July 17, 2010…A day of trying events.  Today are refrigeration unit must have decided that it had worked too hard.  It quit on us in the morning.  We made our way inside the river to the dock to remove the part and install a new one.  (Luckily there was one on shore!)   12 hours later we are good to go and have been cleared by the refrigeration specialist. 

We had not planned on leaving this late in the day because of the tide (now it’s low tide), but we needed to wait till the specialist was available.  Mind you, the tides fluctuate about 25 feet each tide at the river mouth.   So we set out for the small channel out to the bay.  Things were motoring along nicely…until…bam!  “@#*!”  We have hit a large rock.  The imact was sudden and quick.  The deckhands managed to stay on the deck and the boat came to a complete stop.  The door into the cabin came off the hinges and we are resting at a 40 degree angle.  After we all collected our thoughts, we watched to be sure no damage to the hull and no water was entering into the boat.   We were pinned between the tide exiting the river and this lovely rock…waiting for the tide to come back in and level us out.   In 2 hours we are upright and floating.  We are not taking on any water so this is good!  Now we just needed to fix the cabin door and we’re back in business. (Door hinges are NOT easy to find in Naknek.)   The hardest part of all of this is not the manual labor needed to fix things, it’s listening to your buddies on the radio catch fish while you’re not.