The Do-It-Your-Selfers

The Do-It-Your-Self Cabin as finished in 1981

I don’t believe there is a government agency that issues certificates of Do-it Yourself, but I could have qualified for one by high school graduation. I came from a family of such creatures. My parents were born when most people drove horses, when “fast food” was a carrot plucked from the garden, and when the aroma of fresh baked bread wafted through homes. They entered their teens as the country sank deeper into the Great Depression, and had barely reached adulthood when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mom quit school in 1930 to help her family. Dad worked his way through college. Hardship tempered their youth, instilling in them an independent self-reliance. I like to think they passed a small portion on to me.

 Dad and Mom introduced brother Don and me to everyday fix-it tasks shortly after we left diapers by mentoring with example rather than instruction. My brother and I witnessed them doing things around the house from an early age. I remember Dad standing between floor joists as he remodeled our kitchen, and of him moving an inside wall a few feet to enlarge a room. Mom and Grandma cooked all our meals, did the laundry in a tub with a mounted roller-wringer, and made their own laundry soap using reclaimed cooking lard. They taught us persistence eventually gets rewarded, that if you tinker long enough with something and didn’t get electrocuted, or cut a finger off in the process, then you could eventually fix it, or get the job done.

Don and I became Dad’s gofers by age ten, learning the name of tools and how to use them by fetching and watching. We entered our apprenticeship as teenagers. Our school was an old building the family bought in 1953. It was a derelict whose upper floors had gone empty for decades. Brother Don and I got the job of rebuilding the old boiler that sat in the basement. We were then promoted upstairs to remove generations of wall paper, help repair broken plaster, paint rooms, wire, and plumb - all under Dad’s direction. It became ingrained in us to try to fix or build things on our own. To this day I will call a plumber or an electrician only after having exhausted alternatives.

Fast forward twenty years to a time when I sat in a skiff drifting in a beautifully protected cove in Seldovia Bay, Alaska. Another teacher and I were commercial fishing for halibut that summer. The cove, calm and serene, struck me as the most idyllic place I’d ever seen. The thought flicked through my mind of how neat it would be to have a cabin there. But I didn’t own the land, it was not for sale, and besides, my immediate need was a boat, so I replaced the fleeting image with a vision of boat building.



Boat building 101, building a jig

I bought plans for a 22 foot double-ender with a small cabin. A sorry fact soon became apparent - I had more confidence than experience. There are some endeavors in which its prudent to tread lightly, at least in the beginning, and boat building is one. The first line in the directions stated simply, “Loft the plans”; the second followed with “build the jig”. What the hell does “loft the plans” and “build the jig” mean? Those questions sent me to the local book store, to find further instruction on the subject.

Boat builing 101, Lofting the Plans

“Loft the plans” meant one draws the measurements out full scale. Most boat builders draw them on the floor. I connected six pieces of plywood and lofted the plans onto them. The jig is the structure on which the boat is assembled. The plans called for fourteen boat frames with the dimensions taken from the lofted plans. I mounted each finished frame on the jig, and the jig aligned them in the correct position to one another. It took me two days to make the first frame but just two hours to complete the last. That is a short version of my life. I’ve done many things, but did most of them only once, and never became accomplished at any. The skeleton of the upside-down boat slowly took shape. The keel came next. I looked through my wood pile to discover the board had gone missing, I was stymied. I began cutting and laminating pieces to fabricate the keel when I discovered the land on Seldovia Bay was for sale.

The Cabin, front view at end of summer, 1979

I wanted a cabin on the ocean more than I wanted a hole in the water so I abandoned the boat project, bought the land, and started designing a cabin. The full story of that experience is beyond the scope of this essay, but the location was problematic, no road, no electricity, and only water access. I pre-cut the lumber, labeled the pieces, loaded my cabin-kit, tools and supplies onto a rented van, drove to Homer, caught the State Ferry, and sailed for Seldovia in early June of 1979. 

The Cabin from the water, end of first season, 1979

A number of friends converged at the Seldovia boat harbor to help empty the van in a helter-skelter fashion. The van went back onto the ferry in twenty minutes for its return to Anchorage. My commercial fishing friend helped transport the material in his bigger boat. It took eight or ten trips to get it to the site a mile from town. We dropped pile after pile above tide line and I spent the next two days carrying the cabin up the small incline and stacking it around the building site.
I worked alone most of the summer. The pre-cut cabin assembled without a hitch, and the framing was completed by August when my parents came to visit. The original Do-It-Yourselfers helped me put on the wood siding and roof. I finished the gable over the door after they left and put tarpaper on the roof. That is how I left it at the end of the first year.

Dad visited the following summer. He fished, helped wire the cabin and install the metal roof. Mom came the year after to help insulate it. I did most of the work, but I had help at crucial times, help from friends, my parents, and my wife, Mary. No man is an island, but its good to be able to do-it-yourself

Seldovia on Memorial Day Weekend, 1975

Four of us stayed at the end of the Homer Spit in Land’s End bunkhouse Friday night while awaiting our Memorial holiday adventure to Seldovia. Two guys from Kodiak joined Dan and I on the excursion. Roger was an old friend of Dan. The other’s name has escaped me. The three had purchased property in Seldovia, and wanted to walk over and inspect their new acquisition. They had bought about 25 acres on the Slough near town. Each had a two acre lot on the water, and the rest of the property, laying adjacent to the lots and climbing to the top of a hill behind, was held jointly by the three. So we had a two part objective. The other - to retrieve our fishing gear from Yukon Island, where we had stashed it a week earlier

This time out the waves were not so big, the wind not so calm. Calm seas usually occur in early morning or late evening. In between, as the day bores on, the sun warms the air, and starts it to moving. High winds and high tides go together. We were in a high tide cycle that weekend, and higher winds were definitely with us - choppy seas rocked the boat as we rounded the Spit and headed for Yukon Island. A gentle morning breeze pushed two and three foots waves at us, a little spray portended heavier stuff to come.

The four of us, big deckhands, quickly hustled the gear off Yukon, and directed the skiff into the Eldred Passage, running parallel to and just off the island‘s shore. We decide to stop for a break, though it escapes me as to why. Maybe it was for lunch, maybe we wanted to do some clamming, or maybe the weather was picking up. I no longer remember, but we put to shore on either Yukon or Hesketh.

We spent a couple hours on the island. The first thing we discovered was that none of us had thought to bring food. There wasn’t a candy bar between us, and we were all prepared to dine. Nothing! Dan had brought some old frozen fish to use as bait. Roger and his buddy stuck pieces on the end of a stick and tried roasting them over the campfire; can’t remember if any were consumed; don’t recall any accolades about the seafood cuisine.

Dan and I retrieved our fishing poles and used an old fish to try an catch a fresh one. No fish, but we were flabbergasted to land a small King Crab. Its legs probably measured a two feet span. We broke the leg joints into pieces small enough to fit into a like-sized pan, and suspended it over the fire. There was enough to provide four modest meals. No butter! I did not know King Crab were in the bay, and never heard of anyone catching them before or after.

Entrance to Seldovia Bay

We made it to Seldovia without further incident, but I can’t tell much about that visit as memories of it have merged with hundreds of later ones. We probably ate at the Seldovia Lodge. We did slept on Dan’s land, on bare ground, with sleeping bags laid on plastic sheeting with other piece draped over us - tent like. In the morning we probably returned for breakfast at the Seldovia Lodge and then set sail for home.

Seldovai Boat Harbour

The passage out of Seldovia Bay proved easy. We rounded Seldovia Point, Barber Point, passed McDonald Spit, and tacked into the Eldred Passage without much trouble. When we came to the end of Yukon Island and started across the open bay, the boat began to ship water. Wind knocked the top off waves and sent a continual spray into the boat. Within a short interval there was several inches of salt water sloshing around in the bottom. I grabbed a coffee can we used for bailing and started scooping water over the side. Two buckets of clams sat in the bilge, and before long the two Kodiak guys dumped the clams to the side and started bailing. We were able to keep up but decided the wiser move would be to turn back, find shelter, and wait out the wind for a few hours.

Crab boats in Seldovia Harbour

Dan directed the skiff onto the leeward side of a small peninsula projecting into the bay. It lay almost due south and about four miles off the tip of the Homer Spit. We beached the boat, water logged, and clothes soaked through, but happy to be on dry land. Roger built a fire, while the rest of us finished bailing the boat, and restoring the clams to their buckets.

The peninsula was narrow, jutting out a hundred yards from the mainland. A homestead sat at the junction of land with smoke flowing from its chimney. Before long three or four left the cabin and headed out the peninsula toward us. The men arrived well armed. They carried rifles and at least two had holstered revolvers strapped to their side. They wanted to know our intention. Why were we camping on private property?

We apologized for trespassing, and explained our dilemma; that we were returning from Seldovia and thought it prudent to wait out a dangerous sea. We told them we were four harmless seafarers temporarily cast upon their shore - two teachers and two Alaska Fish and Game biologist taking refuge from the storm. They accepted our explanation and withdrew. A short time later they sent am unarmed emissary to invite us to share their Memorial Day dinner. We thanked them for their gracious invitation and ask when they should expect our presence.

We four tidied up as much as possible (combed out hair), and preceded, single file, down the path to the house. After introductions to maybe a dozen people, adults and children, we were all seated at a very long table to share a pleasant dinner - fried chicken wings being the main entrée. The unusual offering was pickled kelp, that tasted like…pickles.

Before leaving we had a chance to return their gracious hospitality. Upon stepping from the house we noticed the owner was in the act of removing debris from a nearby area, and were told the place use to be a fox farm. Fox farms were found all over the Bay in the 1930s and 40s - a major industry of the region. The fox cages had to be wired on all sides, including the bottom, to keep them from digging out. Now they wanted to put in a garden but found that old chicken fencing lay beneath the ground and was matted in the sod, nearly impossible to dig out.

We took long coils of rope, laced them through the fencing at strategic points and harnessed them to two teams of pullers. Like plow horses, we strained against the buried obstacle, broke it loose, and rolled the ancient fencing out of its shallow grave. Half hour later we were walking single file back down the path to the boat and heading toward Homer over a moderate sea.

Venturing by Ourselves on to Kachemak Bay, 1975

Seldovia, Alaska is a small fishing village across the bay, and nineteen miles west of Homer. It had originally been a native village, became the center of a major herring fishery in the early 1900s, and was the main town on Cook Inlet through the fist quarter of the twentieth century. Canneries, built on pilings, lined the waterfront with boardwalks linking them one to another. Its setting, picturesque in the classic Alaskan way, was forever changed with the Good Friday tsunami of 1964. The canneries, the boardwalk and much of the town was swept away.

Dan Wilson, 1976

Dan Wilson bought land on the slough in Seldovia in 1974, decided to fish for halibut the following summer and wondered if I might be interested in working as a crewman on his boat. He couldn’t pay anything, but would trade room and board for my labor. We’d be fishing out of Seldovia, could stay on his property, and would dine on freshly caught fish all summer. That seemed like a grand idea, so I promptly signed on as his first mate and only crew member.

Dan Wilson (left) works on his skiff, 1976

Dan acquired a twenty-two foot open dory, and a 35HP Evinrude outboard that winter. He purchased longlines, buoys, buoy lines, anchors, snood lines, and hooks, the gear necessary for fishing halibut. He borrowed a boat trailer, loaded the equipment into the boat, and the two of us headed south on a Friday evening in early May of 1975. Our plan was to take the gear over to Seldovia on Saturday, stash it on his land, and return to Anchorage by Sunday evening. School was still in session and we had to be back home to teach on Monday morning.

Dan knew an older couple living in Homer that summer. They were staying in a small travel trailer while the man worked at the new hospital being constructed. They graciously feed us on more that one occasion that season. Their trailer was a bit too small for overnight quartering, so we often stayed on the Spit, usually in my Alaskan Camper, sometimes in the bunkhouse at Lands End.

We launched our boat the next morning and ventured out onto the bay - two slightly intrepid sailors, gazing upon, and wondering if those really big waves that we were heading into were a normal phenomena. There is a deceptive illusion about boats. They appear enormous while dry docked, or on a trailer, but instantly shrink as soon as they are placed in water. Our skiff, after launching, seemed no more than a pint-sized toy boat. Once riding those big waves it shrank to the size of a wine cork.

There was no wind. We were sailing up one side of a big roller, sitting momentarily on top, and then gliding down the other side - one large, gentle roller after another - the likes-of-which we had never seen before, and never saw again. The waves must have been fifteen feet high, and their length, from crest to crest, measured forty to fifty feet. Dan was cautious, holding a moderate throttle as he drove up each hill and slid down its backside. We were not making good time. There was no wind spray, and the bow never plowed into the bottom of a trough splashing water into the boat. The ride was more like that of a kiddy roller-coaster. We judged that there must have been a big storm a long, long way off, and these giants were the remnants sweeping up Cook Inlet and turning into Kachemak Bay.

Yukon Island

What might have been a two hour crossing turned into a full morning, and we were only half way to Seldovia. We never felt in danger, but did notice a bit of stress as time was running short. We had cleared the open part of the bay, were passing the eastern end of Yukon Island, and about to enter the more protective waters of the Eldred Passage when Dan decided to stash the equipment right there on the island.

The boat edged up to shore and I jumped out pulling the bow onto the sandy beach. The tide was still coming in so there was no fear of the boat going dry in the time it took to carry the tubs of gear up the beach and into the woods. We felt somewhat like pirates hiding our treasure as we stacked the tubs and covered them with a tarp. Thirty minutes later and we were in the boat heading back to Homer. Memorial Day was coming in two weeks. We’d complete the transfer then.
GO TO: Seldovia on Memorial Day, 1975

At Bay with Lawyers, My First Exploration of Kachemak Bay

Most of my adventures on Kachemak Bay were shared with friend and fellow teacher, Dan Wilson. The first episode occurred in 1973 when a gaggle of lawyers hired a boat to carry them across the Bay to Hesketh Island. Dan finagled a ride, and we joined the legal group aboard a WWII vintage Landing Craft, one similar to the those seen in films landing Marines on hostile beaches. This one was probably designed to carry heavy equipment as there was space in the well to easily accommodate the fifty people along with their gear - enough for a weekend camp out.

Landing Ship similar to what the Lawyers hired

The craft left the boat harbor early Saturday morning, rounded the tip of the Homer Spit and set a southwest bearing. We were presented with a calm sea under a cloudless sky, and that placid experience made us more confident when we later ventured onto the bay ourselves. We were both more neophyte than old salt. Dan was from Texas, and I grew up in Indiana. The only thing the two states have in common with the ocean is flatness. Once you’ve experienced days of calm seas, when the boat drifts aimlessly with a gentle roll, can you appreciate a revisit to the flatlands, and feel the same rolling sensation induced by the prairie visage.

Sixty Foot Rock

The boat crossed the open water and eased into the Eldred Passage, a sheltered channel between the southern shore and the island chain made up of Sixty Foot Rock, Cohen, Yukon, and Hesketh islands. We sailed past them and turned into the western shore of Hesketh. After ten miles and sixty minutes the craft pulled onto its beach. The bow gate dropped and the legal team disembarked, lugging packs and ice coolers up the graveled beach and into the woods. Dan and I chose a less populated site to make camp.


Elephant Rock, Between Yukon and Hesketh Islands

We spent two nights on the island. I remember only a few events during the outing. That first night the lawyers had a bond fire to which they invited Dan and me. I don’t recall how Dan happened to find out about the excursion, but we felt a bit like intruders. The only person I recognized was the wife of one of the lawyers. She had done her student teaching at West High. The rest were strangers. So, here we were, a couple of nerdy biology teachers, out numbered twenty to one, and surrounded by a gang of litigating lawyers who probably knew little more about the life around them than we did about the law. Dan and I didn’t wish to bore them by expounding on local fauna and flora, and we were unfamiliar with the vocabulary of their arcane language so we kept a respectful silence while sipping the wine they offered.

A typical Scene on Kachemak Bay

There was a low tide, a clam tide, the next day and many of us wandered onto the exposed sea floor. I had taken my little Kodak along, was snapping a number of pictures, but set it down on a rock, not thinking to retrieve the camera until after fifteen feet of water covered it. I found it sitting on the same rock at the next low tide, decided it was ruined and figured the to invest in a new one. There are no photos to record the Hesketh adventure, and several subsequent outings, as I didn’t get around to replacing it for a couple years.


I don’t know the size of Hesketh Island, but would guess its foot print covers over a hundred acres. Members soon diffused over the islands expanse exploring coves and beaches. Until that time, our presence on the island was probably unknown, but the owner was in residence, and soon showed up in the attorney’s camp. I didn’t hear all the specifics, but it seems the lawyers had neglected to seek permission to camp on private property. Maybe they had relied on the boat’s skipper to place them on a nice camping spot and he had pulled a fast one.


The owner might have requested a camping fee, but graciously declined that alternative. He could have ordered us off the island, but swimming was our only option. He may have had an impulse to sue, but that probably did not seem prudent as he was standing in a nest of lawyers. I understand he let them know he did not much appreciate the invasion of his privacy, and made a point of not inviting them back.
THE END

Homer and Kachemak Bay, First Visit in 1968, Part 2

The remaining drive to Homer proved uneventful. We marveled at the beautiful grassy meadows that topped the sloughing bluffs along the coast, at the sight of the Redoubt and Iliamna volcanoes standing tall across Cook Inlet. We were impressed by the giant fragments of ice floes that had been stranded on the mud flats by the receding tides, some the size of trucks.
We took the main drag, Pioneer Street, through downtown Homer because the by-pass swinging south of there didn‘t exist, so we did not see some major landmarks along that stretch - Alaska Island & Ocean Visitors Center, the Carrs/Safeway store, the U.S. Post Office, McDonalds - all lay in the future.

East End Road is a paved highway offering sweeping views of Kachemak Bay for most of the twenty plus miles it runs along the high ground overlooking the bay. It was not like that in 1968. The road disappeared in a mud rut a mile or two east of town. Wes and I did not explore that feature. Its “cow pasture” attribute was left for us to discover a couple years later.

We went straight through town and headed out the long, narrow sand bar known as the Homer Spit. The Spit is one of the longest in the world, stretching four and a half miles into the Bay. Its not very wide, sometimes no more than the road, and its elevation above sea level allows big storm waves to crest over it at some spots.

In 1968 the Spit could claim a few facilities: the small boat harbor; the Whitney-Fidalgo Cannery; a couple restaurants; the Alaska Ferry dock; and located at the very tip, Lands End Hotel - but not much more. There use to be more to the Spit, a copse of trees in one area for example, but the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 lowered the whole region by about six feet, and a portion of it now resides in Neptune’s domain.

Four years had passed, but we could still see evidence of the quake’s reshaping of the land. There were buildings along Turnagain Arm, near Girdwood and Portage that sat on land now invaded by tidewater. Standing forests of dead trees offered further evidence. Some of the bridges on the highway were still doing temporary duty awaiting new construction.

It was a bit early in the season for the annual invasion of the “Spit Rats”. That is the term applied to the young, mainly college age summer adventurers that descended on the Spit every year. Many worked the cannery, some found fishing jobs. They camped in make-shift housing: tents, drift wood shelters, etc, wherever there was an unclaimed few feet on the Spit. By mid-summer the spit would be overrun with rat’s nests. It was a free-wheeling time, and when shrimp were present, the Ferry Dock would be loaded with people lowering homemade nets and then quickly raising them full of the wiggling crustaceans. An ice chest could be filled in an afternoon. You can’t even go out on the dock any more.

The Rats were driven from the Spit years ago, and it was gradually commercialized. Expensive condos now block the view of the far shore mountains, and there are numerous piers aligned along both sides, crowded with shops that offer a variety of products: tours of the bay, fishing charters, souvenirs, art, and food - everything that a tourist might covet. Some days, especially during high tide, when there are so many parked vehicles, and people milling around, one has the sensation it’s sinking.

Wes and I explored the Homer Spit, walked the docks looking at the fishing boats, ate dinner at the nearby Porpoise Room, and then started the long drive back to Anchorage.
THE END

Homer and Kachemak Bay. First Visit in 1968, Part 1

The first time I visited Homer, Alaska on Kachemak Bay was in early May of 1968. The trip was impromptu, the decision made after a Saturday night of bar hopping. Some might conclude the midnight adventure was nothing more than an impulsive, alcohol fueled piece of foolishness, but people of northern latitudes would recognize such an act with sympathetic understanding. Those who have endured a dark, seemingly endless winter, will appreciate the need that wells up when longer days and cloudless skies clearly register the impending spring; when cabin fever finally breaks, when the need to get outside, to do something, go anywhere, becomes overpowering.

So, Wes Warner and I were off on our first look at the Alaska that exists outside of Anchorage. Wes and I shared an apartment with two other guys. We had been friends since the previous September. He was a recent divorcee just arrived from Idaho, and I had pulled into the state over the ALCAN a couple months before.

I don’t remember why we arrived at a Homer destination, but were, never-the-less, driving through a moonlit night along Turnagain Arm, climbing the long incline onto Turnagain Pass, and going by landmarks that we would revisit hundreds of more times in the years to come. The road through the mountains was narrow and tortuous as it followed the contours of the land, but oil money, flowing from the North Slope, would eventually transform it to super-highway quality.

Fatigue replaced exuberance after three hours. Morning light showed behind us as we cleared the mountains and preceded through the “Kenai Burn”. We figured the fire had swept through the forest, maybe a year or two before, but were surprised to learn those white skeletons of dead trees, thousands of them, had been standing there for more than twenty years. I discovered at a later date that there were as many trees crisscrossed on the forest floor as were standing - obstacles, one after the other, to step and climb over.

I don’t remember Soldotna, partly because there wasn’t much there, a filling station, maybe a restaurant, but mainly because I’d dropped off to sleep with my head resting against the front passenger window. Wes, driving his little foreign car, bumped to an abrupt stop, and announced that we had just ran out of gas. I roused from slumber to see a “Y” intersection, of which I’m still trying to figure its location. He said the gas station in Soldotna, only a short way back, was closed and he had hoped to make it to the next one - where ever that may have been. I gallantly offered to stay with the car, and rolled into the more comfortable backseat as Wes took off down the road with a gas can in hand.
GO TO: Part 2