Seward in August

Some photos I've take recently. Tom came home briefly, bringing the jitney in. This photo was taken about about nine or nine thirty at night.


Earlier that same day a cruise ship left port. Notice the fireweed? The story goes that when the fireweed is done blooming, two weeks later it will snow.




Today the silver salmon must be jumping right off this side of the bay because the fishing boats moved over here, at the end of our street. In the distance are the lights of a tender coming in from Prince William Sound with pink salmon for the cannery.

Gone Fishing

Here's the F/V Dolly B towing her jitney and skiff out of the harbor and in the second picture you can see the boats as a tiny spec. They are on their way to Nuka Bay. It's about an 8 hour run and fishing there opens at 6am tomorrow morning. Please wish them safe travels and successful fishing. This trip is for Wild Alaskan Red Salmon.

So, what this really means is that I am free!!!! Yayyyy!

I've been working my day job and then working on either the property (clearing & cleaning) or the boats (endless maintenance) afternoons and early evenings, and in between caring for the baby bunnies Tom rescued (long story - coming soon). No quilting. I want to finish my funky quilt and now Sarah has posted a design that I like and want to try too... And my pal Margie has found a great plugin for WordPress photo management and it looks both incredibly learning intensive but everything and more that I've been looking for!

F/V Melissa B

The Melissa B has been in the driveway for renovations. She gets a lot of looks from passers by! She was originally owned by Perry Buchanan and he taught his sons, Steve & Tom to fish on her. She's seen a lot of modifications over the years.

Eventually Steve bought a boat, the F/V Marathon, and Perry commissioned a new boat, the F/V Dolly B, and Tom bought the boat and renamed her to his daughters' name - Melissa. Tom fished the boat for many years, and taught his son Thomas and daughter Melissa to fish on her.

In 1998 Perry retired from fishing, Tom bought the Dolly B, and his son owns the Melissa B. Here they are working on her today.

Commercial Fishing and the Cabana Family

This season has been a difficult one so far and every day I dread more bad news. Last night Tom called and said that they were coming in because the skiff (with it's brand new thousands of $$ outboard) had been swamped. In salt water. It was less than 36 hours old, and all the breakdowns that lead up to it's unexpected purchase...well I won't bore you with the depressing details.

In the middle of these miserable events, my heart was gladdened by the people who are our biggest competitors on the water - the Cabana family. Fishing is very competitive. I've been side by side with their boats, fighting for the fish, trying to out catch them and they try and beat us. That's the nature of this work. But the second that they saw Tom's skiff underwater they cut throttle, disconnected lines and came racing over to help. That is the Alaskan way and their family is one I admire.

Mending the Seine

Here's Tom and crew David and James, mending the jitney seine on Sunday afternoon. We loaded the seine onto the jitney first thing this morning (no pics, I was too busy keeping the seine straight and free from snags) and then mended the net after that. (When we got to a bigger hole I dropped my part of the web and grabbed my camera for a few shots.) We use the powerblock on the big boat (the big boat is the F/V Dolly B) to lift the seine high enough to see holes, and then Tom mends as we go through the net. Then we put the seine back onto the jitney and checked her over for tomorrow's opener. The jitney is tied up to the big boat, just on the other side.

On the far side of the harbor is the cruise ship dock, with a ship in for the day. Seward usually only gets one cruise ship at a time, but there are rare days when there are two of them tied up, side by side, and they just dwarf the entire harbor.

This year I'll be working a desk job while the guys and boats are out fishing. I'm pretty sure I am going to miss being in on the action. It's very hard work, but it's wonderful to work outside, on the water. On the other hand, they are stuck on the boat while I have my sewing machine set up in the living room - happily sewing and quilting and watching PBS specials on TV.

Seine

The net is called the "seine" on a boat that is a seiner. Here is the jitney's seine, in the back of Tom's truck. After working on the skiff outboard all morning, launching the jitney, filling her tanks, standing up the mast and then dealing with my broken down car, he and I loaded the seine from the warehouse (where it is stored for the winter) to his truck. I am so tired that I can't believe that I can type, and I didn't do a quarter of the work he did! Tomorrow we will load the seine onto the jitney and mend it. I'll try and get a photo for you.

The pretty house in the background is a B & B on our street, and that's the bay that Tom will be fishing in come Monday morning at 6am. Please wish him luck for a good fishing season.

NQR stands for Not Quilting Related

I've been a busy gal since coming back from Portland Quilt Market! The boats still need work & maintenance and that is first priority in our lives. So, it's been the usual routine of scrubbing the fish hold, mending nets, launching skiffs and stocking the big boat with groceries and supplies.

The jitney is in the driveway (what a sight!) so that we can repair hydraulic lines, the ram for the power block and the hatch covers.

And then there is my pal Vanta's new bookstore! When I haven't been working on boats I've been at Vanta's store, helping with inventory and painting the interior and exterior of the business. She's going to call it Cover To Cover (isn't that cute?) and she hopes to be open for business in the next few weeks in downtown Seward, Alaska.

All this is in addition to my "day job" - the one that pays the travel bills and fabric expenses - lol! I hope your spring & early summer are just as much fun or more :)

Fishing Season

It's that time of year again. I've been on the boat, which is dry docked right now, cleaning and making her ready for another fishing season.

Here's an older picture of me, when I worked on the boat as crew a couple of years ago. In the first photo I am surrounded by fish, hand pitching them for delivery. I am also very tired - lol! In this photo we have just caught the fish on the jitney and are transferring them to the big boat for icing and tendering.

We are incredibly careful with our fish because a good percentage will make it to your store as fresh Alaskan Red Salmon. That means frequent deliveries of heavily iced fish and "hand" handling, not pumped by machine. Here's a photo of Tom's seiner, the F/V Dolly B, at the dock for delivery. This is his photo, I was probably asleep in my bunk!

Photos of fishing and more in Alaska

I love taking photos around Alaska. Here are some of my favorite fishing pictures (and a black bear pic) - I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! The black bear is in the woods inside Nuka Bay, the 2 men on the bridge of the F/V Dolly B are Tom and his brother Steve the bay photo shows the Dolly B with her net out in a set in Resurrection Bay with the city of Seward, Alaska in the background and the up close photos shows the Dolly B anchored with the jitney in Resurrection Bay, Alaska.

Commercial Fishing

Tom owns a 42' seiner (the F/V Dolly B) and he fishes for salmon in Lower Cook Inlet. It is hard work. At age 44 I started working for him and I've never worked harder in my life - and believe me, I know what hard work is.

What a life though! I made it through 2 full seasons, and now I only fill in when we have crew shortages. I do a lot of the dock work and help keep the boat clean. Dock work means that I pitch fish upon delivery and then clean the boat (2-3 times a week), buy groceries and have them waiting for the boat at delivery and any other tasks that the skipper wants.

In the fall we do any maintenance and then we dry dock the boat until spring. In the winter Tom mills lumber with his friend Mark and they build stuff. Mostly cabins and sheds. And rabbit hutches and feeder stands.