Category: Life in Alaska

Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+20)

Banalities & Journaling / Fishing Report

Well, we went out fishing this morning.

In a way, I’m surprised I went along. A part of me wanted to just tell Arthur to go ahead and go out on his own – I’m not sure that he would have, but it seems possible.

In the end, some weird welling-up of a vague, Confucian-like sense of obligation made me agree to go. The Koreans call it 효 [hyo: 孝], which is translated as “filial piety.” I don’t know where I came by it – I suppose through some kind of cultural osmosis, having lived there all those years.

We had a serious talk about trying to communicate better, first, before going out – but the talk itself was fraught with the kind of issues that have been bothering me. He denies not paying attention, if that makes any sense. He doesn’t recall ever having used sarcasm inappropriately or dismissing my concerns. To conclude: “Anyway. Whatever.”

But we went out. It went better than last time, at least. He was making a sincere effort, within the constraints of his personality. I had told him quite explicitly, I’m not angry that he’s not showing gratitude – he does, in fact, show gratitude and generosity with me regularly. But that isn’t the same as giving a damn about what I have to say, or bothering to pay attention to find out what I’m trying to communicate.

Well, we went over to San Ignacio and ran into Art’s friend and sometime fishing companion, Jeff (in another boat, trolling the other way). We had a shouted conversation with him, boat to boat. And after a while, roughly at the southeast corner of San Ignacio Island, we caught exactly one (1) fish. So we’re not skunked for the season.

There’s some terrible irony – not to say outright tragedy – that “going fishing” is the single most stressful, dreaded aspect of my life here in Alaska. For most people, including Arthur, going fishing is fun, if not the actual goal of life. I’ve always been a bit neutral with respect to the practice of going fishing – it’s never been a strong pleasure for me. But there was a time when I did enjoy going out in the boat. I enjoy boating around, I enjoy the scenery, I enjoy being out “in the world.” But at this point, the emotional and interactive aspects of the venture, functioning in my role as Arthur’s wheelman and protege, overwhelm any pleasure I could take from it.

Actually, I sometimes very much wonder what exactly Arthur finds so fulfilling about going fishing. He doesn’t really seem, to the outside observer, to be enjoying himself. His mood tends to vacillate between long stretches of transparent boredom and brief explosions of frustration and anger when things aren’t going his way – which seems like so much of the time, these days.

I believe Arthur doesn’t actually enjoy the act of fishing, but rather, he yearns for some Platonic “state of having caught fish.” Which is to say, he enjoys it only after the fact, and only if the venture has been successful. And he’s not generous with his definition of success – today, for example, was not in any way successful.

I once said that my feeling toward fishing is similar to my feeling toward gambling: it seems like putting one’s mood in hands of random fate, which is not quite the way to achieve any kind of consistent happiness. On Arthur’s approach, that is certainly true.

Year-to-date totals:

  • Coho: 1
  • Kings: 0
  • Halibut: 0
  • Other: 0
  • Too-small fish sent home to mama: 10
  • Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1

Caveat: Tree #897

A Daily Tree / Food & Drink / My Garden / My Photos

This tree served as a backdrop for this portrait of my green chili, which I harvested from my greenhouse this morning.
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I installed the green chili in a batch of my fish curry, which, since Arthur considers it acceptable despite being called “curry,” I have been making now and then, as it’s currently my favorite of the dishes that I make.

picture[daily log: walking, 2.5km; fishcurrying, 1hr]

Caveat: Tree #892

A Daily Tree / My Garden / My Photos

This tree is in front of a much older tree.
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This is a hot red pepper flower in my greenhouse. Maybe I will grow a hot red pepper.
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picture[daily log: walking, 4km; drilling/pounding/walking-back-and-forth-carrying, 5hr]

Caveat: GDC Surgery

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Alaska / My Photos

I performed surgery on my RV today. I removed a failing organ from it – namely, the roll-up canopy that comes out over the passenger side.

It was failing because one aluminum support strut had broken, and one of the extending arms was weirdly bent, too. It seemed unrepairable, at least given the tools and talents I would be able to bring to bear to it, so I decided to just remove it.

It was very difficult to remove. Several of the screws that I needed to remove were stripped out, and wouldn’t come out. I drilled them out of the aluminum. Anyway, it finally all came apart.

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It was an actual hot day today – hot by Rockpit standards, anyway: almost 80° F. So I laid out my giant white tarp to dry. I thus increased the planet’s albedo by an infinitesimal amount, doing my part to fight global warming.

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Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+19)

Banalities & Journaling / Fishing Report

Still no luck catching fish.

We left at just before 7 AM. The morning was extremely foggy. We motored out of the inlet at half-speed, because visibility was probably no more than about 200 yards. We gamely attempted to start trolling along the west side of Cemetery Island, just north of the north entrance to Port Saint Nicholas Inlet. I don’t know why Arthur has fixated on that location, these days. There have been a lot of commercial boats outside the entrance, but I am wondering if they are there simply because they’re being restricted there by the authorities. Certainly despite the number of boats we’ve seen there, I’ve not once, so far, seen much activity on the rear decks hauling in lines or fish.

We trolled past the north entrance, southward along the Coronados Islands, and past the south entrance, and down into Doyle Bay, where the Kelp Farm is. The sun finally started coming out, there. When the fog lifted at the entrance to Doyle Bay, Sunnahae Mountain was revealed.

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We kept trolling all the way to Caldera bay, to the southwest. We caught some tiny sea bass. Nothing else.

Giving up, we fished for halibut under bright sun and in calm waters, at Caldera. We pulled up some bottom fish, but they too were small, and we sent them back.

We headed to the fuel dock, refueled the boat, and were home at around 12:30 pm. It was our longest outing so far, but no more fruitful, for all that.

Meanwhile, I have become increasingly unhappy and uncomfortable in the boat with Arthur. He is very, very difficult to communicate with: both at the level of “hearing” and at the level of “listening.”

At the level of “hearing” – well, we all know he has some hearing loss. I basically always must repeat myself several times, with any kind of statement longer than a simple “Yes,” “No,” or “Okay.” This in itself is exhausting and frustrating.

But on top of this, he insists on sticking his audiobooks (playing loudly on earbuds connected to his iPod) in his ears at any idle moment. So any kind of talk where I initiate has to be started with getting his attention, conveying that it’s important, and then waiting for him to fiddle with the “pause” on his iPod (a fairly drawn out procedure, sometimes). So I end up deciding very little is really that important to say. And I just sit in silence, and have a little mantra, now, “Only speak when spoken to….”

But even when he asks me a direct question, half the time he still fails to turn off his iPod, which means he can’t hear my answer, and it requires multiple repetitions, followed by him finally realizing he could maybe turn off the iPod, and my repeating it yet again.

This is all just about the “hearing” part.

But he’s a poor “listener” too. He often responds to my efforts at communication with sarcasm, strange non-sequitur humor, or even a condescending tone of “Of course,” followed by a repetition of what I’d just said as if it was his own idea.

Add to this the fact that with our poor results, he gets grumpy and frustrated and well… we all know how that can go.

I know there are cognitive issues here. I try to be patient. But I’m imperfect, and it’s getting more and more difficult.

I really don’t want to go out fishing with him anymore. It’s not fun. It’s stressful and actually lonely, punctuated with moments of stressful and comically incommunicative shouting. It’s as if I’m doing it alone, for all there’s any kind of companionship or friendship or camaraderie.

Year-to-date totals:

  • Coho: 0
  • Kings: 0
  • Halibut: 0
  • Other: 0
  • Too-small fish sent home to mama: 8
  • Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1

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Caveat: Tree #888

A Daily Tree / My Garden / My Photos

This tree a sugar maple tree – about 2 days old. I had mentioned a month or so ago that I had bought some seeds for exotic trees that I was going to try to germinate and grow and eventually plant on lot 73. Well, out of the 4 little planters, this one is the only one, so far, to germinate: a little baby maple tree.
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picture[daily log: walking, 4.5km; retailing, 6.5hr]

Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+18)

Banalities & Journaling / Fishing Report / My Photos

We went where fish weren’t. Evidently.

We gave it a try, though. And unlike the previous two outings, nothing went wrong with our equipment. So I view it as having been a positive outcome, relative to recent experiences.

The downriggers worked – both the old one (which I repaired a total of 3 times) and the new one we bought this week (which we had to wire a new plug for and add a new mount for). They are quite different, the old one is a Cannon brand, the new one is a Scotty brand. Moving from one to the other gave Art’s brain quite a workout, but we managed without any major issues, and only bonked the bottom once with a weight.

We caught a couple of too-small fish, so we threw them back. No salmon though. We went up to an area at the north end of San Fernando Island, along the San Christoval Channel, called Palisade. After there weren’t any fish there, we decided to troll along Cemetery Island and in through the North Entrance to Port Saint Nicholas, just southeast of Craig – in view of the town. There were a lot of commercial trollers operating in the area. But still no fish.

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Year-to-date totals:

  • Coho: 0
  • Kings: 0
  • Halibut: 0
  • Other: 0
  • Too-small fish sent home to mama: 3
  • Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1

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Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+17)

Banalities & Journaling / Fishing Report

We tried going out fishing again today. It was an ill-fated venture. Because we are still having downrigger problems.

Anyway, we only started with one working downrigger, this time. The other is missing cable (line), and we have to purchase replacement line and re-spool it. This time, we got the weight and line down in the water at depth, and were trolling, but when we went to pull it up, once again, the “up” wasn’t working.

Very frustrating.

At least we had brought the new halibut poles and reels. So we put in a few hours hoping for halibut, at Caldera Bay. A few nibbles, and some orange-colored rockfish that we threw back, but no halibut.

Very sad.

Once again, hearts heavy, we returned home.

Once again, I put in a few hours trying to figure out what it was that I don’t get about downriggers, their motors, their switches, their little circuit boards inside. Perhaps the motor is just “tired.” That’s how it seems. Like, it has enough umph to let the cable out, but not enough to pull it back in with a weight attached.

But then I discovered something. Perhaps I’m just hallucinating, out of some misplaced hope that I can get it fixed, but it seemed to me that when I reversed the polarity on the connection from the circuit board to the motor, the motor’s “up” seemed more energetic. Yesterday (or, rather, day-before-yesterday) I had learned that polarity was in fact something that was important on the inputs to the circuit board, and  today, I wonder if what I learned is that polarity also matters on the outputs – the connection to the actual motor.

The reason why this is surprising is that Art has been quite insistent, all along, that polarity shouldn’t matter with an electric motor. That might be true for old style electric motors, but I’ve begun to wonder if his knowledge is out-of-date. Anyway, I got a lot more “pull” out of the “up” direction on the downrigger, by switching the polarity on the outputs to the motor. So maybe that’s been the issue? Art had taken apart the motors back before we launched the boat, and I wonder if maybe he switched things up when he put them back together – based on his assumption that polarity didn’t matter.

I told Arthur that I can foresee two distinct possibilities as outcomes for my third effort at downrigger repair: 1) “third time’s the charm,” and things work great; 2) “three strikes, you’re out,” and we give up and buy new downriggers.

We shall see. Because of the weather, and upcoming scheduled time at work for me, we probably won’t get another chance to test things out on the water until maybe Friday or Saturday.

And thus the fish are safe, for now.

Year-to-date totals:

  • Coho: 0
  • Kings: 0
  • Halibut: 0
  • Other: 0
  • Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1

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Caveat: Fishing Report #(n+16)

Banalities & Journaling / Fishing Report

We got up bright and early to go out fishing today. After all the various delays and problems we had, the weather seemed auspicious and we wanted to give it a try.

We went out to Caldera Bay, only to find that the downriggers would go down, but not up. Both of them. Despite the fact that I’d tested them before departure, and had thought I’d solved the electrical problems yesterday morning.

Having the downriggers already partly down and then not having them go up is a bit of a problem. You have to turn the wheels manually, very slowly, pulling up on the weights (8 lb) on the ends of the lines. Arthur was doing that on the port side downrigger, and I was on the other side messing with the switch and trying to see why it would go down but not up. I made the mistake of messing with the “clutch” – a screw-in clamp on the side of the mechanism. This was because I was thinking maybe the wheel was screwed in too tight and so friction was combining with gravity to make it too hard for the motor to do “up” while it still could do “down.” Well, that may have been the case, but anyway I loosened the clutch just a bit too much, and suddenly the wheel was spinning and gravity was pulling the weight and the line out fast. I tried to stop it, and managed to lose my grip entirely, and just like that, the whole length of line was out and the wire snapped, and the weight was lost on the bottom of Caldera Bay.

Meanwhile, Art got the other one up, but the motor remained unable to do “up” and so we gave up on trolling. We thought: well, we could try for some halibut – Caldera is a place where we’ve had luck with halibut, before. But then we realized that Art had brought along the old halibut rods and reels – despite the fact that they both had some major problems and in fact, Alan (Art’s brother, my other uncle) had bought us new halibut rods and reels last fall. They were sitting in the boathouse. We should have brought those, right? But we hadn’t.

We sat in the sunshine and discussed looking at the scenery.

“Looks about the same as it did last year.”

“Yep.”

We decided to go back home. We tied up at the dock again by 8:30 AM.

I spent the rest of the day wrestling with downrigger electrical problems.

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I feel, once again, that I’ve solved things. But! I’m not very confident, given I felt the same way yesterday at this time. So… looks like some stormy weather is coming through tonight, but Sunday might be nice. Tentatively, we’ll try again on Sunday. We will only have one downrigger though, even if the electrical problem is truly solved – because we don’t have any replacement downrigger line. Unless I drive into town tomorrow and shop for some. I might.

It was a trial run, I guess. On a positive side, the boat remains unsunk and no lives were lost.

Year-to-date totals:

  • Coho: 0
  • Kings: 0
  • Halibut: 0
  • Other: 0
  • Downrigger weights left on the bottom of the sea: 1

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Caveat: Tree #869

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / My Garden / My Photos

This tree is a dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) – as is its near twin beside it.
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I am fond of these trees – they were abundant in my neighborhood in Goyang City, South Korea, where they’re planted all over as ornamentals. They are strange trees – they closely resemble the redwoods I grew up among in northern California (although smaller), but they like to lose all their needles in winter, like deciduous trees.

Here are some dawn redwoods in Ilsan, Korea, in the snow. I took this picture in January, 2017.
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I ordered these seedlings as an experiment to see if a mail-order tree could survive the unusually long shipment time to this island. I think it might work out – they arrived in a damaged shipping tube, but were seemingly intact and healthy when I opened it up. If they survive, I might buy some other exotics to plant around my lot. I like trees – you might never have guessed that, right?

Incidentally, the company I bought these seedlings from (Jonsteen Company) was founded by a guy I went to high school with, and the company is headquartered in Humboldt County, where I grew up. Jon and I graduated in the same class. He was a very popular guy, and a musician, and an athlete – all things I wasn’t, in high school. But he was always kind to me. Once he let me drive his corvette.

picture[daily log: walking, 1.5km]

Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #9

Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / Working at the Gift Shop

I haven’t posted one of these in quite a while. Actually the frame shop hasn’t been that busy, but I have done a few in the past month.

Mostly I’ve been working on a “vendor inventory list” – transferring knowledge in an old, somewhat broken-down filing cabinet into an excel spreadsheet.

Here are some frames. Some of these frames are being handmade here on Prince of Wales Island. That’s kind of cool.

This was a repair.
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I like this bird.
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A teacher was retiring.
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The next five are locally-made frames.
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The mat cutting in this one was the most challenging I’ve done, so far.
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There were also three large frames that I forgot to take pictures of, because they got picked up right as I finished them. They were large frames for very nice, professional paintings, for the hotel that the Shaan-Seet (local Haida Tribe’s corporation) run.

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Caveat: Boat Afloat

Banalities & Journaling / Life in Alaska / My Photos

Finally, much later than originally intended, we have managed to get the boat launched and tied up at the dock.
We need a fairly high tide to launch the boat – that has been one impediment, as most of the super high tides have been in the middle of the night, this past month. But this morning, at 4 AM, we had a +11 foot tide. 4 AM might sound like the middle of the night, but at this time of year, it’s already getting light – sunrise is around 4:30. It was drizzly, but the tide was high at 3:55 this morning when I took this picture.
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So we successfully lowered the boat into the water and floated it around and tied it to the dock. We had some issues with starting the motors, but finally got them running too. Unfortunately, there’s an electrical problem with the downriggers, such that there will still be no fishing happening. We need to get and wire in new connectors for both the downriggers. My evaluation is that it’s just corrosion on the connectors that is causing the issues, but Arthur’s generalized and wide-angle pessimism seems to feel that there are other things to worry about.
Here is the boat down at the dock, as seen at 5:30 AM. We were running the big motor for a while to make sure the batteries are charged up properly – now that it’s out in the water, the bilge-pump needs to work.
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Caveat: Tree #862

A Daily Tree / My Garden / My Photos

This tree (the small alder on the left fairly far back) saw me plant a bunch of raspberry plantlets that I got from my boss Wayne who was weeding and thinning his raspberry patch. I was thinking that if they establish themselves here, on the berm of the flat area that’s over the septic field on lot 73 (left side of photo), I’ll have a nice raspberry patch in future years.
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Meanwhile, in my greenhouse, my single healthiest plant right now is a pepper plant I bought at discount in town because it was looking decrepit. And now it’s flourishing and has a charming little 3/4″ green pepper growing on it.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3km]

Caveat: Tree #851

A Daily Tree / My Photos / Treehouse

This tree saw that I have attached a sail to my treehouse. Nah – just kidding. It’s a temporary tarp roof, because it was sprinkling rain while I was working on it, but it was partly sunny today, too. I made good progress.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3.5km; banging and sawing, 8hr]

Caveat: Tree #843

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / My Garden / My Photos

This tree (well, group of trees) is merely a group of seeds in a baggie. I purchased some exotic tree “seed kits” to try to grow here. It’s too difficult and expensive to get saplings delivered, so I thought trying to grow a few interesting trees from seeds was the best, inexpensive option. The seed kits include the seeds, a little mini greenhouse thing, some specialized soil and such, and detailed instructions. I got 2 coast redwood trees and 2 eastern maple trees. The seeds in the picture are redwood trees. We’ll see if I can grow actual trees.
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We had some cessation to the rain, so I worked outside on my treehouse while Art got reoriented to life-at-Rockpit.
picture[daily log: walking, 2km; banging and sawing, 6hr]

Caveat: Tree #837

A Daily Tree / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / My Garden / My Photos

This tree oversaw the greening of a huckleberry bush.
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Meanwhile, in my garden, there was some critter that had been breaking into the greenhouse at night and eating all my newly-planted radish seeds. So I borrowed a couple of Art’s mousetraps and set them in the planters. And lo, this morning, a very fat-looking dead mouse was caught in one of the traps.
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Meanwhile, what with it raining today, I went down a kind of rabbit-hole on my server stuff. I built an email server. I’m not sure it will really work, or even prove useful. But it might – a lot of the problems I’ve run into with developing my own websites has been a lack of an email system that I fully control. So maybe it will work out.
picture[daily log: walking, 2km]

Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #8

Banalities & Journaling / Working at the Gift Shop

Over the last two weeks I made some frames at the frame shop.
These anime or manga characters (including baby Yoda at the bottom) were drawn by a local resident’s teenage son, and he had them framed.
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This fingerprint consists of biblical quotes.
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This print is by Southeast Alaska’s most famous artist (possibly), Rie Muñoz of Juneau. This artwork was for sale in our store, hanging on the wall since the early 2000’s. I had actually considered it my favorite of all the Muñoz prints in the store, so I’m slightly sad to see it go – though I doubt I’d have bought it myself, at $190.
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This is the frame that caused me so much grief last week. I broke the glass, and damaged the artwork (slightly). You can see the damage in the lower right – it’s a crease across the artist’s signature. I actually used an iron to try to work out the crease – but it’s still there. We gave a discount to the customer, who apparently said he appreciated our honesty with respect to the issue. I like the picture, though. It’s a bar in New Orleans, apparently where the famous poet Charles Bukowski used to hang out in the 50’s when he was in New Orleans. The painting is by a friend of the local resident here who had this frame made.
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This frame is for my boss Jan. In fact, that man in the 1800’s-era photo is an ancestor of her husband, Richard’s.
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This last one is a sale announcement for the month of May, made with “spare parts” lying around the frame shop and utilizing some “practice” mats I did. We’ve placed it in the front window of the store.
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Caveat: Tree #823

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / My Photos / Treehouse

This tree faces a future of sticking up through the deck of my treehouse. I’ve decided to keep it and work around it, rather than lop it off.
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The non-temporary treehouse deck is beginning to take shape – the lighter-colored plywood at right will be the permanent subfloor.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3km; banging and sawing and lifting and carrying, 6hr]

Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #7

Banalities & Journaling / Working at the Gift Shop

Over the last two weeks, I did a few picture frames at the gift shop.
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If that last one looks familiar, well… I did the exact same image for another person, before. It’s the original 1922 Craig City townsite plan and survey. I guess there’s a nice, high-quality image available online, and people are getting poster-sized prints and having them framed. It’s the sort thing I could see doing myself. But I guess there’s no need, since others are doing it.
Beside making frames, I was also fairly busy at the gift shop working on making an “inventory of vendors.” It started out with realizing that the filing cabinet used to store vendor information was broken, so… I spent time repairing the filing cabinet first, so I could use it to organize the folders of the vendor information. I’m going to make a spreadsheet, I hope.
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Caveat: Tree #819

A Daily Tree / My Photos / Treehouse

This tree saw me resume work on my treehouse construction project. I’m building an actual stairway (left side) up to the treehouse, so that I no longer have to use a ladder. This will make subsequent construction activity much easier.
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picture[daily log: walking, 3km; banging and sawing, 7hr]

Caveat: Tree #807

A Daily Tree / Banalities & Journaling / My Garden / My Photos

This tree saw the chilly dawn.
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I ended up running into town for work for the morning – since Jan is traveling and out of town, I was the only person that Adrienne could call for backup.
The sun came out today – not the whole day, but a good part of it. My greenhouse got warm. And lo, a lettuce sprouted (lower left, below).
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picture[daily log: walking, 3.5km; retailing, 2hr]

Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #6

Banalities & Journaling / Working at the Gift Shop

I only completed two frames for customers this week. I ended up busy with some other stuff.
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I spent most of Wednesday helping the store’s owner, Wayne, repair the ancient and broken safe in the back office. That was pretty interesting. I learned a new skill.
We installed an electronic keypad opener for the safe to replace the old tumbler.
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I’m going to keep the old, broken tumbler as a souvenir. Maybe install it on a hapless tree as a bit of conceptual art.
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Caveat: Frame Shop Journal #5

Banalities & Journaling / Working at the Gift Shop

It was a slow week at the frame shop. I actually only made one frame for a paying customer – it was a repair job, at that, and not a new frame at all. The customer was very pleased, though, because in taking apart the frame, I found a bunch of “long lost” family baby pics stashed behind the picture shown and sealed into the frame.
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Sometimes the frame shop is slow not due to lack of customers, but because we rely on our supplier to send us the pre-cut frames ready to assemble for orders we’ve requested, and sometimes those deliveries are slow – that’s life on an Alaskan island for you.
To use up some time during my frame shop hours, I focused on improving my mat-cutting skills. I got adventurous, and tried some circles (using a special, very finicky tool) and some “lines” in box shape around the cut area of the mat (I’m not sure what these lines are formally called, but they’re popular on high-end matting styles).
So I did a bunch of mat cuts and then dropped random objects – a company brochure, a cartoon cat I quickly sketched – into them to give them focus.
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