groping blindly!  The crab pot was empty, the bait not even eaten by sand fleas, surprisingly.  Torsten and Sarah sat on the cooler and sleepy Cailey curled up between the seats.  The water was a little choppy and it was nice to turn and put it on our stern around Seal Rocks.  It looked like there were still lions at the haulout, but we were going the shortest route possible.  We caught up to the Alaskan 40 minutes later in the middle of Stephen's Passage just south of Taku Harbor.  The seas had just picked up a bit, which made off-loading a little tricky, but it went off without a hitch and we were heading back to town with the Ronquil in tow in no time.  Everyone was, not surprisingly, pretty subdued on the trip back!  Outside of Douglas Harbor, Chris, the dog, and I got off and brought the Ronquil into its slip and headed home.  What was a spontaneous "get the bed and windows to Snettisham" had turned into a hugely successful trip with a wonderful group of friends along and (as is always the case when Torsten and Rob get down there), unexpected projects were accomplished!  I look forward to digging out little trenches for the logs to level and secure them, after which I plan to span them with boards to make a wide bridge (wide enough, at least, for a wheel barrel).

Towing the Ronquil

Dad and Jenny in the wheelhouse

Exhausted Cailey back at home