Fires and Fire Ants

Posted on by David under anchoring, living aboard, The Crew, wildlife

We recently arrived at one of our favorite, idyllic anchor spots. It’s a spot that is sheltered from wind and has reliable stretches of warm dry weather–perfect for varnishing. Our arrival this year was about a week too soon because the temperatures have been way too hot (upper 90’s F with a couple days over 100F) for either sanding or varnishing. As a result, we have spent time on the computers interspersed with two or three leaps overboard into the very pleasant 78F water to cool off. Night time temperatures cool off nicely, but the ship’s cat has been a real complainer–her thick Norwegian Forrest cat fur being just too much for the local conditions and she has never been one for swimming.

The first sign of real trouble was a huge dragon fly that I had earlier admired on the fore-deck was later covered in and being consumed by ants. I threw the carcass overboard and hosed down the deck and regretted not taking a picture of the big dragon fly before its demise. Then Brenda noticed some ants down below one evening, and more the next evening. Brenda remarked that a visiting friend, Milly, had mentioned ant problems on their boat last year. The pieces were beginning to click together. We wondered where the ants could be coming from. In the light of day, there were no ants on any shore lines. Ants can’t swim, so we wondered if a few were dropping from the over hanging tree limbs or being carried by the wind. We didn’t yet realize that the ants on Milly’s and our boat were no ordinary ants.

The two mile stretch of water on either side of where we anchor is a posted 5 mile-per-hour (mph) no wake zone to protect the embankments. It is one of just a few areas in the California Sacramento Delta that still has large trees lining the banks and excessive wakes erode the soil around tree roots and leads to fallen trees. During our varnish-fest stay here, we feel we are doing a great public service by giving speed boats another reason to slow down to something near the posted 5 mph limit; the drivers may not be literate because before and after passing us, many are going closer to 50 mph and throwing out huge wakes. But, where the speed limit signs don’t work, a sense of courteous behavior sometimes does.

The waterway is a little wider where we anchor, but it is important to keep Mahdee near the embankment so that she is out of the way of passing boats. Further, to ensure that wind or wakes of law breaking boaters (without even a sense of what’s courteous) don’t throw Mahdee onto the rocky embankment, we usually have four lines holding us in position; the bow anchor, a stern anchor, a bow shore line and a stern shore line. It takes a little effort to get everything right, but with two of us on board we can get secured pretty fast and we sleep well at night.

Our friend Milly sails solo and so I volunteer to run the shore lines for her boat when she visits and anchors nearby. This year, when we were tying up Mahdee, I recognized the tree trunk from a previous visit, but initially thought it was a tree that I had once tied Mahdee to. The appearance of ants was a clue that perhaps this was the tree trunk that I had tied Milly to last year.

Then Brenda developed a nasty painful blistery welt and I remarked that I hadn’t seen such a welt since we lived in Texas and had fire ants in the yard and eventually the house too–a nightmare. We thought that fire ants couldn’t be this far north in California. I remembered seeing that they had been seen and reported in the LA/San Diego areas, but they couldn’t be this far north near San Francisco and Sacramento–could they?

Some online searching revealed that fire ants love a drought and that the current California drought has enabled the northward spread of these awful creatures. California has classified fire ants as an invasive species and they are so destructive that some jurisdictions will quarantine an area, but fighting the spread of aggressive fire ants is a losing proposition. It was clear that not only were we once again in fire ant country, we had tied up right next to a big nest of them and they were in our virtual back yard–there goes the neighborhood.

In the video–a hint of things to come: I’m securing the shore line in entirely the wrong spot. The high crotch in a big tree seen towards the end of the video ultimately ended up being our safe-from-all shore anchor spot.

Shore anchor from Schooner People on Vimeo.

It was after dark and the cat’s water bowl was swarming with ants and she was clearly very distressed. I went outside with a flashlight and discovered that the bow shore-line was now twice its normal one inch diameter, thick and brown with an awe-inspiring invading army–now I was distressed too. We went to general quarters and locked down the boat. Our goal was to make it until morning when the ants would go into hiding from the heat and we could see well enough to reposition the shore line away from any fire ant nests.

Brenda prepared a bowl of boric acid and I sprayed and washed the deck and lines to knock off as many ants as possible. We left a dry segment of line where it came aboard the boat and coated that with powdered boric acid. We surrounded the water bowl with more powdered boric acid and put her food bowl in a moat using a baking pan of water. Poor kitty spent a miserable night in the heat and confused about how to flip her dry food out of the moated bowl and onto the floor which she does before eating each morsel. She whined and complained all night so that Brenda could hardly sleep and in the morning the moat around the food bowl was full of soggy uneatable cat food. I was worried that while sleeping, I would roll over onto a string of these biting ants and be covered in painful welts. No one aboard Mahdee was happy.

First order of business the next morning was to relocate the bow shore line. Fortunately, the wind was blowing from Mahdee’s stern. I untied Mahdee from the tree trunk and was very careful not to disturb the sleeping ants in the now obvious nest. This stretch of slough has lots of trees to choose from so I picked the biggest tree and put the line way above ground level.

We are still left with a huge, but diminishing number of ants on the boat which are now cut off from their home nest. As we find them, we are killing and washing them overboard using the deck/anchor wash-down. With relaxed security measures, the ship’s cat is returning to her happy normal self and so are the humans.

In keeping with current events, I am now doing periodic “border patrols” to ensure our shore lines are not breached again and Brenda knows why Milly hasn’t been back to visit this year–she is reluctant to accept my misguided helpful actions of tying her boat up to a fire ant nest. The following morning, during a patrol I found the deck covered in black and white grit–another mysterious first. It turns out that a middle of the night wind-shift carried ash and soot from the devastating wildfires and coated our decks. We realized that the same drought that has enabled the fire ants to move here is also enabling horrific fires–a real double whammy for the area.

Wildlife Photo (In)opportunities

Posted on by David under Musings, photos, wildlife

One goal during our Alaska trip was to take lots of nature photos. We were especially excited by the prospect of brown bear (aka grizzly), whale and bald eagle sightings and photos. I can now say that we were generally disappointed by either the frequency of sightings, or the quality of my photos. Part of the problem can be attributed to poor wildlife lens availability. At least that’s my main excuse. During the first few days of our trip north, we had an additional crew member who is an avid amateur bird photographer. She seriously indulges her hobby and has the lens to prove it. That lens alone would ordinarily require most people to make a choice between owning a house or that lens–both would require a similar mortgage. I am also the first to admit that equipment is not everything. In fact, most people with that killer lens get far less use of it than our guest Sharon who is nearly constantly using her camera. Her dedication combined with the right equipment results in some stunning wildlife photos.

For our trip, priorities dictated that we use our resources to acquire things like radar, charts and fuel for the engine. A wildlife-friendly lens dropped off the bottom of the pre-trip purchase list. Nonetheless, we figured that spending months in Alaska and BC Canada would present opportunities for some good wildlife photos even without a killer lens. Overall, I think that has proven true, but there are two stories here. First, regarding brown bears–we now joke about the very existence of the beast up there given an absence of sightings on our trip. We now realize that at the time of our arrival in early April, most of the alleged brown bears would still have been snoozing–aka hibernating. That is a pretty good excuse for not venturing outside of the lair for a photo op.

Our trip into Misty Fjords National Monument was supposed to put us in the middle of brown bear heaven and yet we saw none. The single other cruising boat we passed during our week-long visit claims to have seen a brown bear immediately after passing paths with us. In the last fjord, we passed up staying on a park-service mooring because we were feeling overwhelmed with the beauty and decided it was time to keep moving. That other boat stayed the night on said mooring where their alleged sighting occurred. I can’t tell if they were messing with us or serious.

Our first probable brown bear sighting happened about a month later. We were anchored in the guide-book perfect spot in Chapin Bay. Chapin Bay is on Admiralty Island which is also known as “Fortress of the Bears” because of its exceptionally high concentration of brown bears. So, I was anticipating bears. Lots of bears. Late in the day, a cruising trawler arrived and tried, but couldn’t squeeze into that guide-book perfect location where we were–not enough room for two large boats. They headed towards the end of the cozy little bay and as the trawler got smaller and smaller in the distance, we realized that Chapin was not as cozy as we had initially thought–it’s very big. Just before dark, I saw movement on shore towards the end of the bay where the trawler was. Using the binoculars, I could just make out a brown fuzzy butt walking away. That was not even worth picking up the camera for. Brenda still doubts that it was a bear sighting.

Many bear-less anchorages later, we were near Hoonah waiting for just the right moment to zip over to Glacier Bay National Park so that we would arrive there at the start of our park permit period. We saw something moving on the “near by” shoreline. Getting out the binoculars, we could see that the little brown speck was probably not so small. The grass around the brown furry thing was so tall, however, that the scale would be right for that brown thing to be a squirrel, but the shape was all wrong for a squirrel. We decided two things: first, that size and distances in Alaska are extremely hard to judge–stuff that seems to be nearby and small is actually way distant and huge; and second, that this was actually one of the famous Alaska brown bears. I took some photos, but I knew that they would be classic in the sense that any viewer would have to be coached “see that little brown speck there” … “no over there” … “that is an enormous brown bear and that green stuff around the bear–its grass, only its at least 6 feet tall” and I caught it all in this photo only no one will know unless I coach them. Well with a Sharon lens, that photo could have been good.

As time in Alaska wore on, I became increasing concerned that I had no decent bear photos and that was due to having only had one marginal bear sighting. We had a bear bell which is a noise maker that one should wear when walking in the woods where bear are known to exist. Bears with their notoriously poor eye sight might inadvertently stumble upon a human whereas if said human is wearing a jingly bell, the bear will head off in another direction long before coming into visual range of the human. Since bad bear encounters can be really bad, the idea is to avoid all encounters. But, I wanted to see and photograph a bear, and I was increasing becoming suspect that there were any bears to be seen. So I would go off on walks without the bell and with my camera ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. We also took Mahdee to places that bears were known to haunt. Taku Harbor has a pier that we tied Mahdee up to which has a warning that bears may walk out onto the pier and even board boats to get things they want–like food or garbage. We don’t want a desperate bear on Mahdee so we are not stupid enough to leave out food. Shortly after our arrival there was a commotion about a distant brown speck and one of the other boats launched a dingy to go investigate. Other than that speck in the binoculars, there were no bears. So, we next went back to Admiralty Island with its famous population of brown bears. Several days at an isolated anchorage which to my un-bear eyes seemed to be bear heaven resulted in no further sightings.

At the other end of the wildlife sighting spectrum are the bald eagles. I can recall when seeing a then-rare bald eagle was a life altering event. I confess to being a little jaded after living and canoeing around our nation’s capital which was noted at the time for having one of the healthiest recovering bald eagle populations in the country. Still, I was unprepared for the sheer numbers of bald eagles in Alaska. Up there, they seem to outnumber crows and black birds and if it can be believed, are even more annoying.

Actually, they are more than just annoying. Alaskans can be divided into two groups: those that are really worried about it, or who have already lost a pet cat or small dog to an eagle versus those who insist that eagles have plenty of “natural” food and would never go after a pet. There are so many eagles in Alaska that I am convinced that the population numbers have way overshot the sustainable level and that something like a food shortage is imminent for eagle population control–especially given their federally protected status. Given that belief, we limited our cat Beryl’s access to the deck for times when Brenda or I were also on deck as an eagle deterrent. Even so, we almost lost Beryl to a bald eagle at Swanson’s harbor.

Brenda had cat watch but was on the dock talking to the owners of an adjacent fishing vessel. Beryl has always tended to hide/sit under the canoe when alone on deck. From under the canoe Beryl likes to watch what is happening. When Brenda or I come near, she waltzes out from under the canoe and is happy to be around our feet without the canoe overhead. Prior to this trip I though this was unfounded cat paranoia. On this particular day, Brenda was on the dock and I was in the charthouse when a bald eagle came swooping right at Mahdee. My first thought wow what an amazing picture this would be, but that once again, the camera was too far away from me to get in time. Then I realized what was really happening. Before I could even move in reaction, the eagle veered away passing just over Mahdee’s gunnels. I ran out the door to make sure Beryl was OK and she was still sitting under the edge of the canoe. I don’t know if she saw the eagle or not, anticipated any danger or not. I do know now that the eagle’s last instant veering off was because the eagle suddenly saw the small black amsteel removable guard wires/life lines on Mahdee that were between it and Beryl and there wasn’t room for a bird as big as that eagle to get between the guard wires to reach the cat. We are now very vigilant to ensure the guard wires are up when Beryl is on deck and that the human with cat watch duty is closer to Beryl. Unfortunately for her, Beryl didn’t get as much deck time after that incident, but we didn’t want to lose her.

Despite the fact that bald eagles are becoming nearly as populous as cockroaches, everyone still wants a great bald eagle photo. I read in the news during our visit that there were two midwestern visitors who ventured out onto an alluvial mud-flat for a bald eagle photo. One man sunk into the mud and became trapped so that the coast guard had to rush a rescue boat to the scene in advance of the incoming tide that threated to drown the stuck man–all for that bald eagle photo. The glut of bald eagles and a fear of one getting Beryl had tempered my immediate enthusiasm for an eagle photo. Nonetheless, I did want a good bald eagle photo to commemorate the trip.

Bald eagles, however, are clever at avoiding portraits. They seem to know how far away to stay so that my camera will only resolve a dark blur. They use their piercing eye to note when the camera is put away or out of reach and then, they swoop in and do amazing acrobatics and dart off before anyone can get a camera pointed their way. Nowhere was this more evident than in Taku Harbor where a bald eagle was sitting on one of the most distant pilings making up the pier where Mahdee was moored along with a large recreational trawler. I was sitting in the cockpit when the bald eagle swooped towards me and plucked a fish from the water just 50 feet away. I knew that any attempt to dive for my camera was futile even though it was only about 5 feet away. I decided to just enjoy the moment. A woman on the trawler, however, grabbed her camera and spun to get the shot and the eagle flew off to its distant piling top to eat. We both figured the show was over and she put down the camera. The eagle once again came between our two boats and snagged another fish. The woman on the trawler spun to get another photo and the eagle spun off in an evasive course that took it back to the piling while avoiding the camera. I again thought about getting my camera, but knew that the eagle had eaten two fish and had to be full. Wrong. Again it came at me for a third fish and later a fourth. I don’t know how many fish that eagle could have eaten because a shore-party of hikers returned to the pier scaring off the eagle from its glutinous perch.

Every time I was excited about an eagle photo I had taken, Brenda and I would display it on the big monitor and see the brown patch with the white–the white was a signature feature of a bald eagle. We would blow up the photo until the brown and white was big and blurry and Brenda would console me by saying that my lens just isn’t a Sharon lens and that I need not be disappointed. My acquiescence to the diabolical cleverness of eagle camera awareness certainly resulted in several lost photo opportunities even considering my modest lens. I like to think I got the upper hand on two occasions. The first was shortly after leaving Juneau when an eagle decided that Mahdee’s main mast was the perfect moving vantage point to hunt from. I came out of the hatch which was directly under the eagles butt–probably an eagle blind spot–and got some photos of an unconcerned bird with its claws dug into my precious weather station staring down at me while I snapped some pictures. Actually, I am not sure who had the upper hand there.

The second event, however, was more in my favor. We were tied up to Papkes Landing in the middle of the Wrangell Narrows which was a great staging spot for us to take advantage of an ebb tide which would occur at first light the next morning. I was in the chart house when a bald eagle landed on a piling next to the boat. To be fair, that eagle could not have been expecting us there. I am pretty sure the locals didn’t want us there because everyone we spoke to told us we would be hard aground at low tide. Odd since I knew we would have 2-3 feet so I am pretty sure transient boaters are discouraged from stopping there. Thus, the bald eagle wasn’t expecting anyone aboard Mahdee. I slid open the hatch, poked my head out and got a couple of photos before the bald eagle realized its predicament and flew off. Finally a bald eagle photo that wasn’t all blurry–a clear victory for me.

In general, it was tough getting close enough to wildlife for a good photo with my limited lens. I knew that was going to be a challenge before starting on this adventure. Whales and birds where plentiful, but tough targets to capture. Part of that toughness was my philosophy not to harass the wildlife. We never altered course to “chase” a whale and on several occasions had to put Mahdee in neutral to mitigate an evolving potential collision with a whale–fortunately for both parties no collisions ever occurred. I had an unexpected photographic success when a black oyster catcher flew by right next to me. It turns out that there was a nest somewhere nearby and the black oyster catcher wanted me to chase after it so I could be lured away from the nest. I was happy to oblige it for a photo opportunity in return. I got my shot and then left the area so that the eggs or little ones could be tended by the parents.

All in all, I am happy with the wildlife photos we took. We barely scratched the surface of places to visit and see, so we know we will be returning to Alaska and BC Canada. On that next trip, I hope to have a better wildlife lens–maybe not an uber lens like Sharon’s, but one that will extend my photographic capabilities.

Eagle on Mahdee Main Mast