Training - part 2

Hello again, so training has been going for two weeks now and we have only half a week to go until training is all done and it will be time to start heading out on the fishing boats for real.

Before I describe the training let me digress quickly and say that the surfing has been amazing. Ok so yes I am more excited about the surfing than anything else, but the training has still been a blast.

Most of the training has been learning the sampling methods, doing lots and lots of statistics, and learning fish species after fish species. But in the last few days it has been less math and more hands on safety training. The weather has cooperated nicely for this and we have been outside most of the time.

The first photo shows us squeezing into a 6 person life raft and seeing how snug it is. The next photo shows some of the fire fighting techniques that we have been learning. Then there is the all important survival suit, this is a 7mm neoprene dry suit which is designed to keep you warm in the frigid water, in the event of a boat sinking. We have learned to get into them in under a minute in the dark on land, and under 3 minutes in the water.

So next week is exam time, we have a 3 hour fish identification exam on Tuesday and then a 3 hour final written exam on Wednesday. So its time to study, well maybe after another surf.

Training begins

So on Sunday I drove down to Newport, Oregon to start two and a half weeks for observer training. Observing what you ask? Well here is the job details, I go out on the commercial fishing boats based out of Astoria and basically sample all the fish that they would just normally throw back over the side and not bring into port for sale. This is to get an estimate of how much, and what species, of fish are being caught but never seen on land.

Ok so this training covers basically two fronts, how to identify the 160 odd species of fish off the Oregon coast, and how to do it safely. Safety is a huge issue, as anyone who is currently watching the news, about an Astoria fishing boat sinking yesturday.











So ask yourself, what is the first thing Shaun would do went arriving in a new coastal community? If you answered got surfing, well you are right. I found a great spot, donned my thick wetsuit, for the 46 degree water and surfed until dark. That was Sunday, sadly Monday morning saw a huge (far to big for me) roll in and I have not surfed since, but I did head out to the end of the Harbor jetty to watch a coast guard cutter head out to sea in waves that were higher than it antenna tower (probably 35-40ft).

The first two days of class have basically been an introduction to everything, and I will keep you posted to how the training progresses.

Cheers for now.

Oh the pictures, this is the view from my hotel room window, and if you are wondering why I am not surfing in the last photo, that wave would have a 30 ft face and you would need a jetski to tow you into it.

Last catch up - Bora till now

OK well after Bora, it was off to Astoria, Oregon. This was were my new Job was based so I wanted to look around.

First stop - find the highest place around to get a good view, this happened to be the Astoria Column, situated on the top of the hill, then having over 200 stairs to the top it got you up there, and what a view! We even bought a 70c bulsa airplane from the info both to fly off the top.

So then the next important stop - find the best Fish n Chips, and let me just say, wow.

Then it was off to look at the real estate of the local area. I figured that as Astoria has grown over 20% in each of the last two years buying a fixer place might not be a bad idea, and let me just say we say some fixers, they even scared Craden, which is saying something if you say his last place before it was fixed.

We wanted to look in Astoria but also across the 4 mile bridge on the Washington state side of the Columbia river as Washington has not state income tax, and 9% adds up.

So we looked at many homes, but as yet nothing has been the right fit, although I did put an offer on one and got rejected. So I guess its renting for a while and we will see what comes along.

So that was Astoria, I then go to spend a nice quiet week at Mum's place in Portland before Mum and I drove up to visit with Craden, Jess, Sky, Debbie, and Ben in Seattle. This was my first visit to Bainbridge Island and I fell in love with it.

Of course Craden and I had to go on some sort of adventure while I was there so this time it was sea kayaking in the middle of winter. No it wasn't to bad, it only rained for the second half of the paddle and the three mile run back to the car after the paddle but it was amazing. We paddled out to a little rock covered in Corm0rants, then then around to a salmon farm which had resident Sea Lions to play with. Yes it was a great paddle.

Oh the last photo needs some explaining. Its the back of a adult male Sea Lion (probably 8ft long and 600lbs) diving under my kayak. In the bottom left corner you can see my boat. This was not zoomed in, its 3 feet away.

Well that was last weekend and this weekend saw the start of my training for my new job, so by now some of you are probably wondering what my new job is, well you will just have to look for the next post.

See you there

More catchup - the Bora beach house

Ok well after I arrived back from NZ, Mum, Craden, and I headed for the Bora beach house, this is a holiday house owned by the Bora Architectural firm, and it so happens that Jesse's cousin Tim works for Bora. The house is located overlooking the Neskowin, Oregon beach, and it was stunning.

So it was mid January when we went out and coastal Oregon and Washington had recieved rain on 27 of the last 28 days. Not only that but they had already exceeded January's monthly rainfall by about 12 inches! So Craden and I get this idea (sorry Bobby and John A) to go and boat (whitewater kayak) this creek that comes into Neskowin. Just to clarify here since doing this I have never found any reference in any guidebook about running this creek. Anyway so there is a little farm road which winds up the side of it and we scout the creek from the car, I not that there is one sizable creek-wide strainer (a pile of debree which water can pass through but not a large object, i.e You!) So other than that it does not look to bad, so we decide to go. Just a quick side not, its raining again, about 40 degrees out, Craden is wearing dish washing gloves as he has no kayaking gloves, and its would 2 hours till dark. OK so we convince mother to drive up and drop us off, we tell her that the run should take about 45 minutes, and see should stop at every possible spot she can see the creek to watch us go past, but if she waits to long at any one spot carry on down in case she missed us going past. Oh I should mention here that other that taking these photos when we left, she did not see us again for 2 and a half hours.

So we put on the creek and around the first corner there is a creek-wide strainer, so out of the boats we get, hike around it, back in out boats and off again, and around the next corner, guess what, yes another strainer. In all we had to get out about a dozen times, all for very sketchy creek-wide strainers. We didn't make it around all of them, twice Craden missed the eddies and got pinned, I would jump out of my boat and scrabble across the logges to pull his boat up out of the pin, and once I made the grave error of thinking we could slide over a single downed branch, I flipped and Craden swam.

But here is the good news, we had a blast the whole way down, we were not cold, well not to bad, and it was only really dark at the end, when it had mellowed out. There was tones of fun waves and holes to surf and the scenery was spectacular.

The rest of our stay at the Bora house was nice and quiet, eating good food (thanks mum), reading, doing puzzles, and talking.

Ok in the next post ill get you all caught up.