Alaskan update .6

Wednesday(11) continued: so Bryan just quite and we need a new deck hand, and there is talk of another female coming onto the boat! Yay! But you know what’s strange? I started feeling a weird emotion I have never felt before in my life… jealousy. I am never jealous! Never! Then suddenly just because this new 25 yr old bartender who happens to be very attractive might be working on the boat my hopes just plummet and I get very depressed for about 3-4 hours… want to know why? Because with this new attractive older female onboard, I’m not going to be the main female anymore… all the guy’s attention is going to be directed towards this new girl instead of me… I love being the only female on the boat! Well, yea, at first it was a little awkward, but I got to know everyone, and every got to know me, and now I’m doing very well with them all, Allen and Dave are two good natured guys who I enjoy hanging around with even if they don’t want this little 16 yr old female tailing them… and with a new female onboard? Who just happens to be closer to their age? Little ol’ me gets left in the dust. So when I heard about her age and how attractive and pretty she was from my aunt, I was feeling pretty glum indeed. Then we find out she has to give a weeks notice to her boss at the bar before quitting, so we need someone to either fill in for a week, or we need a new, permanent deck hand. Uncle mark and I head up to the house in Homer and let Dave go home to his wife for the evening (which happens to be a hour to an hour and a half trip one way). And tell him to be back at the boat by 7 am. Then uncle mark changes it to 8 am before we drive off.. Then as we leave I yell out the window that uncle mark changed it to 9 am.

Thursday(12): Well today we run around town getting parts and food for The Star and The Poseidon and finally head back down to the docks at around 11… I walk onto the boat with the groceries and find Dave sleeping in his bunk. Turns out he was here at exactly 9:03 and waited a half hour, then hit his bunk to catch up on sleep. “Sure, be there at 9 he says,” Dave exclaims with a scowl “but don’t show up until 11?” hehe, he wasn’t too happy about that! So we rope Aunt Linda into running the skiff so we can make a couple sets off of Neptune. So we drive out there on The Poseidon then transfer over to the jitney to fish the smaller net in the shallower waters and Dave gets to stack the led line! He was so happy that he got to stack the net ^_^ Skiff men always wish they could stack the net because when your in the skiff there is no one to talk to, and you end up either talking to yourself or singing to yourself. So we make a set in Neptune for cost recovery and we end up getting a huge gigantic load of fish! Granted the net was so full of sea spinach that this one set felt like five sets, because Dave and I had to basically pull the net through the block because the hydraulics were not strong enough to pull a couple hundred lbs of sea weed and net through… so we finally get the net closed and the purse line up and we brail it into The Poseidon. We attach the jitney to an anchor then haul our plugged boat over to the fish docks so we can get it delivered. We tie up to the docks and Dave and I remove the hatch covers then I head off to use a ‘real’ restroom and to use the pay phone. Well I call Mein Vater and gab to him a bit, then I call my mother again… wow, big surprise! I get her answering machine again! So I leave a message then head back over to the docks and before I can shimmy down the ladder to get on my boat Uncle mark stops me and tells me that he found a new deck hand and that he is down in our hold pitching fish for Icicle. So I head down there and see that it’s Randy, who is 17. The guy who pumps the fish out of The Star is Tim, and this was his brother. I like Tim well enough so I was hoping that Randy would be something like him. Let me tell you something, I was thanking the goddess t=right then and there for getting us this deck hand instead of that other female.

Friday(13): Aunt Linda grabs Randy this morning and takes him to go get him a fishing license, rain gear, and some boots for the boat, and also to prepare him a bit for what its going to be like on the boat. While they are gone I start to clean out the fish hold when Dave comes back. We goof around until I finish up the fish hold and get out. We are putting on the fish hold covers as randy walks up with my aunt Linda. I can tell right away that he is used to cussing… a lot. Every other word to every word that comes out of his 17-year-old mouth is the F word to bitch. Joy. Well uncle mark comes down and we head out of the harbor to go and see if we can do any common property fishing… so we drive around for about 3 hours before he decides that there is no fish to be got today so we head back into the harbor. Meanwhile Dave is sleeping in his bunk and Randy is teaching my two-player solitary. We are headed back when I remember that Corah is coming back from Florida tonight at midnight and that I want to go over to Dave’s house to I can see her this weekend, so I head up to the top and ask uncle mark if I can go to Dave’s house this weekend. Not to mention I needed to talk to his wife about the tattoo I am attempting to draw and transfer some music from Dave’s computer onto my MP4player. So I ask him and he says he doesn’t know, and that I will have to ask my dad first because Uncle mark is responsible for me up here and if he lets me go and something happens then my dad will chew his head off (Which I know isn’t true cuz dad trusts me and he’s just awesome like that) and because Corah has ‘boy problems’ and ‘cant keep her legs closed’ which I think is a horrible thing to say about her! I know she does have ‘boy problems’ but I also know that she is a virgin. So I of course, defended my friend as best I could then I called me dad. Well no one picked up the phone so I called Rachel (his girlfriend from California who was down this week) but she didn’t pick up either, so I told uncle mark I couldn’t get hold of him so he asked me to get Dave. So I get Dave up from his nice long nap to talk to uncle mark about taking me to his house this weekend and confirm what I had told him. Then I try my dad again and get a hold of him. “Why does he want my confirmation?” Mein Vater asks me, “You know I trust you to make the right decisions.” Which I happened to tell uncle mark. “Ya sure, you can go”. So when we get into the harbor Uncle mark lets Dave and I go ahead and head home. So Dave and I go to his Pontiac Trans Am and we are out of there! Oh, My, Goddess!!! I fell in love today… with Dave’s car… I am so going to get a muscle car when I get back to Oklahoma! It was sweet.. If you go the speed limit all the way to Dave’s house it takes about an hour thirty, but if you ride with Dave in his Trans Am then it takes you about an hour. We passed vehicles at 100mph! That car is totally awesome!! When we got to his house his wife was waiting for us at the door and handed me the new Dean Koontz book! I was thrilled. Dave has 4 children, Page(5), Jonathon(3), Hannah(1) and Mathew Allen(one month). They are all adorably cute!! I love them all!

Saturday(14): Saturday I end up sitting on my butt watching movies all day. I have never sat on a couch for that long! Dave was insistent that I want some movies… because I haven’t seen so many of them, lmao. I saw Corah and her new Dutch hound puppy! Also adorable.

Sunday-Friday(15-20): Nothing much happened this week except a little bit of common property fishing but nothing more than that. Oh, and I want to slowly murder and kill Randy. He is so annoying, he cusses like no other, the only jokes he knows are sexual slurs, he stinks horribly, very ‘ripe’, I believe he talks just to hear his own voice, he thinks he was a genius IQ! Ha! Wonder who lied to him! And… this is the worst part.. He enjoys torturing fish. I almost pushed him off the boat in the middle of a set when he was in full rain gear. He grabbed a small flounder that had fallen from the net, placed in on the deck, and proceeded to stomp on it with his boot. Why? What good does that do! You could have just thrown it overboard and continued stacking! Du Arseloch!!! Das Est Bockmist Du Soukerl! I want to give him 50,000 paper cuts, rub salt in the wounds, stick him is as small a box as he can fit, then fill it with fire ants. Then after that slowly burn off his fingers one by one after ripping his finger nails off, gouge out his eyes, then drown him. Oh and of course I would attempt to castrate him but I don’t think there is anything there to castrate. But of course I couldn’t be the one to kill him so I’m going to hire a big murderous thug from prison. The bunks now stink like none other thanks to him. I don’t think he ever takes a shower or washes his clothes. Du Soukerl. Dave and I were so happy when the weekend came… we didn’t exactly need a brake from fishing, we needed a brake from Randy. I headed back with Dave again so I could talk to Tiffany (Dave’s Wife) about that tattoo and to transfer some music from his computer onto my MP4player.

Saturday(21): I love his car. When I come back to Oklahoma hopefully I will have enough money to get a vehicle like his 79 Pontiac Trans Am and my motorcycle… well today I only watched one movie and I transferred a boat load of music over onto my MP4player. I now have Buck Cherry (YAY!!!), Korn, Godsmack, Linken Park, some music for Brittany, and some others. I talked to Tiffany about the tattoo, and then we went and watched the new Harry Potter. The Graphics were awesome! The visual was great! The movie sucked! Lol. I hate the Harry Potter movies; they leave so much out of the movies! I also got a new watch, its kick arse! Its Union Bay, and Camo!!! Got to love the camo. Its not digital, which is fine, and it shows the date. No alarm, but that’s fine. Thank the Goddess I have a watch now.

Sunday(22): Today Dave and I got to sleep in until 10:30! Well, that’s the time that we had to leave his house by so we could get to the boat by noon. So I got up at around 8:30 and took a nice hot shower before putting on my clean clothes and then headed into the living room by around 9. Dave was snoozing on the couch half watching the television and half sleeping… I snagged an apple and a banana for breakfast before we headed out at 15 past 11 o’clock. We got to the boat somewhere around 30 minutes past noon and no one was at the boat when we arrived, so we were safe. We then headed out with the boat when uncle mark and Randy came a couple minutes later and made another huge cost recovery set in Neptune that plugged The Poseidon. We then headed back to the harbor and put ice over the fish because there was no one there to process the fish we had to wait until the next morning.

Monday(23): This morning Dave and I take the boat over to the Icicle Sea Foods dock and have Tim suck the fish out of the hold. Well water had gotten into the fuel pipes so I help Dave with what ever I can while he attempts t fix it and mark goes and gets some parts. Then we switch around nets with Paul and that basically is it for today.

Tuesday(24): Wake up, and we head back out to Neptune to finish up cost recovery so that Common property fishing would be opened tomorrow morning. Then we fix up some more things on the boat later that evening and I get a little bit of internet time in to check some of my messages, then I head to bed at around 11:30.

Wednesday(25): We get awoken at 4:33 am by the alarm clock on the boat and we head out to do some common property fishing because it opens at 6 am this morning. So we get out there along with Paul, Robert, Chris Perry, the Hanta Yo, and the Shrike. And everyone one is just jockeying around for positions when the Hanta Yo sets two minutes early! And as we try to block him off he rams The Poseidon! So now we have a splintered deck rail. You can bet uncle mark was not too thrilled about that. And then Paul set inside his set because he set to early so Paul gets all his fish instead of him, which is good for us since we (Paul, Robert, Chris, and us) are co-oping together. Well we make about 4 sets today and get an ok amount of fish for our work then we head back into the harbor to deliver. I catch word of going back to Chenic on the tender to fill it up with cost recovery fish, then common property fish, so I have my hopes up, I enjoy traveling. We deliver our fish by 4:30pm then we dock. Uncle mark tells us to start transferring food and our personal stuff over to The Star because we were going to be heading out to Chenic in an hour. So we start moving our things, and I immediately claim the bow bunk and tell Randy that he gets the bunk in the cabin. Dave is happy because between my snoring and Randy’s annoyingness and stench, he would choose my snoring any day. As I unpack my junk into the bow I look on the side of the wall and guess what I find? A real nice, very used, open pocketknife, made by Master Knives. I figure it was one of Roberts crewmember’s knives, but if they were that careless to leave it laying out, open, in the bow, then they didn’t deserve to own a knife as good as this one, so it acquired a new owner. Well turns out we are not leaving in an hour; instead we will be leaving at around 9. So Dave takes Allen to the laundry mat so he can wash and dry some of his clothes and I come along for the ride, (Anything to get away from Randy) and we meet this chick who works at the laundry mat who knows Billy (the crew member who quit) and turns out he didn’t go to jail… like we told him… and that he had a court date rescheduled for a later time… like we told him… so he didn’t really need to quit fishing and let us get stuck with Randy! Well Allen sticks his clothes in the washer and we head out to McDonalds to get some of their ‘crack-fries’. Dave gets a ‘McKinley Mac’ and a large fry, Allen gets two double cheeseburgers and a large fry, and I get a southwest salad. Well Allen and Dave just dump out their fries together onto a try and share them, and I polish off my salad and watch them eat oily, greasy, yummy, McDonalds French fries. They keep telling the other to get up and go get some more sweet and sour sauce to dip the French fries in but neither gets up to get any and I just sit there chuckling while they eat dry French fries. They tell me that they have it down to a science, and then they both start pushing the tray towards the other saying ‘go ahead Dave, they’re all yours’ and ‘no no Allen, I insist’ and pushing it back. I’m just watching all this with a grin on my face. When they finally finish with their shenanigans we head back to the laundry mat and collect his clothes then head back to the boats. We get there and Dave gets a nice parking spot and I decide to use the rest room one more time before we get on the boat again so I start walking towards the public bathrooms and Dave and Allen follow me “Where ya going gabby?” and “We’re following you now” and I just laugh and tell them then they get on either side of me and say “we’re your personal body guards” and Allen starts looking around real suspicious like and states “who’s this? Why this is Gabby!” then we get to the bathrooms laughing and I go into my side and they go into theirs. I come out a little while later and head back to the boat, not bothering to wait on them because I figure I’d give them some time to themselves with out this goofy little 16 year old female tailing them. Well 9 o’clock comes around and Paul and Mark decide that the weather is too bad and that they would wait until tomorrow morning at 4 to leave. So I head to bed in the bow of The Star.

Thursday(26): I wake up at 4 am to Dave’s alarm going off… let me tell you something, his alarm? Is the most annoying alarm ever, I wake up wanting to find it and destroy it. This is when I figure out that not only is Dave down here in the bow bunks, but Allen also just happens to be sleeping with him on the same huge bunk. As we are getting ready to actually get up and out of the bow Allen states “If we weren’t fishing this might actually look bad…” which it would come to think of it! One lone female, sleeping in the bow with two guys, 10 years older than her. Hmm… it does look a little wrong. And then Allen stretches his legs in a sexual way and states “Man I haven’t stretched that way in years!” and we all proceed to crack up laughing. I love those guys. We get The Star untied from the dock and Allen goes to his boat The North Star and we meet them outside of the harbor so we can attach a line to his bow and to our stern so we can tow them along behind us. I get stuck with the first shift so I drive from 5 am until around 7:45, then I get Uncle Mark up and hit the bunk for some more sleep. I sleep deeply until 10 then I doze in and out for an hour and a half before getting up. I then get out of the bow and head into the cabin to see what I can concoct for breakfast. Turns out Dave already made breakfast… scrambled eggs and chicken… yum. So I proceed to throw the rest of it out the window, then I make some big cinnamon rolls for everyone. At 2 o’clock we arrive and unhook The North Star from The Star and Paul takes his boat to catch the fish that are jumping everywhere. He makes his set as we get the tender ready to brail fish into the hold and then Uncle Mark gets the tender close enough to The North Star for Randy and I to jump onto the other boat and help pick fish out of the net. We gilled some more fish. When we had it all pursed up we started brailing fish into the tender. I got the self-assigned job of pushing the boats away from each other so that the brailer could fit in between the two and scoop out the fish. Well we also caught some Dog Sharks, the ones that uncle mark grabs by the tail and bashed on the rail then throws back over so that they don’t come back? Well this time everyone basically just throws them over cuz they don’t have the time to mess with killing them first… but arselock Randy stops what he is doing, grabs a dog shark and just hold it by its tail staring and laughing at it. I wanted to strangle him when he started slowly banging it on the rail then throwing it back into he water, then he gets another one and repeats the process and this time bangs a little harder because the last shark ‘swam off’. So I attempt to grab sharks and push the boat away. By the time we had finished brailing my back hurt from using my body to separate the boats. Well this load only filled up the front hold so Uncle Mark tells Randy and I to hop on Paul’s boat so we can help pick fish out of the net as we are pulling in the set. So Randy and I go and proceed to do just that. This set then fills up the back fish hold and we start heading back to Homer to deliver fish. Dave makes a wonderfully delish’ dinner that consisted of baked Halibut and corn. Wow that fish was good! Dave has a way with fish that makes me envious… well I get the first shift again and drive from 11:30 until 2:37

You know what I just realized? This week is almost over and then I only have one more week of work then I fly to California for a day then I fly home the next day. Just a week and a couple days and I’ll be back home in Oklahoma… wow. I’m not ready to come home yet!!! I don’t want to go back to Oklahoma! I love it up here! It just doesn’t seem like I’ve been here long enough… I’m going to miss the people and the friends I’ve made up here badly… and I’m going to miss joking around with the crew members, and with Dave and Allen, and I’m going to miss Dave’s family, and just everything in and about Alaska in general! There is no way I am not coming back next summer!

Alaskan update .5 (i dont know why its .5 and not .4)

Well lets see… I guess I’ll start with Monday and work my way back k?

Monday(2): We went out and fished in Homer and caught about 1100 lbs. we were high boat that day… and guess what? 1100lbs is a very sucky day. :] We went out on the jitney (a smaller saneing boat that has no cabin) and the lucky guys get to just piss over the side of the boat… but what do I get to do? Use a stinking’ bucket and warn the guys not to look… oh fun for me! But so far I have kept it in until we headed back to the boat with my bladder almost bursting… so far (Saturday evening) I haven’t used the bucket yet… oh but it has been very tempting!

Tuesday(3): Caught about 450lbs today… my cousin Robert caught around 800lbs today.. His boat was high boat this day… my uncle mark constantly cusses out the jitney and who made it… cuz its set up for left handed saneing XD lmao…

Wednesday(4): Caught about 250lbs today, Robert was high boat again, but I haven’t the foggiest idea of how much he caught. At around 6pm we took the jitney and the skiff to Tutka Bay Hatchery and left the jitney there. Thank the gods and goddesses of all religions. :} Ya know what? I don’t like the jitney one bit. The net is way smaller than the one aboard The Poseidon, but I kind of enjoy stacking that big net… lets say I know how to stack the big net on The Poseidon. The little net on the jitney is just a hassle. Oh! Look! Happy Fourth of July!!! Guess how many fireworks I saw? None! XD

Thursday(5): Yay! Its Thursday! I love Thursdays! Tomorrow is Friday, then the weekend! XD joy to the world… :] we caught around 400lbs again today… but we headed back into Homer early… why? Because uncle mark just got word that Chenic was opening tomorrow @ 6 am! And its open 7 days a week! So ya know what that means? No weekend off for me. Joy to the world, more work for me! -_- Psh… so we deliver the fish to the tender, and start heading back to Homer to grab our tender so we can take that to Chenic. Uncle mark tells us (Dave, Billy, and I) to get our stuff together to transfer it onto the tender, and tells me to get the food ready to transfer as well. So I get the food as ready as possible, get my junk together, get my sleeping bag, shoes, and duffel bag with my clothes all packed up… then I lay my head down for a second and poof! Dave is telling me to get up, and that we’re in Homer. (It was about a 30-minute trip that passed in like, 10?) So I get up and Mark tells me to write a list of food we’ll be needing to get, so I start writing down miscellaneous stuff onto the notepad, then I start transferring food and my junk over to The Star (the tender). When I have that pretty much finished uncle mark tells me to grab the list and that we’re heading into town to pick that stuff up. Well I start into the cabin and Dave tells me to write ‘Skiff Oil’ onto the list as well, so I jump down the stairs.. well, ‘jump’ is the wrong word.. But it will have to do for now… so back to what I was saying, I ‘jump’ down the stairs and land on my right ankle (yes, I yelped)… and um.. twist it pretty badly.. But thankfully I have 16year old ankles so within about 5-10 minutes it’s all better, but until then I limp. So here I am, grimacing in pain holding onto the table, balancing on one leg, trying to write ‘skiff oil’ onto the list… and uncle mark tells me to “hurry up and get out there” … ha! Yea right! So I tell him to “hold on a minute!” and he replies, “come on! We have to get going!” so I hobble out f the cabin clutching the groceries list with one hand, and using the other to steady myself. “What’d ya do?” my brilliant uncle mark asks “twist your ankle or something?” genius… pure genius. So we head out, go to Save-U-More get the groceries, head to the house, grab the stuff we need there, then head back to the Tender, fuel up The star, and The Poseidon, then head for Tutka Bay Hatchery… guess what? We’re leaving The Beloved Poseidon in Tutka and taking the jitney along w/ the tender instead. Joy. Well Dave takes The Poseidon into the bay and brings the jitney out and we hook it up to The Star. Then we head out. Mark, Dave and Billy work on The Star while I drive the huge thing for around 30 minutes, then Mark takes over and I head to bed. @ Around 11 o’clock Mark wakes me up and I drive while he sleeps, I struggle to keep my eyes open cuz he woke me up from a pretty deep slumber to drive and so I drive for around an hour 30 before I go and wake up Dave and let him know that it was his turn to drive… then I hit the bed again.

Friday(6): Well I awoke at around 8 am and we were almost to Chenic (10 hour trip) I could see cousin Paul’s boat up ahead. The only boats there were The North Star (Paul) and The Lucky Star (Chris Perry) and now us, The Star (the tender) and the jitney. Well as we approached The North Star we saw Paul, his two crewmembers, and his skiff man (Allen) all on the boat, with a huge load of fish, picking them out of the webbing. It looked like they were Gill-Netting (That’s where you set out a net w/ big webbing so that the fish try and swim through it and get stuck by their gills.) they had gotten such a big set of fish, that they all tried to get out through the webbing and therefore, got stuck. So from 6 until 10 in the morning they were picking fish out of their net. They definitely got a huge set, but they had to pick for a long time! We drove around the bay looking at the huge amounts of fish that were behind the markers (Therefore we were not able to get them) and waited for them to come out. Finally we just went outside of the markers, made a set, hauled it in, and got about 3 reds and 10 sharks. Kind of a sucky set. So we waited with Chris Perry and watched all the jumpers inside the markers… finally Mark told him to go ahead and make a set and that we were going to try and persuade the fish to swim outside of the markers and into Chris’s net… so Chris makes a set and sits there while we drive through the markers and start going in circles w/ the jitney to try and scare the fish out. Finally after about 30 minutes Chris closes his net and starts pulling it in… wow. They caught a lot of fish! Though we had to use our jitney, our skiff, and Paul’s skiff to hold up the cork line so that the fish didn’t jump out and over the net to freedom.
After Chris made his set and went over to the tender to deliver it into there we made a set and Chris tried to persuade the fish to come out, basically the same thing we did… well, as we closed the net it got snagged on a reef, so we could not pull up the purse line cause it was stuck, so Chris set right behind us and we let the fish go and Chris caught most of them in his net as we backhauled ours. Unfortunately, our mesh in our net was slightly bigger than Chris’s… so we caught a lot of fish… by gill. So as we back hauled Dave, Billy and I picked the fish out of the net. Let me tell you, this day, was the worst day of my entire 16-year-old life. I had to physically use my hands and brutally mutilate these fish’s gills while they were still alive. By the time I had finished with one fish, it had stopped flopping… I had brutally killed it. With my own hands I horribly took hundreds of lives. By the 10th fish, silent tears were rolling down my face and I prayed that the fish would be dead before they came up for me to pick them from the net. Every time I grabbed a fish in my hands I silently said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”. I felt as if I was slowly being killed from the inside out, and every time we got a shark Mark would grab it my its tail, swing it over his head and slam it into the side of the jitney, breaking its back, then throwing it into the water, “so it doesn’t come back”. By halfway through the set I finally quit yelping out loud when he, Billy, Dave, or Scott (he came over to help us from Paul’s boat) did that, but inside? I still felt and yelped every time that happened. We were about halfway through the net when Paul and Allen came over in the skiff and asked if mark had anyone who was not good at picking fish could come over and help pitch it (throwing fish from the boat into the tender). Mark told Billy to go with them and I said “can I go?” and mark ignored me. So I mumbled to myself “I guess that’s a no…” and kind of looked away. Then Dave told me “go ahead and jump in” Dave kind of knew what I was going through, he knew some of my feelings and moral values because I would grimace every time a kid would destroy a jellyfish. And Dave would tease and taunt me about it (not meanly, just good naturedly trying to push my buttons, and I would tease and taunt back,) but when I looked toward my Uncle mark and asked him again he shook his head and said “naw, your too good at picking fish.” I looked at my hands… I was too good at brutally mutilating fish’s gills to get them out of the net to go and pitch fish? I was too good at torturing fish to death to get them out to go and do something less destructive? I was too good at it? Just hearing that destroyed me inside even more. So Billy goes off with Paul and Allen to pitch fish while I just kind of stare at the net as its coming down off of the block with more fish stuck in the net for me to horribly kill… and Mark tells me to come over and work the controls a little bit while he picked fish. I’m quiet sure it was not because of the tears, I don’t believe anyone saw them, I kept wiping them away every chance I got.. I didn’t want anyone to see, much less Scott or Mark. So I traded place with Mark and controlled the block, letting the net down when the asked of it. Then Chris yelled over the water “Mark!” and so mark told me and Dave to go and help Chris with his set.
The fish were all jumping over the cork line so Dave and I raced across in the skiff to Chris Perry’s jitney and we pulled the cork line up onto our skiff so that the fish couldn’t jump out. We helped as long as possible then headed back over to our jitney for some more fish picking. I was pleased to see on Chris’s boat he just threw the sharks over the side without trying to kill them or break their backs. Thank you so much Chris Perry, for letting that life live. (Btw, the sharks are around 3-4 ft long). When we finished helping Chris Perry we headed back to the jitney and I work the controls until the net is all pilled on then we head over to the tender to help with the fish.
Well we pitch our fish into the tender and Dave works on cleaning out the fish hold on the jitney and he gives me a box full of tools covered in some white gunk. “Here” he says “Clean this, someone put some pipe sealer onto the tools with the lid… open, while cleaning up the tender last night… So now it’s all over these.” I throw up my hands into the air “hey!” I say, “Don’t look at me! I know I didn’t do it.” Which is true, I’m an artist, and I never put a paint-like substance anywhere without making sure the lid was tight. Dave looks at me and says “Oh no, I’m not talking about you, I’ll give you one good guess” he’s looking pretty agitated right now. And I know exactly who he thinks did it.. Which is the person who did do it. Billy. So I grab the tools and the box and take it inside of the cabin and grab some paper towels to work on it. I get out of my rain gear and start attacking this gunk. Well, its kind of oil based… and sticky… and by the time I’m finished it’s all over my hands. Dave couldn’t find Billy so that’s why I got stuck with the job. Which was perfectly fine with me. Billy comes in and I think Dave found him and said something about it so he apologizes to me but I brush him off with a “fuck you” and go back to work… lmao! I’m joking! He he.. I tell him it’s perfectly fine, and that it gave me something to do. Then I try and wash it off my hands… try is the key word here… it doesn’t happen. So I scrub and scrub and scrub until my paws are red and there is still this pipe sealant all over them. But I’ll live. We get all the fish from everyone’s boat and head back to Homer to deliver. I hit the bunk right away and then get awoken again @ 11 to drive the boat again. This time I drive for 2 hours because I wanted Dave to get some more rest, then I go wake him up, and head back to bed.

Saturday(7): Well we came into Homer Alaska at around 6:30 am but we had to wait until 8am to deliver our fish because they were not ready for a (the) tender yet. So I ended up making cinnamon rolls for the crew and then waited around for Icicle Fisheries to get ready to suck up the fish. Finally 8am rolled around and they send one of their employees down to control the tube, which was a huge tube that you placed in the fish hold to suck up the fish so that we didn’t have to pitch 64,000lbs of red salmon. When they had finished with the back fish hold we moved back so they could have access to the front hold. When they had finished sucking up the fish Billy got on his rain gear and jumped down in the holds to clean them out. When he had finished with the back one he moved to the front hold and started working, at that time Uncle Mark told Dave to move The Star into its slip (the spot at the dock where we park (?) it) well, our slip was being taken by another boat and guess what? They were using our electric as well! That goes onto our electric bill! So we parked in someone else’s slip and called the harbormaster to report that we were not using our electric and haven’t been since Thursday. Well, since we were on solid land I asked Uncle Mark how much time I had to stretch my legs, and he told me around 15 minutes. So I headed out of the dock at a dead run, and reached the payphones in a minute 20. I typed in my phone card number and called my dad, I got a hold of him and told him about yesterday and he told me some more about his girlfriend and then we hung up after 10 minutes. Well 15 minutes was almost up so I headed back to the boat at a run (I’ve been running more than usual I guess because my legs need to be stretched more since I’m on the boat.). Well, I meet Dave and my cousin Robert on my way to the boat and Dave stops me and says “you busy?” and of course since I was not I told him so. “Alright” he said, “then make a U turn and come with us to get Sherri’s groceries.” So I do what he says and followed them up to where her car was parked. It turned out to only be like one cartload so Dave grabbed that and we headed back down the ramp and towards the boat. When we hit the bottom Dave made a comment about seeing Billy coming around the corner soon, and sure enough, as we approached the boat guess who came around the corner with all his stuff? Billy. Turns out Dave had heard Uncle Mark yelling at him from the top of the ramp that if he left that Uncle Mark would not let him work for him anymore. And Billy left. He was worried that the cops would put out a warrant for his arrest if he didn’t show up for court on Monday. Mark had been telling him all along that they wouldn’t do that because his lawyer would tell the court that she didn’t have enough time to prepare and would need the hearing extended to a later date. But I guess Billy didn’t believe him, or was just too scared of what might happen that he left. So guess what? We are now short a deck hand, our Lead Line stacker to be exact, so of course that left Mark in a pissed off mood. And since we are short a deck hand and we’re about to go back out to Chenic to do some more fishing and tendering, we need a new deck hand. So my cousin Robert and Dave go off for 15 more minutes to do quick search for one. Yay! I get 15 more minutes to run around! So I head back off to the pay phones and then I called my mother. I yelled, screamed and cussed at her for the remaining 10 minutes then I hung up. It felt good… I’m kidding… I did call her but I wouldn’t do something as outrageous as that, no matter how good it made me feel at the moment. I didn’t get a hold of her; I got her answering machine instead. I was told by my dad that the last time I called her and left a message (“hey mom, this is Gabby, just thought I’d call, chus.” that it really brightened her whole week, and since I liked brightening other people’s lives by doing what ever I could I called her again today… (“Hey mom, this is just Gabby, guess I got a hold of your answering machine again, take care, chus.” Maybe that also brightened her next week. I guess that would brighten mine if the daughter that I had not talked to since February 20th, and not seen since December, then any little message that let me know that she was thinking about me would bring joy to my week… so its understandable. That took about what? 3 minutes to do? So I use the public rest rooms then make my way back to the boat at a nice slow walk. When I get back to the boat I get on my Uncle Mark’s computer and guess what?! His wireless Internet has a connection! Joy to the world!! There for I get on for about 10 minutes and answer some messages. 45 minutes later my Uncle comes back with Dave and I find out that they had no luck what-so-ever in finding another crew member so Mark calls Sherri up and asks her to come with us so that Paul will have an extra crew member that we could steal for a set when ever we needed him. Then we head back out at around 2 pm. So in a short summery; delivered fish, 64,000lbs, Billy left, need crew member, heading back to Chenic.

Sunday(8): We arrived in Chenic at around 12-1 o’clock this morning and then slept until 8am. No one thought the fish would be coming out today so we stayed on The Star and worked on some things and sat around playing solitaire. Finally when we were just about to go over to Paul’s boat, The North Star and grab one of their crew members to bring them back so we could play cards, Uncle mark decides that we should go out there in the jitney and see if we could persuade the fish to come outside of the markers. Well we try along with The North Star and The Lucky Star’s jitney for about 2 hours but to no avail. When we head back to the tender (The Star) Paul’s boat pulls up along side us. Sherri decides she wants to put out a pole and attempt to Halibut fish while we start playing cards. Around the 3rd hand of cards Sherri goes outside to check her pole and turns out the bait is gone (a 5th of a Red) so we add some more bait and go back to playing cards. 7th hand rolls around and she goes out to check it again and finds that something not only took her bait, it also stole her hook. We rummage around on the boat and find another hook, this time attached to a stronger line than before, so we attach it to the pole and head back to playing cards. 8th hand rolls around and Dave looks out the window at the pole and sees it bent over and tells Sherri that she’s caught something. She runs out there and filled with glee, she catches a big ‘ol Halibut. So as they kill it she sets the pole again and then we start to play cards again. 10th hand comes around and guess what? Sherri caught another Halibut! They kill it, Sherri sets the bait again, and we resume cards… again. We attempt to play another hand but guess what? There’s another Halibut on the line! This time Dave catches it instead of Sherri; she’s done for the night. They kill this one as Dave set the hook up with more bait. Right when he was almost done tying down the pole, so we could play some more cards, he catches another Halibut! That’s four Halibuts in a row! We finish up cards at this time and we all go out to watch Dave fillet the four Halibut that we caught. Allen baits the hook, and then waits with the pole to catch another one. Dave gets 2 of then filleted when Allen calls out that he caught something! Turns out he caught a shark.

Monday(9): Last night I had ended up going to bed at around 1 am this morning, and then Dave and I got woken up at 4am this morning to go out fishing. We had been warned that we would be going out at 3 am, but I guess he let us sleep in… lucky us! A whole hour! So we head out there on the jitney with the skiff tied up in back and we join the others out behind the markers trying to persuade the fishies to come out from behind them to where we could legally fish them. In trying to do so my Uncle Mark hits a rock with the jitney… and so Dave had to tow us back to The Star with his skiff. Basically, my uncle wrecked his jitney; we have to actually take it somewhere to get it repaired. Dave and I go out in the skiff to go help persuade the fish into The Lucky Star’s jitney’s net. And they would have had a nice sized set too if they hadn’t gotten hung up on a reef and had to let the fish go. We hitch up to The North Star (Paul’s boat) and head over to the other side to see if the fish had gone over there, because its all legal on the other side. Well the fish are there so Paul sets as Dave goes out in his skiff to scare the fish into the net. Well I end up plunging my arse off trying to keep the fish from swimming under the boat as we were pulling in the set. When we finally had our purse line up we started picking fish out of the net. We had a huge set. Today was a lot better than Friday with the picking of the fish because the ones I picked were already dead. After this set we loaded them up into the tender and headed along the shore line to another place whose name I cant remember right now, Paul set a set but it was cost recovery and we didn’t get too many anyhow. After we loaded them onto the tender The North Star and us left to Homer to deliver. I had first driving duty to homer at 11:30 tonight.

Tuesday(10): I drove until around 3 o’clock this morning when Uncle Mark told me to go and sleep on the ‘couch’ in the cabin for awhile because he didn’t want me walking on deck to go to my bow bunk when it was this windy and the boat was rocking this much. (We got some pretty big waves). So I slept until around 3:30 when Mark woke me up. “We have a serous problem.” turns out the net on the jitney that was tied to the back of The Star came off while driving! We had set in the ocean off of the jitney, which was tied to the boat… without anyone watching it! So we pull in the jitney and Dave jumped on it to release the net. When he had accomplished that he got back on the boat and we turned The Star around to find the net in the water, then we grabbed it with a hooking stick and Dave wrapped a rope around the net, tighten it, and attach a line to use from the deck boom. I would then use the controls and pull the net up as high as I could, and then repeat. We did this from 3:40 to around 6:30… am. As I was running the controls I was being not only physically drained, I was also being emotionally drained, not only was I running the controls, I was calming down the ocean. As you all well know, I am a Wiccan, a hedge witch if you will, a Wiccan following the path of nature. (We do that anyway, but I guess you could say I do it to the extreme, like uh… attempting to calm down oceans.) The waves were pounding The Star from just about all sides, and if we were going to pull the net in, and for Dave to be safe while he was wrapping the rope around it, the ocean would have to calm down at least a couple of degrees. I had no clue if I could, or even should attempt it, but I had to try. So first I became very calm, very passive myself, then I willed the ocean to do the same, I kept repeating, “I am calm, I am the water, I am the sea, I am passive.” over and over. As I was doing that I imagined my deed already accomplished, Dave calmly wrapping the rope around the net while the sea barely moved and rocked the boat, when I had done that a while I asked the goddess to hear my plea and help me calm this wild spirit of water. As I was doing these three things the waves, to my surprise, got smaller, dramatically smaller. Then I imagined myself as the ocean, I became the ocean, I felt the ocean, and I felt the life living in my veins, my lungs, and my body. Then I imagined a scar, a great big ugly scar running along my back, disrupting my wild beauty. That scar? Was the net. I then pleaded to the ocean and told it that we were going to get rid of that scar; we were going to help and heal it. Slowly but surely, the huge waves that once crashed into the side of the boat were gone, replaced with smaller, more docile waves, they still rocked the boat, but to a way, way smaller extreme. As I held onto those images, pleas, and chants, I ran the controls to the boom. So basically, I was a wee bit spacey. Uncle mark didn’t appreciate it too much because 1. There was no way I was going to tell him that the reason I was ‘spacey’ was because I was attempting to calm the ocean. And 2. I almost ripped some holes in the net when the net caught on something on the side of The Star because I was only half there. Occasionally a large wave would crash into the front of the boat when I wasn’t paying attention or when my emotions ran high because of Uncle Mark yelling at me. When my emotions ran hot, that meant that I was not calm, and passive, which turned the ocean not calm or passive… resulting in a nice big wave. Finally when we reached the end of the net I slowly let go of the ocean, starting with letting the chants fall off into nothingness, I thanked the goddess for her help, I didn’t have to imagine my pleas getting answered anymore because they already were, and then, last but not least, I let go. I became myself once again, my skin, my blood, and my bones, I departed from the wild body of water as we lifted the scar from her beautiful back. When we had finished I still had that calm, passive feeling left over which was a positive thing, but the negative was that I was drained. Emotionally. Physically. And Spiritually. And then you know what I get to do after all that? Drive the boat some more. Yay. Kill me now? I get around 45 minutes of sleep, then I get to drive the boat some more? Lucky me! Well I drive for around 30 minutes then I let uncle mark know that I was heading to bed, I was exhausted. Four hours later I wake up, its 11am and I figure we were going to be in Homer soon so I climb out of my ‘den’ down in the bow, and go up to the bridge. Turns out we still have 2 hours until we get to homer, the net slowed us down for around 3 hours this morning. Uncle mark relieves Dave of driving and lets me sleep up there in the nice, warm bridge. I wake up about an hour to and hour and a half later and we are almost there, so I go wake up Dave and let him know how close we were and what was happening, then I headed back up to the cabin and grabbed my avocado from the refrigerator and went back up to the bridge. Uncle mark was on the phone with some guy named ‘Bryan’ and turns out, he was our new deck hand! Yes… finally we have another one. Then he gets on the phone with some other person and buys a net from him. We now have a net that the mesh is tiny! Which is great, because that means no more picking gilled fish from the net! We arrive in homer, deliver the fish, yada yada… get the old new loaded onto the jitney, take the new net and put it onto the tender, get our new deck hand, then we leave with the tender and the skiff. Paul and Chris already have fish that they need to be delivered! So we head back over to Chenic. The new deck hand is all right, but he is very ‘work’ and ‘money’ oriented. “I just want to get paid” is basically his motto. He’s used to working two jobs so that’s what he expects. I think he’s a druggie. I believe that’s why he wants the money so bad, if cuz he needs it for his drugs. I don’t think he’s on any right now, and that he kind of has that much of his priorities strait… but I think that’s what he is. Well I got first driving duty at 8 o’clock and I stayed up until 11. It was originally planned (by myself) that I would stay up until 12, but I got to tired. Which is understandable, the night before last I got 2 hours of sleep, then last night I got around 5 hours of sleep, and tonight I’m hoping for at least 7… if I’m lucky 8.

Wednesday(11): I ended up getting around 7 hours of sleep, from 11 to 6 this morning. We pulled up to The Lucky Star to pitch his fish first in the front hold, then move onto Paul’s boat. Well as we approached the boat it was so weighted down with fish you couldn’t even read its name on the back of the boat! I mean, you could read th and ar but that’s it! When we got tied to it we opened the fish hold and it was too the brim with fish! I mean packed full! So me, Scott, Bryan(our new guy) and David(Scott and David were Paul’s crewmembers). When we had tossed a brailer bag full of fish we desided to try and scoop them out with the brailer bag that had the long handle. So we attempted that a couple of times before Allen come over to show Scott how its done. Thank you once again Allen… I even told scott to “Move it further back!” but did he listen to me? Ha! Never! So Allen comes over and tells Scott the same thing I had told him before, so Scott moves it further back and as he’s trying to push it down into the fish Allen jumps right on top of the side of the brailer bag and rides that thing! He has one hand grabbed onto a rope that is attached to The Lucky Star’s boom and his feet planted firmly on the brailer bag, therefore pushing it down into the fish! It was great… we were all laughing and joking about it until Paul came over and told Allen to go and help pitch on their boat and run the hydraulic valves. So Scott says “ok gabby! Jump on!” and I look at him with contempt “Can’t, I’m neither tall enough nor heavy enough to make a difference.” Which was true, because I was not tall enough to reach the rope to steady me, nor was I heavy enough to push down the brailer bag with my weight. So I declined. When the fish hold got empty enough we all jumped in and started pitching fish and that soukerl Bryan started complaining! About how if he wanted to pitch fish then he could have just stayed at the Auction Block and gotten paid more! Du Soukerl! I haven’t been liking him too much…could ya tell? When we had a small break because the brailer bag was full and they were dumping it, he asks me, “And you have fun doing this?” and I replied with a smile, “I love doing this! I have been having so much fun doing this job! Even…” I gestured towards the fish we still have to pitch “This.” He tells me how this is just manual labor to him and I reply, “This, is a breeze.” Yes this is hard work, but I guess it feels so easy because I’ve been having the time of my life up here! Then he states something like “Well I came from California…” like that’s some excuse! Ha! Then I reply, “Well I’m a Okie.” He looks at me sharp, “Your from Oklahoma?” I just nod and smile and that ends that conversation (speaking of which, I just remembered a joke I heard recently… “Happiness is seeing 10,000 Okies headed out of Alaska with a Texan under each arm” that’s great!). We finish pitching The Lucky Star then head over to Paul’s boat The North Star to help over there. Well Scott tells me as he pitches a fish or two, “Come on in gabby and join the fun!” well I decline because there is not enough room for a gabby and someone else states “These is always room for a gabby!” He he… Then I do join in when Allen leaves to go and help control the brailer bag over at Chris Perry’s jitney because a spot opened up for me. Darn it. Then when we were pitching fish the soukerl Bryan had the nerve to start complaining again! Started saying things like how he should have just stayed back in homer doing the work there instead of coming to work here! Just because he had to pitch some lousy fish! Lazy arseloch! When we finished that we transferred the net smaller net that we had onto Paul’s boat and his onto our to take back and load onto the jitney when we came back, and while doing so my watch got caught, got ripped off of my hand, and plunged into a watery grave. My nice, expensive, 30$ watch that I got for my birthday from mien vater and loved, is now at the bottom of the ocean, in Chenic Alaska. I feel naked with out it. Since with all the fish we loaded onto the tender we plugged it, guess what? We get to make the trip back to homer! Again! Joy! I hate traveling this much. Well, at least with traveling this much everyone knows that I am not prone to seasickness… so we’re off again traveling to Homer… once again, to deliver fish. Dave made lunch because that’s what time it was when we left, lunch consisted of hot dogs, mac and cheese, and veggie soup for me instead of hotdogs. Then after lunch I hit the sack. At around 6 o’clock I woke up and headed to the bridge to see if mark wanted me to drive or not, and of course to get the time, because I didn’t have a watch anymore.. man I need to get one! There is no way I am going to go through the rest of the summer without one! That would kill me! Well, turns out he does want me to drive so I get to drive some more to homer. I hate driving. Well mark just broke the truth to me… our new crew member? Doesn’t want to be a fisherman! Wow! Big suprise there! So now we need a new crewmember… again…

Hello y'all, :] yes, another update cuz people are actually reading these on myspace! *shocked expression runs over my face leaving tire tracks* ok, let me see... I guess I'll start w/ wednesday...

Wednesday(27): I started the day by making pancakes for Dave (our skiff man) and Allen (my cousin Paul's skiff man). not much happened except I didn't burn the pancakes, which is a big plus... and I learned how much I hate the skillets we have on the boat. we have 3. the first one is tiny, the second one is handle-heavy so that complicates things, the third one is convex in the middle. so when you pour pancake batter onto it, it runs off of the middle and onto the sides. much fun. After we all were fed and watered, we went and worked on The Star, Dave and Allen worked on something on deck while I got the wonderfully fun job of cleaning out the Nasty, Grimey, Disgusting refrigerator!!! Oh Lucky Me!!! There was mold and grime everywhere... so I went back to The Poseidon and grabbed the bucket, some bleach, and a washrag. Then I got to the task of washing it down. Fun! Joy! Super! oh god kill me now. It really was not that horrible, but it was'nt fun. Well I finially get done poisoning my hands with bleach water I attacked the dishes... there were about 3 days worth on there, strewn about the cabin. Some of them still had *gag* old rotted and corroded food left on them, I left them to the last. Dave was telling me to just 'accedentelly' slip them over board and into the water. "Oops!" lol but I toughed it out and they turned out pretty good ^_^ I was proud of myself.

"Gaaabbbbbbbyyyyyyyyy!" Sherri, my cousin Paul's wife was calling me so we can go get groceries for The Poseidon, I got the lucky job of shopping as well, how come the females always get the female type work? Washing out the 'fridge, washing the dishes, getting the groceries, cleaning up the cabin, washing the clothes, ec... ec... ec... well anyhow, Sherrie and I go to do that and she informs me that we are suppost to be leaving Homer by 2 pm... let me tell you something, it was 1:15 by the time Sherrie and I left the docks to do shopping.. there was no way that we were going to be back there, by 2, and ready to leave. Ha! Guys are such funny creatures... so we go shopping and get the food we need for the boat, then we head back.. at around 2:30. Sherrie gets on her husbands boat, The North Star, and I head to our boat with the groceries. Dave left for home that evening because his wife was having a C-section friday and he was going to have another child! His name is going to be Mathew Allen, after his two best buddies, which I think is awesome. So my Aunt Linda is our skiff (wo)man for the rest of the week.

Acouple weeks ago when we were taking The Poseidon to Homer from Seward (18hour trip) Dave and my uncle Mark told me I would get sea sick. well I didn't get to go on that trip cuz' I drove my cousin Robert's Subaru back instead. well this time we were headed to Nuka (12hour trip)... and guess what!? I didn't get sea sick!!! nope, not one bit. well, besides puking over rail every 30 minutes and feeling like my stomich was running laps around in my body.. no, I didn't get sea sick at all! lol I'm joking, I really didn't get sea sick, and I didn't throw up, didn't even come close.

Thursday(28): Uncle mark woke us up at 5 oclock in the morning telling us that we had to get ready to fish... so, we got on our fashoinable orange rain gear and I waited to pull the release line on the bear trap (a piece of metal that releases the skiff). There were a total of 5 boats out there, The Poseidon(us), The North Star(Paul), The Lucky Star(Chris Perry, a known and respected fisherman), Dolly B.(A jolivent 'big' guy), and the Melissa B.(The Dolly B.'s son).

We make about four sets and the Mwlissa B. makes a set right infront of us! basically he makes a circle set INSIDE our own net! Steals our fish and says that he set at the same time as us! Der Bockmist!!! we had half of our net out before he even let his skiff man go! so let me tell you uncle mark was not too happy.. he almost tried to prop their net. We let them go though and exchanged some choice words with them and their father, and that was that. Later Uncle Mark told my Aunt Linda that he would refraine from 'teaching that guy a lesson' untill he had Dave as his Skiff Man. Aunt Linda was a bit happy to hear this. There were not enough fish for Chris Perry to stay so he took his boat, The Lucky Star, and left.

Later that night we ancored up and Aunt Linda made us some dinner, they had hamburgers while I enjoyed some soy protien shaped to look like a hamburger(Veggie Burger). Then I sat outside and watche dthe fog banks roll in.

Friday(29): We got up at around 6 am and the fog was still there, it was so thick you could take out a spoon, chip some out of the air, and eat it. not really, I know, cuz I tried. but it was thick. we drove around a little bit but didn't make a set untill around 10:30am. we got about 9 fish that set.. kinda a sucky set if ya ask me.. well, if ya ask anyone thats a sucky set. After we pulled it in Uncle Mark drove full speed over to where The North Star was making a set right near the boundry line of where we can fish, and where we cant fish. Paul was making a circle set and it looked like he was pulling in alot of fish (well, we find out later he got a huge set) but the Melissa B. was clearly over the line! we are not allowed to fish there, but that didn't stop them! huh! so mark drives over there and yells at them "Your WAY over the line buddy!" and ya know what the Melissa B. said? the 'wind' blew their set over the line... well.. the wind? um.. they also make a circle set! there is not enough time for the wind to push ya over the line when your makeing a circle set! Der abschaum B.'s think they own that place! well Paul works on hauling in the set and his Skiff Man and his wife (Allen and Sherri) take the skiff over to the shore neer the boundry line, Sherri runs up there and takes acouple pictures of the Melissa B. while they were over line. they shouldent be able to get away w/ that! Paul got his set in and drove over to the Melissa B.'s set and drove right over his net! I though he was going to prop his net while they were making a set! Paul yelled over at the Melissa B. "Back haul your net assholes!" because the fish they had in their net didn't belong to them cuz they set over the line, and the fish they had were not legal. But his boat didn't prop their net and they pulled in their set anyhow. We were all pissed.

We made acouple more sets that day, but we didn't get very many fish. We took our boat and paul took his and we went around the bay to a dip in the shore to set our ancors. Uncle Mark and Billy took a nap and I went outside and took some pictures of Nuka. Nuka is such a beautiful place! I should have some uploaded soon. Then Paul took me, Allen, Scott, and David(scott was paul's lead stacker and david was paul's cork stacker) over to the beach to walk around on solid ground! it felt nice under my feet. but were were walking around out there and Scott (ooh, I dont like him.. he sends shivers down my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end when I walk by him) pulls out behind me and starts pissing right behind me, in plain view of the female (IE: me) thxfully I'm walking straight ahead and dont see anything. Der arsch. Allen told Scott to turn around when there was a female present (yay, thank you Allen!). After 10 minutes of beach walking Paul brought the skiff back over and we headed back to the boats.

The North Star, (Paul, Sherri, Allen, David, and Scott) left and we (The Poseidon) went back around the corner to keep an eye on the Dolly B. and the Melissa B., we were pretty sure after we left an there was no-one left to make sure they toed the line and fished legaly, that they would go right in and scoup out all the fish inside the line. Das arschloch! We then made a circle set got about 30 fish, then we finially left at around 6-7pm, they were going to fish eligally anyways, we we'rent going to be able to stop them. Arschloch.

Saturday(today, 30): This morning we got in at around 8:30 am and delivered our fish. We had a total of 1800lbs. it was ok... but kinda sucky for a 2 day trip... and that long drive up and back... and now I'm here, in Homer... finishing up this journal..

hope you enjoyed it!
Gabs

Hmm.. I need to look up JellyFish.. I want to know if you can eat them or not... cuz we get enough of them in the net!

Sunday(17):Lets see, i was in Tutka bay @ this time and i helped out by mowing the lawn, and helping work on the Skiff's motor. then when we were finished w/ that process Cierra and I went and jumped in the hottub. Well, i get the brilliant idea to um... go jump in the ocean... lol. Ceirra seconds that thought so we get ready and jump out of the hottub.. and walk for 5-7 minutes through the cold air to get to the ocean... then we just stand there looking into the water and contimplating on how we were going to do this.. I look @ Ceirra and tell her we should just dive in... and she refuses XD she said 'lets not..' thats when i dove into the water. !!!SPLASH!!! well, let me tell you something.. that water? IS COLD!!! i come back up to the surface and tell Ceirra "Its not cold! its actually quite nice!" and becon for her to come in.. thats when i come back out of the freezing cold... she goes in, but slowely and doesnt get her head wet :].

Monday(18): Awoke @ 5:00 and took a shower, then we went and let the little baby fishies go @ the Hatchery. then we drove back to homer, sat around, and talked to y'all homies.
Tuesday(19): got the news, Seward Fishing is opening again on wednesday for Cost Recovery! oh yay *sarcasm*. so my Uncle Mark, Cuz' Paul, his two crew, and I drove back to seward. thxfully i was in between Uncle mark and Paul instead of in the back w/ Paul's crew... lol. when we got there i took a shower and headed to the boat to sleep.
Wednesday(20): Woke up @ 5:45, Drank my Nature's Nutrition, then as the boat was headed out of the harbor went outside into the 45 degree air and put on my fashionable Orange Overalls and RainCoat. lmao! then we waited for a while but didnt see any jumpers.. then the fog rolled in. wow. it was so calm and foggy! it was beautiful.... the fog was too thick to see anything bejond the deck of the boat. when it finially started to clear we saw a jumper and went after it... and got 15 fish. THATS IT!!! ARG!!! Made Me So Mad! actually it didnt lol. i enjoy it too much to be mad at a small, incegnificent set. then we made another one where we didnt see any jumpers and got 30 fish. o_o hmm... lol. somethings wrong w/ that picture.. lmao. finially we headed back for the dock and turned in our fish @ the harbor. Thats when i find out that we are going to take the boat to Homer tomorrow. yay! we get to see if gabby gets see sick! then Cuzzin Robert asks me "You drive?" I look up from my book "yea..." "do you have a license?" In my mind in thinking 'duh' "yea..." he stops a minute and looks @ me "if my dad will let ya, could you drive my car back to homer tomorrow?" i cock my head as i contemplate it... "Yea, sure" i reply "But i dont know the way..." thats when Billy pipes up "I'll go w/ ya, i want to go home anyway to do some work around the house... i'll make sure ya dont get lost." Robert looks @ us and states "alright" problem solved... I was going to drive to homer w/ billy. knowing i probobly have a long drive in the morning i go to bed @ 9.
12:00amI wake up to mark telling someone to be careful and that i was a 'young driver'. so naturaly... since i'm the only 'she' around so i got up and brushed my teeth so i could hear more XD. well, turns out Allen is going to drive Uncle mark's truck w/ Billy, and i was going to drive behind him in Robert's Subaru. fine by me. back to sleep.
Thurdsay(21): Yesterday since we did cost recovery and barely pulled in any fish, a nice 4 hour trip. Woke up @ 5:45, Drank my Nature's Nutrition, then started driving.
The vehicle i drove back is so ugly! its a Subaru but it hugs the curves really well! i love the handling on it! the brake and gas pedels are a little touchy, but the turn radius was excelent ^_^ i enjoyed driving that thing.
My Uncle and Dave are currently driving the boat here *Homer* its a 18-20 hour trip for them. depending on the weather. well we get here @ 11:30? and from then on i've been online XD doing everything from myspace, facebook, and myyearbook to deviantart, mail, and artwork.
Friday(22):.. Has not come yet!!! yay! lol... we'll im betting i wake up.. and drink some Nature's Nutrition... then i have no clue...

yup, im in alaska... for the whole summer, i have been up here since may 18th and im up here untill August 5th. Its a summer job, I'm commercial Fishing w/ my uncle, Dave, and Billy. my job is stacking the cork line. heres how it all goes.

*picture a boat, picture a net, now picture a small boat called a Skiff tied to the back of the boat and the net* my uncle see's a Jumper (fish jumping out of the water) says 'Release!!' and ii run out and pull the line that holds the skiff onto the bigger boat and it releases it along w/ Dave. then we head off some direction and the skiff just stays put while the net is coming off the back of the boat. I wait untill all the net is 'set' and then i grab the 'lunger' from the mast and start plunging the ocean where the net is. big plunger about 8-10 ft long. the act of air bubles going down into the water makes the fishies think 'oh! seal! Run the Other Way!!!' so they run to the other side of the net where Dave, the skiff man, has another plunger and plunges over at the other side and we do this for about 30 minutes.. then my uncle closes the big circle gap around the fishies and i put the plunger away. Billy grabs the 'net line' from Dave and pulls the net off of the Skiff and attaches it to the boat. i grab the 'wind line' and attach that to the boat as well while Billy is hauling in the purse line. then we start winding up the net and it comes down off of the Block that is attached to the top og the net and the net strarts coming down. Billy grabs the led line while i handle the cork line. then we stack from another 30 minutes. then when its over i grab the skiff line, and attacht hat to the boat and were done. * i know y'all probably didnt even understand a word of this... lmao*

*looks outside* its raining here.. like usual. at lease its not real windy and we are not out on the boat... oooh.. thursday it was horrible... the wind was really bad, and it was cold, and the net was flying everywhere and trying to knock me off the boat and i could see two images runing through my head...
1. Gabby getting knocked off the boat by the swinging net as she's trying to stack it..
2. Gabby getting burried by net as she's trying to stack it... screaming 'help' but the wind is too loud and drowns out the sound... (this one isnt possible cuz Billy would see and help me out lmao.)

My location is around Seward during the weekdays and Homer during the weekends.

well, thats whats happening w. me and why im not reallying doing much online.. cuz i'm not online except for a couple minutes during the weekend. :]

miss y'all!

Gabs

Oh, and yes... i have been working alot on art.. but no way for me to get it onto here... no scanner and this computer i cant plug in my camera.