Shrimping to go with Diving

                       
   It is now our third week of diving. Mike and I worked hard on week two with our fair share of problems. That is just the nature of the beast.
  I have watched with interest the show, a few years ago, Swamp Loggers. The owner of that swamp logging company faces one break down after another, week after week. He is a fine Christian man, and I watched with interest, to see how any one man could just keep facing all the mechanical breakdowns, and still keep calm. He has been a kind of hero to me as I face many mechanical difficulties in my floating business.
  So... without going into details, let's just say that this dive season has been a test of Mike's and my patience, and of our mechanical skills.
  It is Sunday morning when I kiss my sweet wife goodbye, meet Mike, and head to the boat.
  Dripping rain for the past three days has everything soaked. Nothing unusual about that. Mike pushes the plastic tarp over the back of the boat and
 a roar of water pitches into the ocean.
  "Wow, that is some build up of water on the tarp," Mike comments.
  "Yeah, That is from yesterday, cause I was down here clearing it then," I said as I jumped under the tarp and unlocked the door of the boat.
  I fire up all the electronics as we idle out of the harbor. A quick stop by the fuel dock for a top off, and we are under way to Hoonah Sound.
  We race past our dive area of the past two weeks. The allowable amount of Sea Cucumbers has been all but caught. Fish and Game announced a three hour opening in Krestof Sound area. Not quite enough time for us. We have elected to make the run to Hoonah Sound for the full day and a half opening there.
  It is a beautiful run on inside waters of South East Alaska to get to Hoonah Sound. We scan the beaches for deer. Mike and I would both love to bag a deer for some fresh eating venison.
  About half way to our dive area we spot a nice deer walking the beach. I slide the boat near shore and quietly drop the anchor. Mike and I quickly get the rubber skiff off the top of the boat and into the clear blue water. We silently paddle to the shore and drag the boat above the tide line. Mike has the gun and makes a great sneak to where he can get a shot at the deer.
  It is gone!
  "Ah rats!" I say as he comes back empty handed.
  We row back to the boat, load the skiff, and pull anchor and head to our dive destination.
  Mike and I have a great plan. We have loaded the back deck of the boat with shrimp pots and buoy line. We will set the pots in a good shrimping area, dive for cucumbers on Monday.  We will then sell the day's catch, pull the shrimp pots, re-bait and re-set them, and then go anchor on our dive area for the Tuesday's half -day dive opening.
  If it all works as planned we should at least catch enough shrimp for our supper on Monday night. There is nothing like eating fresh shrimp... all you can eat fresh shrimp, right out of the ocean FRESH!
  The pots set, Mike and I use the afternoon until dark running an underwater camera looking for the elusive sea cucumbers. We do not find much in the way of dive product and finally bunch it at dark, dropping the anchor on a random shore, and just hoping to find cucumbers at the eight o'clock opening in the morning.
  The wind picks up after dark and makes for quite a rocking start to the evening. Mike and I watch a good movie on our navigation computer and then call it a night.
  Somewhere around midnight the wind stops blowing, making sleeping much easier. The first night on a boat is always difficult as the sounds of waves against the hull are more distracting than soothing.
  Five in the morning and we are up getting the boat dive ready. Daylight seems to never find Hoonah Sound, but at about seven we can see enough to pull anchor and stage to our diving shoreline.
  The dive goes fairly well. I pick as quickly as I can, the cukes are small and it takes quite a bunch to fill our bags.
  I come up around noon wet and cold. My dry suit has leaked up one arm and all down my chest. I am wet and freezing. Mike and I decide to call it a day.
  We race up the sound to where our buying tender boat is anchored. We sell our catch of cucumbers to a boat named the Lucy O. She is a purse seiner in the summer and a dive tender in the winter.
  After selling we head up to our waiting shrimp pots.
  Buoy line races through the hauler to the first shrimp pot.
  "Crab on top!" I yell above the noise of the hauler motor. Mike scoops the crab off the top of the pot on onto the deck. A nice Tanner crab, plenty wide enough for the legal width.
  "Wow! Look at the shrimp!" Mike shouts.
  The pot bottom is completely orange with huge orange spotted shrimp.
  We run all eleven of our pots and each one comes up with many, many large prawns!
  We re-bait the pots and get them back on the bottom, then race back to our dive area.
  Mike and I sit on buckets pinching the tails off the shrimp till way after dark.
  "Wow, what a haul," I comment as I watch Mike pour bags of ice over a half full cooler of shrimp tails. "We are going to eat well this winter!"
   We do the same thing on Tuesday and find even more shrimp in our pots.
  We stop by the tender on our way home and drop off a half a five gallon bucket of shrimp. The fresh gift is well received!
  Mike and I drift for nearly an hour pinching shrimp, and when we finish we find we have a full cooler and more than half a five gallon bucket of shrimp tails.
  "Unbelievable," I tell Mike as we motor towards home.
  Our dive work has paid for our shrimp trip. we now have enough shrimp for our two families for the entire winter. We will certainly be eating well this winter.
                                                   shrimp pots filled with shrimp

                                                     the jumbo shrimp we catch

sink full of shrimp tails

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunset

 "Wow, look out the window," I told my wife, "we have a sunset going on that is something to behold."
  Shades of red, orange, purple, and blue lit up the evening sky and spilled onto the quiet ocean below.
  I grabbed the camera and started shooting photos as quickly as I could. Each ten or fifteen minutes would give me
a new look or color.
  Commercial salmon fishing boats were making their way from the ocean to town and added to the majestic flow of color
and background.
  I think everyone in town stopped for a time to take in this beautiful evening. Face book pages lit up with posting of
the pictures as each of us tried to out do the other.
  It is so seldom that we get sunrises or sunsets here in Sitka that the few we do get are just almost more than we can grasp.
  This truly is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Wild Alaska at its best.

Crazy Dive Page 4

  After selling our cucumbers to the packer, Mike and I race back to town before the parts stores close.
  Living on an island with small time stores is always an adventure. You almost have to be your own parts store, as most of the business close at 5:00 each evening.
  We need to get the compressor back up to full air capacity. Not being able to dive beyond 30 feet just does not put enough worms in the bags.
  For some reason the big half inch air line elbows are breaking off inside the compressor.
  Mike and I race to town for all the parts we think we need, then back to the boat to start disassembling the compressor. We have to unbolt it off the back of the boat, then remove the compressor from the system.
  We try to extract the broken elbow but find it is heated in and not budging. We do not dare ruin the threads inside as we need to get another elbow installed and run the airlines.
  Back to the hardware store. Back to the boat. To my house for drills. To the boat. Back to the hardware store.
  Daylight is now pulling darkness out of its pockets where it stored it this morning, and spreading it quickly over the mountains and ocean. Darkness creeps into the harbor quickly devouring every last bit of daylight. Adding to the fading light we are working in pouring rain requiring full rain gear and watching everything getting soaked. Lovely!
  We have to drill out the elbow then back to the hardware store for one last die for cutting new threads, we walk into the store as they are locking the door, talk our way inside and get our final purchase!
  The die works perfectly, making a good thread to install our new elbow. We use a copper line elbow system I have as a back up and, working by head lamps, finish putting the compressor back together.
  We fire up the compressor and run it as darkness snuffs out this long, long day.
  Mike and I "high-five" as we head up the dock claiming our fix bomb proof!
  "Meet you at the truck at 6:00 a.am.," I tell Mike as we say our good nights. "Good work on the repairs," I thank him as we part.
  Six in the morning comes way to soon.
  I stagger down the stairs to the truck to find my soaked woollies did not dry properly in the dryer. to my back up pair.
  Mike and I launch the boat in the dark and make the idle through the harbors by braille.
  We have to idle much farther today as the daylight is loosing to the winter hours so quickly.
  "Have to rig up the Sodium lights for next week," I comment to Mike as I throttle up. "Keep your eyes peeled for logs and kelp." This is definitely two person driving for a while.
  We make about half of our run just hoping we will see things in the water before it grows light enough to really see.
  "Wow, this is nerve wracking," Mike comments as we relax with a cup of hot coffee.
  Back at our dive spot. We fire up the machines and I quickly get into my dive gear.
  "Running good?" I ask mike.
  "You betcha!" he smiles back.
  The little 9.9 hp kicker motor seems to be failing to go into reverse gear. Not good. Mike grabs a pair of needle nosed pliers to make adjustments. We get it to go into gear after much fiddling. Not good as that is such an important part of the dive operation. Mike has to keep the boat near my bubbles and be able to get the corks to bring the bags to the surface.
  "It looks like It will work. I'll keep an eye on it," Mike tells me as I sit on the back of the boat clearing my mask for the dive.
  'Two minutes till dive time," Mike says.
  "Three, two, one, you're good to go," Mike counts me into the water.
  I clear my sinus' as I watch my computer count me down to the bottom. At thirty feet I start seeing some cucumbers. I pick as quickly as I can.
  About a dozen cucumbers into my first bag my air shuts off completely. I suck hard on my regulator. Nothing.
  I head for the surface and crack my pony bottle drawing a gulp of air. I shut it off to conserve the little bottle.
  I crank the valve shut on my dry suit to keep the air in as I break surface to keep myself floating with the heavy weight belt still around my waist.
  Mike hauls me to the boat hand over handing the air line.
  "It broke again!" Mike shouts.
 He shuts off the compressor as I climb onto the boat.
  "Yup, it is the same elbow fitting! It is broken clean off." he says, leaning over the back of the machine.
   "The kicker cable seems to be broken as well," he further informs me.
  "You've got to be kidding," I agonize out loud to him.
  Sure enough, the elbow fitting has sheered off the big half inch copper fitting and the threads are left up inside the compressor motor.
  Kicker cable is not working at all. We are done.
  "We might be able to jury rig around all of this but it will take us a couple hours of our four hour dive time," I tell Mike. "Or, we can just bag it, get back to town and fix everything properly."
  Mike and I decide to scrap the day's dive and just get back to town for a proper fix of all the machines.
  So much for our hoped better day!
  We clean the twelve cucumbers and Mike takes the meat home to try. We have not really eaten the very cucumbers we harvest so many times. Mike says he is going to smoke some of them to see if they will taste like smoked clam. (that is what we keep hearing).
  We head back to town with our tails between our legs. Not a good first dive opening at all. Each year the diving is getting tougher to find the product as the sea otters compete with us for the cucumbers. I feel we have just squandered our very best opening on one of our best dive areas. Oh well, at least I am alive and well. Next week will have to be the make up dive, even though the tide will be at its most un-divable stage that week.
  Mike and I work on the boat and compressor the full rest of the day. We learn that we have been tightening the line between the elbows too much putting pressure on the elbows. The great heat from the compressor motor causes the elbow failure. We cut longer lines between the elbows and wedge them in. It looks good, but only a few days run time will tell the real tale.
  Mike and I head home in the dark, tired and a tad bit discouraged.
  This is the life of a diver.


                                              Mike at the compressor pulling in a dive hose

                                           a full bag of cucumbers on the deck

crazy dive page 3

  "You've got to kidding!" I shout to Mike, "My back up computer is dead."
  We can see Scott's boat about a mile up the channel from us. We discuss for some time about whether to go see if he has a spare computer or to just bunch the day and head back to town for repairs.
  I do not say to Mike, but I know I should get back down to pressure to decompress from my too quick accent.
  "Let's go see what Scott has," I say, as I fire up the big engines.
  with a roar we race off to talk to Scott.
  C.J. is tending for Scott when we pull up along side. I glide in, very careful to see where Scott is so I don't get my boat over the top of him.
  C.J. looks up and cranes his neck out of the boat to hear over the roar of his compressors.
  "Does Scott have a spare computer?" We shout as loudly as we can yell.
  "What? Can't hear you!" C.J. shouts back.
  I pull the Samantha in closer to the Gracie K.
  We shout again.
  "I don't know if he has one or not. Give him a bit he is on his last bag, and will need to come up on this one," C.J. shouts back.
  We pull out and wait for Scott to surface.
  "There he is," Mike says, pointing at Scott's hooded head breaking surface.
  We pull along side and grab the rails of Scott's boat as C.J. helps him on board.
  "Scott, I locked my computer on a quick accent," I tell him as he peels off his wet hood. "Do you have a spare computer I can borrow for the rest of the day?"
  "You bet," comes his quick reply. He races in his boat and comes out with a computer.
  We discuss the dive tables I have on my locked up computer and what safe dive limits are for me now.
  "Thanks millions Scott," I shout as we pull away.
  I race back to our dive area, knowing that Scott has harvested half of his quota in the time I have just a dab. Hard not to be a tad bit bitter.
  Shutting down the boat on our dive area we learn that the rising tide is like a river flowing the opposite direction from the morning.
  "Let's get to the point up there and work with it," I tell Mike as I fire up the engines again.
  We race to the point and Mike gets the deck ready for me to dive.
  Back into the dive suit, the bail out bottle, the weight belt, gloves, hoods.... good grief, this gets old quickly.
  I jump in the water, give the thumbs up and head for the bottom. Clearing my ears as I drop I press my air valve on my suit to slow my decent to learn that I failed to hook it up on surface. All I do is fill my dry suit with a blast of very cold ice water!
  I can't find the end of the hose to connect, so back to the top I go.
  "Hook me up," I shout to mike.
  He snaps me in and back down I go.
  No air! Again. I race for the surface, this time from a shallow 20 feet.
  "The part we put on broke!"Mike screams.
  Back out of the water. We unhook the outlet hose on that compressor and cap it off so it won't drain the reserve tank. This will let me dive, but on very limited air. The tank gauge barley creeps to 90 pounds.
  Back into the water. I try to go below 40 feet and have to suck way too hard on the regulator to get air. I decide to just finish the day working shallow. But... shallow with the extreme high tide is just crazy. There is not much to find. Very big rocks with lots of kelp to dig through.
  I pick as hard as I can for about an hour when the cold of my flooded suit starts getting me.
  I am shivering like crazy and my legs cramp completely. I pull myself along the bottom with my hands, screaming in pain into my regulator. "good thing I don't have com system or Mike would think something is attacking me," I think to myself.
  "This is crazy," I think to myself. No amount of money is worth this.
  I slowly make my way to the surface.
  We are done for the day.
  "I'll have to make it up tomorrow, I tell Mike as I undress from my dive suit and get into some warm clothes. "If we can get back on the good picking at low tide tomorrow I can make up for today," I promise him.
  I fire up the engines and we head up the channel to the packer boat that is buying our cucumbers.
  We off load a surprising 926 pounds for a very tough day.
    Not bad for a decrepit old has been diver with a few obstacles along the way!
  Tomorrow is the day... but... little do we know... tomorrow may be worse!
  I'll keep you posted

Crazy Cucumber Dive Continued page 2

  Back on the bottom with plenty of air and cucumbers everywhere I look. I am filling bags in less than ten minutes, and we are definitely on a roll.
   I look at the dive computer. I'm picking in about 52 to 55 feet of water. I don't like to pick this deep very long as it uses up my decompression time too quickly, but with picking like this I have to stay here. I ignore the desire to follow the vein of worm into shallow water, choosing to leave those for later in the day when the tide fills the pool and I have to pick shallower.
  Suddenly my air stops. I suck hard on my regulator. Nothing! I immediately head for the surface, my hand going to my bail out bottle relief valve.
  I feel my air hose tighten and then I'm yanked towards the surface. I know I'm heading up much too quickly, but there is noting I can do but ride this out.
  I crack the bail out bottle for a deep breath of air, then turn it off quickly to save air. Again I'm needing a breath. I open the valve for another breath. I can feel Mike hand over hand pulling me towards the surface... but much too quickly.
  I have my hand over my head in case of impact on the bottom of the boat. I look up and can see the dark outline racing towards me.
  Whoosh, my head breaks surface. I am right at the side of the boat and Mike has a death grip on my air hose.  He is a little wild eyed.
  "Hey Bro," He shouts, "The compressor blew a line. You have no air!"
  That is like the understatement of the day for me, after sucking on my regulator till my mask dug into my face!
  Mike helps me into the boat and we inspect the compressor.
  I actually have four compressors working as a unit to fill a big reserve tank that I breath out of.
  When one of the lines brake between the compressors it immediately drains the reserve tank, shutting off my breathing air.
  We shut down the motors and go to work.
  Tool boxes are dragged out of compartments, spare parts and pieces are recovered from their hiding places around the boat.
  Mike and I work at a fever pitch to fix the broken line. We work in pouring rain, and keep glancing at the shoreline, willing the rising tide to slow down.
  "I can't think of a time I've seen the tide come in this quickly," Mike comments.
  We laugh, knowing it is just the pressure of time that makes it seem like it is lunging to its peak today.
  Mike is very handy at repairing things. He has worked most of his life at maintenance jobs. Between the two of us we are up and running in about an hour.
  Copper lines ran, we fire up the compressor and glare at the gauge on the reserve tank. The Needle slowly climbs to the 110 pounds of air pressure required for me to dive 50 or more feet deep.
  We shut off the compressor to check for leaks. Major hissing greets our ears.
  We feel the new line to find one of the joints needs a couple cranks of a wrench to stop the leak.
  "Are we good to go?" I shout at mike over the roar of the hookah.
  "Looks great!"  he beams a big smile.
  I once again suit up, tank up, weight belt, hood, gloves, and mask.
  "What about your bail out bottle? Should we fill it?" Mike questions.
  "I only used two breaths out of it. should be mostly full," I shout back.
  I plunge off the back of the boat, and give Mike the o.k. sign. He o.k.'s back.
  I deflate my suit and start down, glancing at my computer. It is not giving me any readings.
  "Oh brother," I scream to myself as I turn and kick my way back to the surface. I will not dive without a working computer.
  Back up to Mike who drags me on the boat.
  We shut down the machines and inspect the computer. It is locked up.
  Our dive computers are designed to lock up if you blow your dive tables and come up too quickly
  Once the computer is locked up you are instructed to contact your nearest dive safety expert and see about getting to a hyperbaric chamber for decompression.
  The other way to decompress is to get back to depth underwater and stay there for an hour or better, then come up very slowly.
  "I've got a spare computer," I inform Mike. "I can go back down and just dive very conservatively for the rest of the day."
  "Man, I don't know, Bro" Mike says. "I don't feel good about today. Just too many things are going wrong."
  I grab my spare computer out of my dive bag and hit the switch to turn it on. Nothing! I press the button again. Nothing.
  Dead Battery!
  "You've got to be kidding!" I scream.

to be continued...

Crazy Cucumber Dive Opening

  Mike met me at the truck at our time of 5:45 a.m., it is pitch black.
  "Looks like the weather is going to hold for us for the entire day," I commented as we drove to the boat. Only yesterday the weather center in Alaska called for gale 45 knot winds and driving rain.
  We quickly ready the boat and shove off. We idle through the harbor systems on radar and blind navigation.
  Big Sodium crab lights light the harbor behind us. More dive boats heading out.
  "Hey Samantha, are you there?" came a familiar voice over the radio. Scott on his boat, the Gracie K, is calling us on my boat, the Samantha.
  "Hey, good morning, where are you guys?" I asked back.
  "Just coming under the bridge," Scott replied.
  "That is your sodium's lighting up the harbor behind me. I am just ahead of you, leaving the break water," I inform him.
  We chat and plan for the next half hour as we travel to our dive location. Daylight slowly gathers the darkness and stuffs it into its pockets for the next ten or so hours.
  We arrive at our dive location at about 7:00 a.m. and Mike quickly readies the boat as I crawl into my dive suit.
  Mike fires the dive hookah compressor and warms it up, as well as the 9.9 kicker outboard motor, and the hauler motor. All systems are running great.
  Mike counts the time down, as I donned my bailout bottle, weight belt, dive bag with cucumber bags, hood, gloves, and mask. He grabs a screw driver and pushes the valve on the air hose to clean out my air line. Nothing!
  "Oh no," Mike yells over the roar of the engines, "this air hose is plugged"
  "Shouldn't be," I yelled back, "I cleared all the lines this past week."
  Mike takes the air line apart and cleans a big chunk of rust out of the fitting. Typical Alaska. It seems to only take overnight for things to rust, corrode, or salt up in this drippy atmosphere.
  Air line cleared up, I slid into the black, ice cold water. I gave Mike a thumbs up and he replied so I release the air out of my dry suit and slide towards the inky bottom.
  Clearing my ears at every ten feet, and watching my computer as I entered the depths, I feel the burn of the cold water as it enters my wet suit hood and gloves. I never seem to get used to how cold this water really is.
  I see cucumbers (worms) before I reach the bottom and am getting my first bag ready. I quickly start picking all the worms in sight.
  I suck hard on my regulator. It is like I am not getting my full flow of air. I glance at my computer, I'm in 32 feet of water. My air is shutting of quickly.
  I grab one last worm and then my regulator shuts of completely. I race for the surface with no air.
  I break surface and wave for mike. He spots me and slowly starts backing the boat to me. I have no air so I spit the regulator out, but am not buoyant enough to float. I am kicking hard to keep my lips above the surface, and shaking my air hose above the surface to get Mike to pull me in by it. He does not know what my signal is and keeps slowly backing the boat towards me.
  Mike gets to me and helps me up on the back of the boat. I'm panting like I've ran a marathon, and tasting salt from the water I've drank trying to keep my head above surface.
  "No air," I shout to Mike, waving my regulator towards him.
  Mike shuts down the noisy compressor so we can hear each other, as I get out of my fins and climb onto the back of the boat.
  We spend the next half hour taking my regulator apart to find one tiny piece of rust under the air release valve. We wash it out with fresh water and run a bunch of air through it before calling it "cured".
  We are racing a great morning low tide. As the day progresses the tide will be coming in, and will be at a huge 11 foot high by noon. With our diving, we need as little water over our heads as possible. By law, we cannot go into decompression diving. At low tide I can go to fifty feet for a good while. That same water by noon is 61 feet deep and gives me no time at all.
  I get my fins back on and slide back into the ocean. I race back to the bottom breathing big gulps of great feeling air. I really like to be breathing under water. The other option is just not that appealing!
  I swim past the spot I have just picked and look deeper. Everywhere I look I see cucumbers! I am grabbing them by the handful. I jam the bag full and sent the cork to the surface. I look at my dive computer. Six minutes! That can't be. I look again. Sure enough, it says six minutes. On fairly good picking I feel good to get a full bag in twenty minutes. Six minutes is unbelievable. I watch the bag head towards the surface and quickly have another one off my belt and jamming it full.
  To be continued...