A cautionary tale

[Sea Wolf]

[primative]

Nainu

Thank you so much for sharing your experience-your story.

RE: the waves that did not make sense and nearly rolled the boat. Perhaps it was a Rogue wave. Check out the article Rouge Waves The Physics Of Pure Hell at Sea by Bruce Stutz in Discover Magazine July 2004. It features an experiment by physicist Alfred Osborne and colleagues performed at a foot ball field sized wave tank in Trondheim, Norway. I don't understand the math but they created Rouge waves by applying nonlinear physics and can reproduce them.

You do not have to understand the math to appreciate the fascinating information about waves in this article or the elegance of this experiment.

Tom

[Noreaster]

Amazing story. Thanks for sharing. There's no doubt that "Get There Itis" causes more than a fare share of plane, boat and car accidents year after year.

[Nainu]

Thanks for posting the map. I was going to try and post something myself, but you beat me to it.

After looking at the map, I am going to make two revisions to my story. First the swells were more from due E not ESE, secondly that would have put them at about 50-60 degrees off the stern, not 20 degrees. My having "surfed" down the face of some of the steeper waves at about that angle I think influenced that recollection. I am sure my course was more of a zigging up and down the waves and zagging to run along the troughs and ridges. I should have written this down years ago when the details were fresher in my mind.

I raised the point about multiple marginal decisions converging because Alaska has reinforced that lesson with me several times over the years (one time in particular on a solo sheep hunting trip). You need to look past the immediate decision and look at the complete picture. When I made the decision to cross in the swells, with the information available to me I knew that I would not have much trouble making that crossing. What I didn't consider was where that was going to put me on the other end, which was at Cape Resurrection with a nearly 12 hour old weather forecast. When I first hit the wind from the N at the Cape, I had room to turn around. It would not have been nearly as pleasant a trip going back and, in the couple of hours it could have taken to return, the sea conditions could have worsened and put me in even a more precarious situation. So I may have had choices, but none of them were good choices at that time. I should have considered what my choice would be if sea conditions at the Cape were bad before making the decision to go there. This I think is the real lesson of this story.

BTW I do not think the unusual waves I experienced in the pass between the Cape and Barwell were "rogue" waves in the true sense, as I think rogue waves are more of a creature of wave harmonics combining to create a large wave. My best guess was that this was a tide rip perhaps into the wind at a 45 degree angle with the wind bending the wave form around to about 90 degrees to the wind. Might be able to dig up the tides for that day at Seward, but not sure how much it would tell me as I am not positive how the current runs in relation to the tides at the Cape.

At the time of this story I was a single unattached bachelor more interested in having experiences than worried about my mortality. I have since married late (at 47) and now have two toddlers (3 and 4 yo). I am now much more circumspect about my decisions than I was back then.

Just boating makes me a lttle nervous now as I have nearly struck whales when running at speed on two occasions (missed them by about 30 feet both times) when out on open ocean between Prince William Sound and Resurrection Bay and have had a couple of other narrow brushes with possible disaster. But every time you get out of bed in the morning you take a chance - that is just living. The idea is to keep the odds well in your favor by making good decisions.

[primative]

Life is sweet.

[T.R. Bauer]

Any of the capes on the North Gulf Coasts are very scary places to be with a wind from a southeasterly component. You don't even need a tide rip or anything for it to be crazy. Out in front of Pinnacle Rock on the entrance to Johnstone Bay (good halibut fishing though) the wave rollers are 6-8 feet high on a calm day when the tide gets going. Fun on a calm day, hell when they are much bigger and you are trying to make a run for it. The currents, with the irregular bottom, really accentuate the conditions. At Cape Rusurrection, they have a tendency to bounce off the perpendicular cliff faces when the wind is blowing E/SE causing steep pyramiding seas and sometimes very confused seas. I never boat out of the bay in Seward when there is the potential for dirty SE weather. It will be horrendous. For those in doubt in the Puget Sound area, picture rounding the corning out of Neah Bay to go south into the open Pacific with strong winds and a ripping tide.

I don't call BS at all. I know for a fact how crazy that area can be. In fact, even in the bay it can get incredibly wild depending on the conditions. I don't blame you at all for kissing the dock; just watch out for the otter poop.....BTW, I almost never boat in that area when the seas are forecasted above about 5-7 feet. YUCK!!!!

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm glad you posted it and that you made it back in one piece.

[berryst]

I have had green water over the bow. Green water makes a boat descend rapidly. The power of big water is big.
I for one appreciate a great story like yours. All great stories start with a bad decision that did not seem to bad at the time. A great story has a happy ending and your had a great ending
A great story reminds us all what not to do as we balance the need for adventure and the individual tolerance for risk. I have made stupid mistakes born of ignorance that I could not fathom making today. The lesson that I hope I take away is the wisdom to be patient. To wait for weather and to know and watch for rogues and other waves that will await those who don't pay attention. Thank you for the story. Glad that I now own a c dory. Someday I will tell you about my first 25$ boat.
Chris

[centerisland]

This covers the area:
www.keithpleas.com/seward.jpg

[berryst]

Do you think in hindsight that you should have stayed in Humpy hollow? You were in calm water, you had the updated forecast at that time, night was soon to be upon you and the forecast was for high winds? Was retuning to work that critical?
Chris

[Nainu]

berryst,
Frankly, it was a matter of perspective at that point. The fetch from the N was limited so I didn't think it could get much worse, and compared to what we had been through it didn't look so bad. If it had been worse than I expected, I could also have tucked back into Thumb Cove to the N to sit it out. As it was, it just turned out to be a very long slog almost directly into the wind making maybe 3 knots at an average over the entire distance. What I was later told by my friend who has had his property in Day Harbor since 1973 is that the W side of Resurrection Bay is his preferred route on a gale from the North. He had been caught a couple of times over the years and cut across between Fox and Hive Islands to downwind from Caines Head and avoided a lot of the bad water by running near the beach from there. Not sure if that would be better or not - looks to me like it would be a six of one and half a dozen of the other kind of thing.

Bauer, you have a point - don't think you would want to make a practice of kissing the docks in Seward. BTW it can be pretty good silver fishing at Cape Fairfield too if you catch it right.

[Yellowstone]

Naimu - When you boat in Alaskan waters, and heavy weather moves in, are you carring survival gear such as rafts and immersion suits? What is the ambient temperature of the water?

My Alaskan boating has been confined to charters In Southeastern Alaska and the waters were tame.
John

[C-Pup16 in Los Angeles]

Boat owners need to read this. You were lucky and I'm glad for you, but there's a tipping point where no boat can compensate for overestimating one's abilities and underestimating what could go wrong.

Keith
C-Pup16 in Los Angeles

PS: What happened to the goat?

[T.R. Bauer]

[berryst]

I fished out of Seward commercially years ago. Did a halibut trip to the area that is the topic of discussion here last spring. The water here is big. Big swells. Big current. Big wind. The wilderness is vast. It is the kind of place you would not want to miss.
When you spend enough time on the water like Nainu as a commercial halibut fisherman then big water is just another day at the office. Complacency then become the issue. This is when you to can add your name to the fisherman's memorial.
From my view... and my view is from the guy who wasn't there so in fact counts for very little... the better part of discretion would have had me waiting out the storm from the nearest sheltered cove after pushing the limits. But waiting does not make as good of a story and I do so like and pleasure in a good and epic adventure story especially when mixed with friends and whiskey
Chris

[retnavy]

we need our stories to celebrate our lives. Hopefully we are all telling our own stories instead of someone else starting out with "There was this guy I knew who"