Heading out to begin dredging.
Carburetor problems with the small boat lead to a long, wet and cold tow back to the Port of Nome.
Did I mention that it was a wet ride!
Cleaning out the slues. The dredge system worked great, but due to my lack of experience in operating the nozzle of the dredge we only had two hours of productivity, the rest of our time was spent wrestling with 30' of 6" diameter hose with 10% packed full of rocks (The dredge sucked so much material it plugged up, I kept the nozzle down and watched the ocean floor pour into it)
We had are asses handed to us today! The seas were mild, Rodney and I (the divers) fought the currents as the boat pulled the end of the nozzle all around the bottom of the sea floor (I muse how most objects retain there weight in water...except for the diver!). Visibility was good but at times from our dredging plume we could not see our hands in front of our mask's. All and all this was a successful day...we got material to process, first run of the dredge equipment worked as intended and...well...we finally did what we came to the Bering Sea to do.
