There was too much excitement here this morning. Waves and a high tide brought a ton of logs crashing on the shore, over the Jetty and against the electric fence shattering the wooden supports.

I so wanted to pike pole some of nice logs onto the ramp but the California sea lion on the ramp ahead of the logs wouldn’t allow it. Normally approaching with the herding board will encourage them to move.  The wheelbarrow also normally works. I even tried putting the herding board upright in the wheelbarrow.  It grabbed the wheelbarrow in its mouth, picked it up and flung it over its shoulder toward the sea. That ended my efforts to move it along. I was glad to able to retrieve the wheelbarrow with a pike pole.

The sea lion has been there all day and it doesn’t appear well. It is very skinny, almost skeletal, and appears to have little ability to move its hind end. I expect it may decide to move tomorrow when the students come and it sees a large group of people.

An emancipated CA sea lion. Normally you can’t see their spine or shoulder bones.

California sea lion with its spine bones protruding. A broken wooden support piece for the electric fence is lying on the Jetty above.

I had to skip the sea water sampling today as it was too sketchy during the morning flood with all the water over the Jetty and crashing logs, and too scary to walk past the sea lion in the dark for the evening flood event. The fences will need to be repaired when the tides drop later in the week and hopefully the good logs aren’t washed away.  I focused on cutting the smaller firewood pieces on the grass that had been hauled up previously.

Facility work

• ran the desalinator to produce fresh water
• transferred fuel
• cut firewood

Vessels – none

Weather

Partly cloudy in the morning, overcast with periods of rain in the afternoon. Gentle northerly breeze (Gentle sound pleasant, I suppose on large sail boat,12 to 19 knots may feel gentle and keep the boat moving, but in the rain and cold, there is nothing gentle about it). Daytime temperatures 9 to 11 degrees.