Snettisham 2014 - 8: The Way it Should Be, Days 8-12
  September 9-22

Sea lions at Circle Point

There was some rain during the night and a few sprinkles greeted me in the morning, soon to diminish into an overcast day. I was hoping that my mother would show up at some point, and there were a few things I wanted to do before she arrived, so I quickly got to work. I’d also decided that I’d better take advantage of the meager 13’ tide to bring the riverboat up on shore, but the tide wasn’t until 10:30 so I tackled a few other tasks while I waited for it to rise. In general, my goal was to knock out those close up tasks that wouldn’t inconvenience us for the last couple of days. First up: waterproof Hermit Thrush. Several years ago I smeared the small lip of flooring projecting on the back wall of the cabin with plumber’s putty and hadn’t had an issue again with water getting into the cabin until this year (at least, not that I’ve noticed). Perhaps it was because the putty was crumbling off, or perhaps it was because the summer was rainy, but this year water was saturating the 2x2 cedar strip below the walls and pooling up around the screws, soaking the box spring and the floor underneath. It was time to do something more permanent.

Thankfully, I seemed to have the right supplies for a first crack at it. What the 90 degree metal flashing was originally meant for I have no idea (probably something on the lodge), but it looked more or less ideal. I cut a piece to run along most of the back wall (all along the exposed lip of floor) and set it on the lip so the vertical side lay against the 2x2 and the first log above it and the horizontal piece lay on the plywood. I tacked that piece in, then put a full piece and a partial piece all along the exposed plywood on the wall facing the mountain, which was more even and much wider. On either end I cut a notch in the vertical side to fit under the extended log and protect the wall to the end. There was plenty of flashing leftover, so I tacked in pieces on two walls of Harbor Seal as well. I didn’t finish because I wanted to get my mother’s advice before securing them any further.

Then I decided that there was no sense in leaving the water systems functional for the two cabins that wouldn’t get use. I cleaned the sink and vanity in Hermit Thrush with scrubbing bubbles, then shut off the water, removed the filter housings, drained the system (being careful to try to drain all the water out of the sink hose), and wrapped the exposed filter heads in tinfoil. I repeated the process for Harbor Seal, carrying the housings back to the lodge to be cleaned and moving the blanket I’d put on the bed in Harbor Seal for my mom up to Mink cabin (I’d decided to put her in Mink since it is closer to the lodge and Cottonwood).

By that time it was high tide, so I kayaked out to the boats with Cailey and brought the riverboat to shore, tying it to the line still secured to the chain in the woods. I was just finished and back at the lodge at 11:00 when I heard the drone of an airplane and within seconds a Ward Air 206 was landing straight at the beach, no circling or anything to give me time to run to the outhouse! Instead I threw on my waders as quickly as I could and barely made it to shore as he was taxiing in. Generously, my dad had offered to fly my mother down to help me close up. As we unloaded my mother’s gear, we chatted with the pilot about his experience flying up the Whiting River, which apparently is a good route to Canada due to a low pass (3,000’) over Whiting Lake. He reported never seeing moose up the river, much to his surprise.

After carrying my mother’s few bags to the porch and replenishing the cooler with a fresh bag of ice she’d thoughtfully brought (there were only a couple of small pieces left from the original ice), I gave her a tour of the property (the first time she’d seen the bridge or stairs) while she told me about closing up the Taku cabin the week before. Then we ate quesadillas for lunch and spent the afternoon in the lodge chatting and working on the puzzle. That evening we ate an amazing butternut squash risotto dish my mother brought and exquisite “everything” pie featuring Taku blueberries and nagoonberries. After dinner we managed to finish the puzzle, struggling to the end with the dappled, painted leaves, and chatted until bed at 10:30. That night I slept better than I had all week, Cailey snuggled up as usual next to me; it rained all night.

In the morning I managed to beat my mom to the lodge with enough time to do the dishes and clean/lubricate the o-rings on the six filters. Then I opened up the shed and found a wren fluttering against the upriver window. He or she was gently captured with only a little effort and I released him in front of my mother who’d just stepped off the boardwalk. The little guy flew away, apparently with no harm. Those guys bob around the ground so much that he must have found his way through the crack in the door even though it was closed. We drank coffee on the porch with biscuits and looked out at another lovely overcast day. Little did we know what a long day’s work we had ahead of us!

The first thing I did was replace the trailer ratchet on the chain in the woods with the come-along, but the tide wasn’t for another couple of hours and would give us another foot up the beach, so we left that task and went to work on the flashing. My mother agreed with my strategy, so we set to work nailing the back of the flashing to the wall, spacing the short roofing nails at a distance that held the flashing flush to the wall (sometimes only a few inches apart). After nailing them in on Hermit Thrush, we experimented with bending the bottom part down to better shed the water; on the mountainside wall we bent it at a sharp 90 degree angle and hammered it against the top of the 2x8 to protect it from rain splatter, but on the other wall we just bent it at a gentle angle.

By that time it was after 11:00 and high tide, so we pulled the boat up as far as it would go and then began bringing it up by come-along. This turned out to be a very slow process, as there was only a six foot reach of cable and a lot of that was used taking up the slack in the line. Each time we reset, we had to tie a new loop in the line which made the painfully slow process all the more apparent. I sat in the woods cranking while my mother watched the boat and helped pull it the two or three times the boat moved a few inches for each length of six feet. Then she came back to where I was and helped release the line, pull out the cable again, and secure it to a new loop in the line. It looked like we were bringing it up about two feet per session, tediously slow. I did soon improve management of the come-along, though, and would already have the cable pulled out by the time my mother got there to stretch the line out and find where the next loop would need to be. By a little after noon I was worn out and badly in need of food, so we took a lunch break. The boat seemed hardly to have moved, still somewhere in the middle of the steep slope adjacent to the log. We ate quesadillas and drank beer, then decided to remove the engine before we continued moving the boat. I unhitched the chain from around the tree in the woods and we carried it, the come-along, and my new tripod to the boat. In order to line it up correctly above the engine, I removed the engine hood, surprised to find most of a package of noodles stowed against the back! As we cleaned it out, chuckling about how I’d run the engine all summer with a bunch of noodles in it, we saw that there was oatmeal and rice underneath all the pasta. The amazing thing is that I recognized all the stashed materials; two springs ago I’d opened up the lodge to find that a mouse had made its way inside and had stashed the same pasta, oatmeal, and rice in various places in the lodge. At first I thought he’d also carried a considerable amount (it must have been a hundred loads) all the way to the shed and under the engine hood, but Chris later pointed out that the engine had overwintered in the lodge that first winter and no doubt was filled up at that time. We scooped it out as well as we could and stashed it on the boat, though I think Cailey had eaten all of it by the time the day was over.

Once the hood was off we could arrange the tripod. After throwing the chain over the top of the 2x4s, we spread the tripod behind and to either side of the engine, making small adjustments until it looked to be directly over the engine loop. I was concerned about how to connect the come-along to the chain, as the shackle pin I had is too thick to fit through two links in the middle of the chain, but my mother solved that problem by tying a knot in the chain which worked beautifully. We clipped on the come-along and were ready to pull. Before we did that, though, I brought some cedar shims down and filled the gap between the bottom of the engine and the top of the transom (the jet engine’s bracket does not rest on the boat, which makes it difficult to bolt in). Once it was all shimmed up, I duct taped the shims together, we unscrewed the bolts with socket and wrench, released the clamps, and had the engine up in no time. With only a little extra maneuvering, we lowered the engine down onto a dolly and tied it securely in place.

The boat was blocking the best path up to the lodge, though, so we left it there and repurposed the chain and come-along back in the woods for the boat and removed all the remaining gear off the boat (battery, bilge pump system, etc.). We pulled the boat up another few feet that way until it was on the relatively flat meadow above the lodge, then jointly pulled the engine up to the shed. The only really awkward part was getting it along the edge of the porch where the gray currents are thick; my mother heroically fought them back with her body while I lugged the engine past.

After that we hung tarps around both outhouses (not yet securing them with line) and finished the flashing project at Harbor Seal. Back at the lodge, we stowed the lumber I had staged on the deck under the lodge for the winter, then decided to move the boat “two feet” before we took a much desired break. By that time we’d decided to try pushing it ourselves as a faster and more efficient method of moving it. We quickly got into a routine with my mother pushing a 2x4 under the stern and raising the boat up while I lifted and pulled on the bow, sliding it forward inches to a foot each time. Some of the time there was enough of a gap back there that she could insert the 2x4 without help, other times I had to go back and lift up one side. It was hard work, but so much faster than the come-along! By the time we quit we had moved it considerably farther than two feet, nosing the boat into the tall grass behind the fire pit. We finally did take a break, drinking an orange san pellegrino (Mom) and a diet coke (me). Then we manhandled the boat the rest of the way to the porch (moving one of the benches out of the way temporarily), heaved it up on top, scooted it across, then dropped it down on the other side before turning it over as gently as we could. We propped it up well with lumber scraps I’d left out, then quit for the day, well and truly worn out.

That night we ate the same amazing meal we’d had the night before. While it was cooking I cleaned and lubricated the rest of the water filters we’d taken off the cabins and got the motion sensor camera all ready to go for winter with fresh batteries and a strap extension so it could go around a larger tree. It had been windy in the morning, but we were thankful that it only rained briefly here and there while we worked. I’d wanted to set the halibut line that day so we could pull it before we left the next day, but we were so tired by the time we quit (around 5:00) and there was a brisk chop coming in off Gilbert Bay that I elected to forgo halibut fishing. I just wasn’t up to kayaking out to the boat and fighting myself across to Gilbert Bay at that point in the day! The wind did die down during dinner, though.

Mouse noodle stash in my engine!

Mom pushes the riverboat

All set for winter

The next morning I was up a little after eight o’clock and found my mother already up and about. We ate oatmeal and then I ran some errands around the cabins while my mom cleaned her cabin, carrying four blocks of wood to raise the wet box spring off the floor to help it dry, adding a short piece of flashing to the back wall of Hermit Thrush to protect the butt end of the 2x2 (though there was no lip of plywood sticking out there, which is why I hadn’t covered it already), putting the heater and propane tank in the cabin and locking it up, and setting up the motion sensor camera pointing upriver down the new wide trail.

Then I cleaned my cabin, tied the tarp around the cabin outhouse, tidied up the shed (a lot of items had accumulated outside it and I needed to rearrange the interior to fit the engine back in its corner), re-secured the tarps over the main lumber pile (which I’d disturbed to find a piece of hemlock siding for the window repair), began packing up the lodge, and finally put the gray water system away. This last is a most unpleasant task, which involves cutting away the filter bag through which all the gray water flows on its way into the tank (which was clogged enough to be full of water and hard to handle) and then dumping the remains of the barrel on the ground and removing the lower filter bag. I bagged up the filters and covered the ground where the barrel had dumped its contents with branches and moss and twigs to discourage Cailey from digging around there. At that point we were nearly ready to go with the exception of winterizing the rest of the water system, which involves removing the olive barrel from the creek, the filters from the lodge, draining the hoses and valves, and wrapping the valves in tinfoil. But we didn’t want to be without water until we knew we were going and we’d woken that morning to another northerly whipping down the Whiting enough to cause waves. We were again puzzled by the incongruity of the weather, as rain had poured all morning (which is usually indicative of a southeasterly system). We were finished with our chores by 10:00 and decided to wait on the water system until the weather lay down in case we would be overnighting again (neither of us wanted to see what Taku Inlet was like if there were northerly waves on the Whiting, quite rare in summer). We had a picnic lunch and rested for a while. All our gear was ready for departure.

Around noon the wind began laying down, so we hiked up to the olive barrel and struggled to wrangle it out of the creek. I’d noticed a few days before when using the unfiltered valves to fill buckets for scrubbing the bridge that the water coming out was deep brown and full of sediment (a testament to how well the filters work that the water came clear out of all the taps). When I finally pulled the barrel out far enough to remove the lid and look inside, I found a lot of fine sediment that was weighing it down. I scooped most of it out and stashed the barrel off the side of the creek. After that we drained all the valves, trying to be careful to raise the hoses and get all the water out, and wrapped tinfoil around all of them. I took the time to visit the two valves off the main line to try to drain any remaining water out of them as well in an effort to avoid having to replace any next spring. After that I finished packing inside and moved everything out to the porch while my mom swept and covered the windows in newspapers. We filled the wood box and, finally, removed the smoke stack and covered the opening with plywood (which took longer than usual as I dropped my first hammer and lost it somewhere under the lodge).

Finally we hauled everything down to the water, placing some of it on a tarp to help keep it dry. The water was calm right against the shoreline, but by the time I was 50 feet out I was feeling the rollers. It wasn’t the worst I’ve seen it there at Snettisham, but the swell was strong and significant and I knew from experience (well, as well as one can know without actually going out to check) that the port would be seeing heavy seas and there was no way we wanted to be in Stephen’s Passage. I bopped around the boat a little while making the decision; on the one hand, we were ready and wanted to head out and we really didn’t know what it was like out there. On the other hand, I had a pretty good idea we’d be coming back and that would mean reanchoring the boat, unloading gear, etc. I called it, kayaking back to shore to explain the situation. Since the tide was dropping, we left everything where it was and went back to the lodge to wait out the weather. I figured that 4:30 would be the latest we’d want to leave, as it usually takes two hours to get back in decent weather and that would give us an hour to be slow or deal with any situations before it got dark around 7:30. We had a beer on the porch, then retreated inside, ever watching the water. It did seem to diminish a little, but we called it at 4:00 and decided to stay, sending a SPOT message later to let the people at home know we hadn’t left. When we retrieved our gear, the wind was strong and swirly, vindicating our decision to stay. Right afterwards, however, the southeasterly swell did die down and was replaced by a light northerly again. Earlier we’d lit a candle and a kerosene lantern in the hopes that it was help warm the place up; now that we’d decided to stay and the light was dimming, we lit three of the propane lights as well as the pilots on the stove. We didn’t light a fire, but were comfortable all evening. We ate butternut squash soup, bread, biscuits, and chocolate for dinner. I’d already packed away my sheets, so I used a blanket and the comforter as a big sleeping bag and was comfortable all night. It rained intensely and was very cozy.

You can see the seas coming down the river

Soggy route to the water source

We settle back in for the night

Our plan was to get up early and try to head out before the winds kicked up again, if possible. I woke up at 6:00 and heard the eagles screaming, but stayed in bed until it was a little lighter at 6:30. I packed up everything in the lodge and put the kettle on, getting mom up when it was hot. We drank Russian tea (being out of coffee) and ate oatmeal for a quick breakfast on the porch (I refused to leave until I’d had another cup of Russian tea on the porch). Mom did the dishes while I shut down the propane and brought the boat in. It was far too shallow to motor anywhere near shore, so I wound up just jumping in with my waders and walking it in as far as I could.

I couldn’t help but notice a howling northerly coming down the river, though it left the shallow water at low tide undisturbed. I anchored the boat in the mud and we slogged our gear to the boat in many trips. We pulled anchor and drifted downriver while we got the boat ship shape, then took off enjoying a following sea out of the port. Around the corner in Stephen’s Passage we started to encounter smooth swells coming down, but nothing that slowed us down very much. We paused below Grave Point, then headed back out, passing a sea lion that leaped out of the water on the way. The seas built as we headed up toward Taku Inlet until they began to get ugly off the tip of Grand Island. I plunged between a couple of waves and took a lot of green water over the bow before I sat up on top of my folded seat so I could see over the top of the windshield. The day was fair and bright, and there were even patches of blue sky here or there, but the salt spray made it impossible to see in those conditions. We pushed on a little farther, but it was getting increasingly unpleasant, the wind whipped seas building to three feet and requiring concerted effort to maneuver safely and comfortably and avoid scooping too much water out of the ocean. Poor Cailey had moved down the narrow isle as far back in the boat as she could go and we moved her blankets back there for her to lay miserably on. My mom suggested we try making it to Doty Cove and finding some shelter there, but a few seconds in the trough of those waves on the way and I vetoed that idea. The fact that Doty Cove was full of whale blows should tell you that the attempt was very unpleasant!

Then my mom mentioned that my dad used to go up the south side of Taku Inlet and cross farther up, so we thought we’d give that a try. We turned and made our way across Stephen’s Passage and cruised up along shore at Circle Point, delighted to see about 75 sea lions including several large bulls on the rocks. A little farther along the shore I got a cell phone signal and we managed to call my dad to tell him what we were doing; he was very glad to hear from us. The going close to shore was a little slow, but fairly comfortable and we kept an eye out for sheltered areas to retreat into. We worked our way just past the cove where the power lines cross Taku Inlet, then headed out to see what it was like. It didn’t take long before I turned around. My dad had said a big southeasterly storm was coming in and that we should hurry home before it did, so we were hoping the northerly would die down. To that end, we retreated to the most shelter we could find (the beach Chris and I explored earlier this summer), but it wasn’t sheltered enough to protect the boat, which was banging on the rocks. Cailey got a couple of minutes ashore and then we pushed off and anchored about 15 feet off to wait. We ate cheese and crackers and waited about 40 minutes before decided that we should probably just call it off. It was so deceptive looking at it from that perspective—it really didn’t look bad out there at all. When we finally pulled anchor I insisted on giving it one more try, if only to stop myself mulling all night over how I might have made it. At first, it was promising. For maybe 25 feet at a time we could head straight across the inlet toward Bishop Point before we’d have to turn and face the larger set of oncoming waves. I felt we were making decent progress and would be able to eek our way across eventually. But about ¼ mile from shore we got into the teeth of the wind, which whipped over our heads and blew the seas into tight three and possibly four footers that there was no escape from. Although we could manage them, we had to face every one of them, which meant that we could make no progress across the inlet. Not only that, but riding up the wild seas and smashing into the next on was causing a near constant slosh of water onto my face (necessarily peering above the streaming windshield) so that I couldn’t see anything significant most of the time anyway. Although the day was dry, my backpack got wet and I discovered that the crotch and thigh areas of my mustang suit are apparently not waterproof. Trying to ride the trough in that situation was out of the question.

And so we turned back to Taku Harbor for the night, something I’ve long said I could do if I ever needed to. We hadn’t seen any boats in there on the way up and it was a Sunday night in late September, so we hoped the cabin would be free. On the way down we called my dad again to let him know our plan; he said then that the weather man had told him that the northerly might not die down even when the southeasterly hit. I tried to call Chris without success but did manage to send off a quick text. We also saw a boat at Point Arden come across the inlet in our direction before turning south and following us into Taku Harbor. It was a great relief to get beyond Grave Point and into the calm. We tied up at the end of the dock and filled a harbor cart with gear and my mother drug it all the way to the cabin (which is not far from the dock as the crow flies, but is a somewhat longer walk down the dock, up the ramp, and back to the cabin along a gravel trail). We cautiously dropped our gear off, then went to look for wood—me to make spoons for dinner (we only had a plastic fork and my leatherman for utensils) and my mother to gather wood for the fire. We wound up sitting on the bench outside the cabin whittling; my red alder spoons struggled into clunky existence while my mother’s chop sticks (ramen was on the menu) took quick and effective shape. We broke for a cup of jasmine tea, regrettably unsweetened. Quite luckily for this trip, I was bringing back the camping gear I’d packed for my potential overnight trip up the river or to Gilbert Creek, which meant I had a camp stove, pot, and cup. For my mother we salvaged a slightly moldy plastic mug we found in the cabin, amply rinsed and washed with my camp soap. We were also lucky in that I was bringing back extra food from the cabin, so we had tea, ramen, chips, soup, and lots of snacks on top of the dehydrated food from my boat emergency kit.

While we were finishing our bitter tea (I tried to sweeten it with pear juice from a can of pears, unsuccessfully), the promised storm began to blow into Taku Harbor. My mom and I were both surprised to see that it blew so directly inside the harbor, having both assumed it was sheltered from both the north and the south. We watched the waves build and begin to jostle the Ronquil, whose stern was facing the wind. I considered whether to turn it around to face the wind or move it inside the float where the other boat was, protected from the wind entirely by the T of the floating ramp. I didn’t feel much like moving the boat and it seemed to be riding pretty well there.

That lasted about ten minutes. The wind built swiftly until the trees were bent sideways and swells were rocking the boat and splashing over the transom. It happened so suddenly and dramatically that by the time I put my jacket on, I ran down to the boat in my haste to save it from the ferocity of the storm. The wind practically buffeted me off the ramp on the way down and the boat was jockeying to and fro. I threw on my rain pants which I’d left in the glove box and helped my mom untie the lines, an awkward task as the wind pulled the boat from the dock and waves splashed over the back. My mom wound up holding the line on the dock as I puttered forward, following me along until I pulled back close enough for her to throw the line on board. While Cailey nervously rocketed around the dock, I brought the boat inside the float and tied up right inside the floating connection to the ramp. It was dead calm in there (on the water anyway) but we tied extra lines on (making use of the second 50’ line on the bow), adjusted the fenders, and made sure that everything was covered by both tarps and secure from the wind.

Back at the cabin we enjoyed security from the now-raging storm. The gentleman who owned the other boat had come out to help us on the dock, saying that he was going to come get us about the boat if we hadn’t come when we did, and mentioned that the storm was a gale. I don’t think I’ve ever been out of Juneau in such a storm. The young cottonwoods outside the cabin bent sideways in the wind, gusts whitened the water across the harbor, and even little whirlwinds of salt spray sprung up. My mother tried to get the diesel stove to work with what remnants of fuel were in the tank, but never succeeded. The small emergency wood stove had some kindling inside and my mom gathered a bunch of sticks and twigs to supplement that, but everything was absolutely soaking wet from a day and two nights of heavy rain. My mom worked valiantly all night burning twigs, cardboard, and paper in an effort to warm the cabin a little and perhaps dry a few items of important clothing, but it never really got going, not even with a few of my special egg carton/wax fire starters, though I’m sure it did take the chill off and help dry some of the clothing. My backpack had gotten very wet with the nonstop saltwater sloshing over the side of the boat on our last attempt, so I was glad that it dried out a little close to the stove.

All in all, though, it was quite cozy. We tried the two cold water dehydrated entrees from my emergency pack and decided that the couscous left much to be desired (it didn’t taste like much except bland garlic and peppers) but the potato salad (which had a lot of cheese in it) was tolerable. The best part of dinner was the package of ramen that we split and the half a glass each of wine we managed to squeeze from two nearly empty bladders. We had an excess of food available, but I did wish that I’d brought the rest of the Russian tea and another package of ramen!

So we were lucky to have food and the ability to cook, but it didn’t stop there. We were to spend the night, and Cailey couldn’t keep us both warm! But with my camping gear I had a sleeping bag and we had two remarkably dry yellow blankets from Snettisham I was bringing back to town to launder. All this we’d packed up to the cabin in the cart. In sorting through my backpack and perusing the many items stashed there for emergencies, I pulled out my fancy bivy sac, the superior alternative to the emergency blanket, made of similar material but shaped like a sleeping bag. Ever adventurous, my mom chose to try it and left me my sleeping bag. There was no need to determine who got my camping pad, as the cabin was equipped with four enormous, soft foam pads which we put together in a long row on the bottom bunk (as big as a couple of king sized beds). I checked the boat again before it was fully dark and found it weathering the storm with serenity on the small square of calm water inside the float. The gear under the tarp was nice and dry and I grabbed my long underwear to sleep in and a magazine for my mom to read. Shortly thereafter, my mother went to use the outhouse at dusk and came back to tell me about an encounter with a small owl. He had flown into the tree in front of the outhouse and looked at her curiously for some time, making little noises. He flew away, only to return to a tree behind the outhouse and observe my mother again. A rare encounter!

We turned in rather early, Cailey next to me on her fleece jacket and the drier of her two boat blankets.

We discovered two issues with using the bivy sac as a makeshift sleeping bag. For one thing, it is very noisy! This is easily enough overcome, but the other issue would give me pause about trying this again without a good reason. Sometime in the night my mother discovered that there was a small pool of water in the bottom of the sack. More water dripped on her when she rearranged the bag around her shoulders. Unlike conventional sleeping bags, those sacs are apparently waterproof and moisture was condensing inside with no escape! Nevertheless, we slept well enough given the circumstances. Early in the morning an animal was scampering vigorously across the roof repeatedly until I was forced to get up, if only to scare him off. I didn’t see any sign of him, but I was able to return to sleep afterwards.

Gear on the porch, ready for loading	Slogging through a low tide departure	Getting dressed and ship shape
Those seas don't look bad so far	Drinking tea and whittling at Taku Harbor	My dog turned brindle
This does not capture the intensity of the storm!	Storm churned harbor	Ramen!
Ramen!	Our gear trying to dry	A beautiful ride home across the inlet

Pulling the Ronquil for the winter (a few days later)