Dutch Harbor

During my briefing last week I stayed at the company apartment in Seattle. I was the last of those in the briefing to head to Alaska. My flight was on Tuesday at 7:55 and it did not take off until after 10, so I was very late getting in to Anchorage. I went right to bed at the company apartment in Anchorage and had only a couple of hours to rest the next morning before I was headed back to the Airport. This time headed for Dutch Harbor. There were four of us from Saltwater Inc. and when we got to the air port there was a group of observers from another company in front of us in line. I grabbed a quick bite to eat in the airport and then walked out on the runway to climb into the plane. It had propellers and the ceiling was just to low for me to stand up straight. We had good weather for flying but landed in King Salmon and again at Cold Bay to get fuel, apparently they were trying to get more passenger and baggage weight on the plane by cutting down on the amount of fuel they put in the tanks.
After landing Keith and I set out to find our boats, which are owned by the same company, and were together. We got in a taxi and headed out to OSI dock, but on the way the driver radioed ahead and found out that the boats were not at the dock. So we got out at one of the processing plants and made some phone calls, we couldn't call long distance from that phone and didn't get any information fr0m the local numbers we had. We called the cab to come back for us and the driver suggested that the boats might be at the spit dock because they had docked there before. So we went out to the far end of the road and still didn't see the boats. There was a whole group of fishermen waiting for a ride into town so they all piled into the Taxi van and we turned around. We got out at the hotel and finally got a call through to Saltwater, who got us a room at the bunk house, one more short taxi ride over there.
The Grand Aleutian hotel has a seafood buffet, so we ate our fill of crab legs and salmon for dinner. And then went to the bar. There were more observers in the bar that night than I had ever seen all in one place.
In the morning we called back to the office and they got back to us when they had contacted the boats. We loaded up our things and went out to the City Dock. Keith got on to the America No. 1 which was tied to the dock, and I had to get my baskets of gear and baggage across that boat to the Intrepid, which was tied to the America No. 1.
The Intrepid looks like a nice boat, at least it is cleaner than the boat I was on last year. I am in a very small bunk room. when I have one shoulder against the bunk the other is against the shelf on the opposite wall, but I suppose the bunk is long enough to lay down on and that is all that really matters.

Seattle

I arrived in Seattle on January 6th, for a briefing on changes to the regulations and data collection in the Alaska fisheries. First Kristie Dokes picked me up from the air port and I spent the day Sunday with her and in the afternoon we met Cathy Harmon. Both Kristie and Cathy are good friends of mine from the Peace Corps.
The four days of the briefing were not too bad, although a bit boring at times. I was dissapointed that we did not get to do the cold water training in lake washington this year. It was the highlight of last years training to get in to the big red dry suits and float around and practice climbing into life rafts. Instead the time slot was used to learn how to fill out a new form and to assign personal locator beacons to all observers. It was good to see a few observers that I knew from last year and there were some more good people that I met this year, and with any luck I will run into them from time to time if we are in port at the same time.
The people I did not expect to see were Lydia and Emily, I got in touch with them after I got a random email from another highschool friend. It was really coincedental that I got that email when I happened to be in Seattle and could do something with the information. It was good to get back in touch with people I havn't seen or heard from in about 9 years.