⛏️ Home stretch
Just got in from a scrappy day on the water.
It was rainy and swelly this morning, and the wind was forecast to blow from the south, which fuels the swell.
Dan and I set anchor and hemmed and hawed for a half hour about whether we should even dive. Sometimes you rush to setup to beat the weather and you aren't paying close attention to conditions and you have to take a second before the diver goes underwater and ask, "is this stupid?"
Despite a few whitecaps and a two-foot swell Dan decided to give it a go.
We prospected new ground for about 90 minutes before calling it off for weather as the wind blew the waves and the swell up.
I'm not happy to report that we got absolutely skunked.
We're within 10% of our season gold goal right now - a stretch number that I wasn't sure we could hit this spring when we set it - and even though two weeks ago I thought it was easily within our grasp, I wonder if we'll be able to get there by the time we get frozen out in October.
Even good forecasts this time of year turn into marginal dredging days. The sea always seems angry, and the wind always seems to be blowing from somewhere. An expected "full day" of dredging turns into just a few hours of decent diving conditions.
When you're hot you feel like you're the smartest gold miner in the Bering Sea. And when you're not so hot for a few days you can start to wonder if there's even any gold left out there. It's a great litmus test for your own outlook on life - can you be consistently optimistic through the ups and the downs, or does your confidence swing dramatically with your fortunes?
The back half of September is really the only reliable chunk of the season that's left. With a summer as cold as we've had, I don't know if we can rely on any mining time in October at all. Hope we can find a way to get hot again.
Alex
Don't Forget to use the code BSPD10 for 10% off ANYTHING in the shop, including gold, with your first purchase!
That's it for this week's newsletter. Drop me a line at Alex@BeringSeaPaydirt.com if there's anything you think we should cover.
Until next week!
Bering Sea Paydirt
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