The end

Well, I figure that it is time to give this blog a formal ending. The trip is over, so the log must end too.

I will be going back at some point. I don't know about this summer but maybe the summer of 2009. We'll see what kind of schedule school will dictate.

So to everyone who read this over the past 4 months or so, thank you for paying attention, and I hope you were at least mildly entertained.

-Jack

Almost time

Less then 8 hours left now until liftoff. Everything other than my computer is packed and ready to be hauled off to the Cordova airport. I'm really hoping I don't have to recheck my bags in Anchorage, because I am only scheduled to have an hour layover. Oh well, we'll see soon enough I suppose.

It sounds like Ensley will be picking me up from the airport in Jacksonville and take me back to Gainesville to begin spending all of my newfound money. The trip will be sponsored by the parents, so the plan is to eat at a restaurant for every possible meal. What would be really great is if Ensley could manage to get her hands on an extra ticket for the Gators football game on Saturday so that we could go.

Sunday night she will return me to Jacksonville where the boat should be docked at the Navy Marina, waiting for my return. It will be nice to be home.

-Jack

I'm done

Yep, I'm done working for the summer. The last few days have been filled with scrubbing anything that needed it on the Jonathan S.

Megan came over from Cordova on the 7th and stayed with us. Andrew saw an opportunity to get some extra work done and put her on the payroll. So she and I got to take a romantic trip into the oily dirty engine bay to scrub it, and another voyage to clean out the skiff. Good times.

So Monday we caught the ferry back to Cordova and since then we've been tying up all the loose ends before we leave on tomorrow.

Yesterday I went to the bank with Carmen and she transferred something like $21800 into my bank account. It made me happy. Right now I'm about to go to the tax office here in town and get all of that business taken care of, and then I think all my tasks in Cordova will be done.

Less then 2 days now until I am flying out.

-Jack

Valdez again

Well it's all over. The whole season is done with.

We got done fishing silvers after only 1 day. The fish were already becoming flushed and old, so we decided to just call it quits and come into the harbor. Luke left the next morning to head back home, leaving me and Andrew to scrub, scrub, and scrub some more. That's seriously all we've been doing the past 2 days. I got to delve into the fish hold yesterday and scrub lovely fish residue out. My journey into the pits significantly improved when I came upon a 10 day old fish, rotting and brown in a tiny nook. The smell was less then fantastic, to say the least.

That was not the last rotting fish for me though, oh no. Today was went through the net, washing it out with a couple hoses. Along the way there were some truly excellent examples of dead rotting fish. Just so everyone knows, these carcasses are the remains of the Valdez run that ended in the middle of July, so they had some time to sit on the bottom and become really ripe. I could tell when we needed to stop and pick a fish out just by smell alone.

So tomorrow we will get the boat hauled out and get to work painting the bottom and doing some fiberglass repair. That's probably about all we will get done before I leave for Cordova on the 10th. I don't really know what all we need to do though, but I'm not sure Andrew does either. We'll see.

Ok well my battery is dying, so it's time for me to head back to the boat and take a stab at making hamburbers. I am making no promises.

-Jack