Home at Last!

My trip was amazing! I loved all of it. I was on a tendering boat, which is the boat that the fisherman sell their fish to so they don't have to go to town. The work was pretty hard, but not too bad. There were 4 people on the boat: the skipper and 3 deckhands. Our hours were 6am to 11pm but we usually had breaks in between boats. However, there were 10 straight days that we actually worked from about 5:30am to 12:30 or 1 am. The average boat had about 600 fish. The biggest load we had was 1100! The fisherman would load a container with salmon that were already gutted and cleaned, we would bring it to our boat with this crane-like hardware and dump it onto our working table. They would fill up anywhere from 4 to 12 of these containers. We then had to examine each fish to make sure they were cut right, they didn't have any shark or seal bites, they had minimal scale loss, and they were still fresh. Any fish that had any of those things went into a box that would be made into cat food. Then we determined which type, there are 5, of salmon it was. Then we weighed them and sorted them first by type, then by weight. When all the fish were sorted we packed them into totes. We had to stack them in a row on their backs and then pack each of the bellies full of ice. We did as many rows as we could until the tote was full. On days we didn't pack fish we either unloaded and reloaded with empty totes or cleaned. Some of the days were super slow and we got to explore surrounding beaches. I think that was my favorite part. And when we travelled from city to city we all had to take turns driving the boat. My shift was usually 9pm to 1 am. I love driving the boat. It was super cold, it rained A LOT, and we all smelled like fish and were covered in scales all the time but everything was totally worth it.

I took about 300 pictures so it was hard to pick which ones to share, so there is kind of a lot in this post :]

Leaving Sitka

Karla, Chris, and Me on my first day of work

Our boat, the Deer Harbor II

On the beach in Warren Cove

Me and Karla on our way to Craig

Sunrise at 3 am!

Working on a small load of fish

Bouncing on the bouys used to keep boats from hitting un when they tie up to us

I won the race!

Sunset in Mite Cove

The sun finally coming out from the clouds on a really rainy day

After tripping and falling off the edge of the boat. Luckily we weren't moving very fast and got a hold of a random rope before they realized I fell. haha.

The actual water that was in my boot!

Borrowing a fisherman's kayak.

I have a fish on each finger!

A cruise ship we parked next to

Goddard Hot Springs!!!

Chris, Karla, and me in the hot springs.

A sunset with Mt. Edgecumbe, the volcano on the left.

A homemade boat out of the totes we packed fish into

we couldn't move very fast so i decided to work as the propeller and kick and it worked!

It worked even better when two of us kicked!

A whale tail!!

Karla and I decided that we could both fit into a one man kayak

Karla tried to get in first but chickened out

So i successfully got in first

Then Karla tipped us over

and even more over

Then she pulled herself to the ladder, leaving me in the kayak full of water

After I fought my way out of the kayak, Karla didn't want to share the ladder

we watched the kayak sink until it was completely vertical before we realized we needed to pull the plug on the side under water. so it was my job to swim under the freezing cold water because Karla can't swim (notice her life jacket)

And afterwards we were freezing cold!!

Exploring in the forest!

There were tons of waterfalls. probably because it hardly ever stopped raining.

Rock climbing was against the rules, but I've never been much of a rule follower anyway.

Whale!!

I found some missionaries!!

and a boat with my name!