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
sink full of shrimp tails
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