In China, it’s the Year of the Rat but here in Alaska with all the rain, it’s “Year of the Mouse.” Rats are intelligent and won’t live in Alaska. We’ve had about 4 times the usual rain and it’s the tropical stuff. So, I have mice again. Our oceans are putting more moisture into the air and that air is circulating further and further north. This makes it difficult to get my logs out. I leave Alaska in two weeks from this posting and it’s been a wet, non-productive summer with a few setbacks. But in spite of all these issues, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Let’s begin with the down-falls.
One of my first orders of business was to float nine large Spruce logs asap–before the bugs got them. Total cost was $3300! The initial $400 to cut them off the stumps which I covered in an earlier blog.
First step–hiring a landing craft to deliver an excavator. That bill was $1700 (four 15 minute stops to load and unload) and a day at the helm of the Komatsu or whatever brand the excavator was $1200–to snake them out shown here.
Total $3300 and the mill will only give me $1250 for them–so I decide to build a dock. A floating dock.
Finally out on the beach–waiting for the tide.
But what a mess!
Four hours later they’re on the beach and ready to float around the point. Our high tides in the summer at at night but fortunately it’s pretty much light all night. Alaska tides are the third highest in the world–with 26′ swings–this entire salt-chuck fills half-way up the pilings on the boat museum.
Towed them out at high tide. Yamaha’s rock!
I now have nine 20′ spruce “floaters”, 40′ of piling and the dock end which will be my old float–mounted like a “T” at the end. I will cut each spruce log in half, having 18, ten foot sections anchored with cable to the boulders on the beach. Each span will be 15′ X 4″ X 6″ Alaska Yellow Cedar beams with 2″ X 8″ AYC decking. This will give me about 300′ of dock plus an additional 8′ “T” at the end. More access. Currently I haul the boat in and out on an “outhaul” which can be a 300′ slog. And my outhaul has been vandalized by neighbors–this is Alaska politics.
Pies #5 and #6. One year I baked about 35 pies and had a waistline to prove it. Apple and peach here.
And made a bodacious venison stew. And the summer staple–Dungeness Crab:
Friends show up for dinner
The outdoor kitchen is the best room of the house.
Some years are good and others not so. This was an OK year for crab.
Pleasant ride home
The left pane of glass on my fireplace exploded showering the entire cabin with glass–even inside the piano (which I had tuned). Been relearning Claire de Lune… This is a nice rendition–mine’s not quite that polished…..yet. My summer music project.
Harry, my pet Stellar’s Jay is back and pounding on my window for his nut supply. If the lights are off, he pounds on my bedroom window. Smart birds; like rats who won’t live here. One year, I rewarded him with extra nuts and he left me a truffle as a gift. Or perhaps he simply couldn’t carry his truffle and the newfound nuts and exchanged it for what he thought was a better deal. 
My larger (east) intake blew out in the winter rains. FERC sent an inspector up to check my system–the smallest hydro system every applied for in the US. This took 11 years to complete paperwork and about 11 weeks to build and yields about 750 watts of power on a good day–er, a bad (rainy) day. I passed the inspection.
I complete the Leif restoration and launch.
And beautiful to row–It will eventually receive an engine.
I rowed it around the point and will store it in the Naust or boat museum with all the others I’ve fixed up…..
….to make room for the “Hunter.” This was a yacht tender found floating in Chatham Strait in the late 1920s and passed down through two families here in Petersburg. It sports a full deck and a Wisconsin engine–this will become the Yacht Club tender.
I think the locals used Hunter for a duck blind. It’s very well built and well over 1000 lbs. in weight. I’ll build a grid–with a roof–to store her during the winters with direct access to my net shed. That’s what these pilings are for.
Let’s see–what else did I do this summer. Performed an autopsy on the voltage regulator on my Northern Lights 6KW generator. These never go out, so NL was puzzled by the fact I couldn’t charge my starting battery. There are only three options in the differential diagnosis: bad battery, bad alternator, or bad voltage regulator. The battery was exchanged, the alternator puts out about 21VAC so it must be this regulator. Without an accurate diagnosis, you cannot effect a cure (as I always told my students).
I did some internet research and found a replacement part (#185516061) ranging between $18 and $30 but the OEM part was anywhere from $250 to $800. Well, an enquiring mind wants to know why all this price difference. Turns out–these are all manufactured at the same place in China and embedded in a rubber material so you can’t rewire them. Nor fix them. My work-around was to put a $50 NAPA charger on a dedicated circuit that trickle charges when the generator runs.
However, I still wanted to find out how Amazon could sell one for $18 (cost perhaps $9 and manufactured for about $4). I had NL send me a photograph of the replacement and the wiring matched the $18 model–red wire in the middle. I splurged on the $23 version–wired it using alligator clips to the correct colors and there was no charging output. So $23 out the door. After cornering NL on why the different wiring sequence (note the red in the middle on the replacement part), they finally sent me a used one for free just to shut me up perhaps. I’m back up and running. But something is rotten in the state of Denmark….or China…..or here at home, methinks.
The $23 part is here on the left and the OEM $700-$800 part on the right. Note the red wire is on the left on the OEM part and the middle on the after-market version. This won’t match up on the plug interface. That’s why I made up some alligator clips and “rewired” to the correct colors (there are only six wires, yet 11 ports: Black & Red (to battery), Two blues (Alternator AC input), Green = ground; and Yellow to the fuel rack. These same six colors are scrambled in the after-market version; hence the alligator clips. No luck! But the used one worked. Thank you Northern Lights–the gold standard in off-grid generation plants. I own four of these units–two on my tug and two here in Alaska. I’ve an old 12KW NL which is three phase and air cooled–a real rare relic.
Finished the relief carving on the lid on my bentwood box. Here’s the blog last year on how I built this. I also put “opercula” shells on the sides–like the Tlingit’s do; however, these I picked up on the beach in New Zealand.
I clean up my debris piles and have a summer solstice beach fire. Lots more to burn.
Remember that venison stew–it was bodacious. However, look at this stuff sold in the supermarket. No wonder we have a plethora of heart attacks in this country. I’ll stick with venison. A plethora!
And at the bottom of the barrel of poor nutrition–here is how the bad habits start (actually it’s the coke in baby bottles I saw in all the Eskimo villages). As a retired dentist, I must call out General Mills–they once bought out Eddie Bauer–on this atrocious “food.” Artificial everything–only on this one point I support RFK Jr. On the rest of his policies, he’s nuts–like Harry my pet Jay. OK–enough–Time to put in some time on the piano……
The Columbia arrives every Sunday evening. In two weeks, I’ll be on this boat southbound. Stay tuned!