Off with the port stern!

Something strange afoot chez Adak.

Suddenly the urge to can fish and pickle string beans and rip off the stern port corner to excise rot. To do something about previously-tolerable leaks. Make things warm and waterproof. What flew before flies no more. It might have something to do with a woman leaving her life in Colorado to move here to Alaska.

Cal feels it too. He’s been shedding less and doesn’t drool so much when he eats. A little more patient in the mornings for his dockside walk.

It has been work. Little time to write or go out. That port side in the galley – the closet with the washer and dryer and general catch-all for tools – needed to go. You could feel it while cooking, wafts of dampness huffing as if some cold-breathed monster inhabited space. Which is more or less accurate considering the amount of living mold that existed in there. The stairs leading up to the stern topside deck functioned like a sophisticated rain catchment system. Water had been pouring into the cargo hold, kept off the freezer by a section of corrugated fiberglass. Rot through the bulwarks beneath the galley, buckling the oak flooring. When you poked the wall crumbled. If it wasn’t for the galvanized tin in the closet we would have had much more water in there.

We started by destroying the corner. The wood released a rich mossy scent, turning quickly to the consistency of cornflakes left in milk. A huge pile of boat dung at our feet. Thankfully along with the Ebb Tide, our new – in a manner of speaking – fishing boat we got a 4×4 F250 which we use to haul away trash from the work float. The truck works great save for the frame being rusted out. It threatens to buckle at any moment, but lends a healthy drama to cruising about town.

Skiff after skiff of rot and debris we hauled away. We built forms over the beams and filled them with concrete and Fix-All, first sprinkling the wet area with Tim-bor and painting it with Jasco, a nasty green liquid probably responsible for why I coudn’t recall for the life of me Beatrice’s name in Much Ado about Nothing the other night. I swear as this boat begins to make sense and I slowly wrest control from the Gods at least slowing its inexorable crumble back into the water I grow stupider in the conventional sense. If this day-to-day work has taught me anything it’s that book-learning is a skill and muscle as well. After going on ten year of carpentry I fear I have lost completely the art of conversation and quick reference. That said, it’s fascinating to watch it morph into something else, although I’m not sure what.

Any case day after day of just going at it beneath a tent of tarps. Starting at the bottom rooting out the rot and building upward. Thank goodness for the 9” oak ribs of the boat, the 3” cedar planking. She won’t go down easy the Dak. And once you hack away to good wood, you’re in em.

As we worked Thom and I made the decision to move the stern door to the port side and create a mudroom. Put a Solatube in overhead and a window where the door used to be. The sun rises these days round 4 I guess. Up and moving at six. Try and get a couple hours of writing in. Then to work, with Thom picking up the trade quickly, each of us voicing ideas and variably shooting them down.

Meanwhile filling in with other jobs. Here’s the Yoga Union after we did the floors. And a couple other small gigs to keep the money flowing in. Marine plywood – 76.99 a piece. For the love.

And we gots to eat – Rick and Darcie have been around, we’re doing our best to enjoy Rick’s perfect trailer home by the ocean before he loses it. Went out the day after fishing for a bbq and s’mores. Oh lordy, with the sun setting.

And breaking free when possible to forage. For a while there going up Gavan at least a couple times a week and getting dinner salad – twisted stalk and violets and licorice root and devil’s club buds. dMade syrup out of spruce tips which hardened into a candy when I boiled it too long. Oh and the garden!! That failed. The ravens loved all the hops I mixed in, and the soil took on a ton of water. So all my starters, grown from seed, nursed I tell you, met their sudden end.

So covered the whole thing with black plastic to let it dry out. Mixed in some alfalfa meal and dietonic rock or something like that, a water absorbent. And raked it all in then built a cold frame from shower doors. We’ll see how this grand experiment works out. It’s the only way I know how to learn – by messing up over and over and over. I will tell you that everyone in the community garden has been so kind – perhaps a symptom of pity – with their help and advice.

And finding time for straightout stomach-turning fun, although not in the sun. At the all-you-can eat Dungy crab fest we set up a camp stove on a cooler of beers and went to town. Must have eaten two sticks of butter. I KNOW Cal ate two sticks of butter when we stopped in the P-Bar for an after-dinner kahlua and coffee. The box was in shreds, and Cal was throwing up the rest of the night and morning. That’ll learn em.

And did our own fishing. Went out on Sound Judgement over to Biorka and slaughtered some kings, which are now in my freezer. Got some ling cod here near the breakwater and of course the rockfish bonanza. Need to finish all the deer in the freezer, make a big stew or such.

Finally last Saturday put together a Hot Havana Nights at the Larkspur, attended by all my students at the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. What fun! Had a great crowd and got a great big rueda going on and danced our hearts out. And of course the radio show last Sunday for Father’s Day – Rick and Xander stopped by with their kids, along with Lauren Kennedy who has just about the sweetest radio voice. If she and Holly Keene ever teamed up – oh my, watch out radioland.

Headed out to Nerko’s shop to run the caprail my buddy Dustin got from standing dead cedar on his enormous tilting bandsaw. Great shop, great tool, great caprail. Just yesterday heated on the stove boiled linseed oil and turpentine and got the rail coated.

And such is life as we speak. Chillin on the Adak on a Sunday with building blocks a puzzle and instruments. Having a bbq on the back deck with folks.

Tomorrow I fly to Seattle and search out my love at the airport. We board the ferry on the 22nd duct tape our tent to the cement deck and make the trip north up the Inside Passage. Just over four days of no internet, no phone. Enforced meditation. Is is far-fetched that someday soon people will pay for such isolation?

And step over the cedar threshold I built in Mike Nerko’s shop to our sweet home afloat. One foot in front of the other.