Friday, October 18, 2013

A Near Disaster
By Michael
TOMALES BAY, CA


Del Viento heading into the fog a month ago,
en route to Prince Rupert, Canada.

I’m not a great sailor, not even a very good one. But I enjoy moving from one place to another in that way and I’ve long thought my seamanship knowledge and judgment are sufficient to get me, my crew, and boat wherever we’re going, safely.

Then I almost lost Del Viento and my family in a chain of events that spanned about five minutes.

After almost a week in Astoria, Oregon visiting family and friends and waiting out storms, it was time to continue south. We planned to sail direct to Eureka, California, a 350-nautical mile coastal passage that would require we cross two notorious bars: the Columbia River Bar departing Astoria and the Humboldt Bay Bar arriving Eureka. In each case, timing and good conditions would be important. As our trip would cover three nights and two days, we paid attention also to wind and sea-state forecasts for the stretch.

On Wednesday, we readied for a Thursday evening departure. On Thursday evening, Windy took another look and determined it might be better to hold off until morning, that leaving as-planned, we risked arriving at Humboldt too late if our speed was even a bit less than projected. And arriving too late could mean having to wait outside for several hours.

“But if we make good speed, we can still leave tonight and make Humboldt on time?” I asked.

“Yes,” she hesitated, “if everything is goes perfectly.”

I don’t like change. I bristled at the prospect of plan upheaval. We’d sent emails to everyone announcing our imminent departure. We’d just finished refueling and successfully arranged with the fuel dock to remain tied there for a few more hours until departure time.

Eleanor with a small frog she found
in the warm springs of Baranof, Alaska.
“I say we go.”

And we did.

And you think you know where this is going, right? You think this is a story of calamity that will stem from a decision based on convenience or from poor planning? Nope.

At 7:30 p.m., we left the fuel dock and motored out of the marina at the base of the Astoria-Megler Bridge. We had nearly two hours of narrow shipping channels to navigate before we reached the bar. Windy went below to clean up after dinner and I stayed in the cockpit.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“Yep.”

This would be our fourth transit of this channel and across the Columbia River Bar. Now, even in the dark, this is pretty boring stuff. I’ve got all the channel-marking buoys, the channel, and Del Viento displayed on the iPad clamped to the bimini frame beside me. Most of the channel traffic is reflected on the tiny AIS screen of our remote VHF on the binnacle. And the conditions are severe clear; I can see everything around me for miles, a sea of lights. I’m bundled up against the cold night on the water and we’re doing about 5.5 knots under power.

For forty-five minutes, I do little else besides make adjustments to the autopilot to keep us on our side of the 600-foot-wide channel. There is a current and we repeatedly drift off-course. A couple small fishing boats pass in the opposite direction, but there seems to be little traffic. I look for anticipated marker buoys ahead and I look for unanticipated traffic from behind. I listen to big ships on the radio fifteen miles out, coordinating bar pilot rendezvous.

The running lights of the next opposing traffic are about a half-mile away. I think that it may be a large fishing boat. There is no question in my mind we will pass port-to-port as we should.

The girls hauling groceries home in
Craig, Alaska.
Recall I said that I almost lost Del Viento and my family in a chain of events that spanned about five minutes. Well, I know that at this point in the story we haven’t yet crossed the fear-inspiring Columbia River Bar, we haven’t entered the Graveyard of the Pacific, we haven’t even sailed night and day and night and day and night along a North Pacific coastline where gales this time of year are a dime-a-dozen and come on quickly, and we haven’t made it across the next bar and into Humboldt Bay. But none of those potential, perceived hazards are relevant; we can go ahead and start that five-minute clock…now.

There is about a half-mile between me and the oncoming vessel in this narrow shipping channel. Given our roughly 13-knot closure speed, we’ll pass each other in just over two minutes.

It’s night, a very dark night. My depth perception is off and I’m trying to make out a shape. I make a million subliminal mental calculations as I watch this traffic, continuously trying to make sense of the lights all over the boat, of the lights on the hills and shoreline beyond it. But my interest is pretty subdued; I know it will all be clear as we get closer.

Then I realize we are a bit closer, closer than I assumed, less than a quarter-mile now and getting brighter, but still not a concern. We’ll pass by, two proverbial ships in the night. I wonder if they see me—my little LED running lights so low on the water—but there’s no need to call on the radio to be sure, we’re going to pass port-to-port, sure as rain.

Then a larger boat grabs my attention, off in the distance, just a smudge in the darkness about a mile beyond this approaching boat, way outside the channel on the other side, heading the same direction as me and merging into the channel. It’s like a large white hull and the first strange thought that occurs to me is that it’s an unlit cruise ship heading out to sea, strange indeed.

My approaching traffic is closer, right where he should be. I can see now it looks like a large tug.

But I’m focused on the new guy, wondering about this big, white, unlit cruise ship—but not concerned, he’ll merge into this channel way ahead of me.

Suddenly my perception of everything changes.

Lights jump out from behind the big, white, unlit cruise ship and they’re close, and I realize this cruise ship is not a cruise ship, but a white wall that’s growing fast. I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing, but it’s all growing quickly, eclipsing the lights in the background.
In Sitka, Alaska, the girls stepping between
salmon heading upstream--like many rivers,
this one was thick with humpies.

“WINDY!”

I fumble with the AIS to see what it says, to help me interpret what I’m seeing. It’s set at five-miles and I can’t discern anything and I drop it, there is no time. I hear new noises, growing sounds of rushing water and rumbling engines. This produces a flush of panic because I usually hear little over the sound of our own engine.

“What is it?” Windy climbs quickly out of the companionway from the brightly lit interior. She knows something is wrong by the way I called her.

“HELP ME WHAT AM I LOOKING AT?”

The approaching tug is now close abeam, passing quickly. I take a second to look at the iPad to confirm we are where I think we are, headed the right direction. Then I turn back. The white wall is towering ahead and I see a bow wake, but it doesn’t look right. The lights beyond it are disappearing, but they had been moving alarmingly to our starboard side.

Windy turned to face forward. “Uh, ohmygod, uh, um…”

I know we are in danger and very close to something bearing down on us, but I still can’t orient what I’m seeing. Why isn’t someone blowing a large warning horn? Wouldn’t that happen before we’re run down? What direction is this thing moving? In the same moment, I spin our wheel to port, perpendicular and towards the transom of the passing tug. It seems safe to get into his wake, close to an object I can discern and know the direction it’s headed.

Windy points to starboard.

Immediately I see a line the diameter of a tree trunk lift out of the water in front of us. Then the towering white barge comes into focus and everything makes sense. The tug passing us to port has a large, white-walled barge under tow, but the tow isn’t trailing behind, it’s crabbing far into the opposing traffic lane of this narrow channel. It is dead ahead, less than 150 feet away from us.

Windy says, "No, starboard!" as I spin the wheel back, hard over to starboard about 140 degrees and throw the throttle all of the way forward.

Two or three or five seconds pass before I realize we are clear.

It races by us, right next to us, a big, metal wall.

Behind the barge another large, brightly-lit tug is there, pushing from the rear.

In this context, all of the elements present--the sound, the barge, the wake, the lights--the scene of what nearly happened plays in my head, sharp, sickening, and tactile imagery. I imagine the popping and cracking as Del Viento is caught beam-on, pushed sideways, a wall of water pushing over our side as we roll, break-up, and sink underneath the hard, flat end of the barge.

We both breath deeply and stare at each other, wordless.

For the next hour we stood together, using the radar, AIS, and each other to gauge traffic in the channel. We used the VHF to announce our position and received appreciative responses from captains who had us on their radar but couldn’t otherwise see us. Both of us were buzzing from adrenaline and eager to get out to the open ocean. We were ten miles out before we could relax.

And all the while we talked about and learned from the mistakes I made.

In short, I trusted my senses even when I knew the darkness was disorienting, comfortable with assumptions I made and failing to use the tools I had at hand to verify my perceptions and broadcast my position. Specifically: 
  • I should have referred to AIS signals long before I tried to. I would have set the resolution and realized the tow was drifting into our traffic lane and could have left the channel to remain out of the way.
  • I should have been broadcasting our position at each marker buoy all along. (I should have assumed I was invisible from the start.)
  • I should have been using the RADAR too, from the start. Even though visibility was excellent, this hazard would have been clear long beforehand.
  • I shouldn’t necessarily have been in the shipping channel. Though we sought to be in the channel for crossing the bar, the added depth was not important at this stage, more than an hour from that time.
  • We should have had everything secured below before we untied. It seemed reasonable that we had almost a couple of hours before we both had to be topsides for the bar crossing, but we discounted the value of having both of us in the cockpit while we moved through this traffic corridor.
  • I should have recognized the pattern of navigation lights displayed by a tow boat with a barge behind.
  • I should have been less assuming, less cavalier, about my ability to avoid the potential hazards at the start of that passage. A different attitude would have gone a long way.
                                                                                                                                         
My dad, a private pilot, has long trumpeted a saying popular in the aviation community. The message is equally suited to the cruising community: Cruising is not inherently dangerous, but is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.

--MR
I realize I don't take or post many pictures of our home inside.
This is from the nav station looking forward into the salon.
Here in the isolated Bunsby island group on the west
coast of Vancouver Island, I spotted this blue boat washed
ashore. We stopped to investigate, thinking it may be
tsunami debris. There were no markings of any kind on
the busted hull.
  
This is Strawberry Island off Tofino, BC. We anchored here. Those are all floating homes.
Note the stilted wood hull ashore. It is there forever, with a deck
built on the shore side, another home.
  
Del Viento sits at the dock at night in Sitka, Alaska.


15 comments:

  1. Wow. that is scary. I noticed no recent posts and I was a little worried about you guys. Good to hear that it turned out ok. Phew! I understand what your dad means and that is what always worries me about living on the ocean. regards.-Gerard

    ReplyDelete
  2. My hair stood on end when I read this, it's so easy to misread stuff at night, we've been through big scares and they sure are a wake up call.... Thanks for your candor,, we can all learn from each other's experiences... :) glad you are all safe!!! Hugs from Nyon

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh. My. Goodness. My adrenaline is pumping just from reading this! What a terribly close call. Thank you for having the courage to post what you have learned; I know it will remind us to remain vigilant.

    So glad to hear it ended well. Safe travels!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glad you're all ok. Getting between a tug and barge can happen even in daylight with a long tow and the consequences can be unpleasant to say the least (also if you didn't know many barges trail a long rope floating rope astern in case the main towline breaks - avoid it too).

    If you don't know your light signals (tugs towing a barge will have extra masthead lights in a vertical row), then a quick refresher quiz found here might be helpful.
    http://www.usboating.com/testlights.asp

    My usual rule if I see more than a red, green, and more than 2 white lights is to avoid it big time. Then figure out what it is later!

    We were sailing off Santa Barbara channel one dark night and I noticed a ship towing a stream of white lights. Figured it might be a fishing net so I gave them a VHF call. Glad I did - they were towing an underwater seismic array about 2 miles long. The lit lights were only the top part of the array. Much of it was well underwater astern and not lit. I was planning to pass 1/2 mile astern of them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I knew they were vertical, but I should have been more versed. Windy has an app with this info--I forget the name and I'm off the boat. That said, this boat was so lit up, it was difficult to distinguish nav lights at all. The fishermen in the area are worse, totally impossible to read the lights, you just know that the bright sodium lights are brightest at the bow--except when they're pointed aft. But I don't relate any of this as an excuse of any kind, just a reality that should have been more reason to follow the courses of action I did not. Michael

      Delete
  5. I had a close tug-and-tow encounter in the Strait of Juan de Fuca a few years ago. Scary as hell, seeing that dimly lit barge rearing up like a large metal wall. Very similar to your description. Gotta watch out for those special lights when the tug is towing a load.

    ReplyDelete
  6. So glad all turned out well! I think you've just convinced us to upgrade our radar. Love the photos of your salon, can't wait to sit in it with you all again one day.

    ReplyDelete
  7. And how was the rest of your trip down...?

    Do you think having an AIS transponder would have made it more likely that the tug skipper would notice you and call you (by name)? Also, your AIS should have indicated whether it was towing a short or long tow.

    So much electronics yet it still gets so confusing at night.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. An AIS transponder would be a great addition and would have almost certainly alerted that captain to my presence. Our AIS receiver is integrated into our VHF (the Standard Horizon Matrix model) and I love it, but it doesn't return the same amount of information as I've seen and read about with other receivers. For example, I understand some show a commercial vessel's destination and payload. Ours shows only name, SOG, TCPA, CPA, and bearing--and allows for DSC calls too, of course. The trip to Astoria and the trip from Astoria to Eureka and the trip from Eureka to San Francisco were all great, with lots of sailing on the latter two.

      Delete
    2. Our standalone Vesper Watchmate transponder gives all this (all at 0.3 amps). For your system, can't you take the NMEA output from the Matrix and send to OpenCPN for more info?

      I am envious -- sailing! So little wind down here in Santa Barbara-LA area! (And we were not so lucky with wind south of SF either.)

      Delete
  8. I love that saying at the end of your post. We too live aboard and have had our share of recent 'mishaps' that could have been avoided. We have learnt from them though and that is the best you can do. I'm pleased I found your blog, if you have time perhaps you might be interested in seeing ours too. www.homeschoolahoy.com We are in Australia at the moment but intend to cruise internationally in the future. Safe seas, Lyndy

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Lyndy, it's a good one. The full quote is anonymous and is: "Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous, but to an even greater extent than the sea, is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect."

      Delete
  9. It is amazing how you can fool yourself especially at night. I have two instances: l. On a trip to Bermuda from Florida alone at the helm about 3 a.m. I thought a shadow was another boat; in fact it was shadows cast by the moon. and 2. Off the Georgia coast in the middle of the night I identified lights as a pier even though I knew we were at least a mile off-shore. The lights were in fact a boat waiting to enter the Savannah River. A quick maneuver averted disaster. Really crazy thinking on my part.

    ReplyDelete
  10. We had a very close call with a tug towing a barge ourselves - many years ago on a dark and moonless night - in the days before radar, GPS and the like. We were heading out to Santa Cruz and all we "saw" was an absence of light, which was the barge blocking out the stars. There were no lights on the barge and it was well astern of the tug we'd seen go by. Our course was taking us between the tug & the barge. Fortunately the tug blew it's horn and shone huge spotlights on the barge and we were able to come about due to our very nimble boat (Yankee 30 at the time). It left a huge lump in the pit of my stomach and a sickening thought of what "could have been". Boats have disappeared between the Ventura area and the islands and I've often wondered if they didn't meet their fate this way.

    Because you and Windy are a TEAM and you rely on each other and each know your boat and each other well, you were able to avoid disaster. Don't beat yourself up over what you coulda/woulda/shoulda done. You were you wise enough to call on your co-captain as "another set of eyes"; she was capable enough to assess the situation herself and you trusted her judgement even though she told you to do the opposite of what you thought you should be doing. I'm sad to say that, in all my years of boating and selling boats, there were so many couples who did not share the duties & responsibilities of running the boat. There were "blue jobs" and "pink jobs" and they never deviated from that - truly a "captain" and "first mate". You are the Captain but Windy has proven herself to be a great co-captain and I'm so proud of you both.

    Okay - getting off my soapbox now.

    Fair winds!
    Connie

    ReplyDelete
  11. I've never had AIS or RADAR on any of the small vessels I've owned in 4 decades of sailing, but as I prepare my next vessel for cruising in retirement, I anticipate doing so. Why not take advantage of technology, as long as I use it to augment basic nav & piloting skills?

    Your post was so well written. At the outset, I expected it to be about calamity crossing a bar, but from the edge of my seat I read the unfolding tale that you skillfully invited the reader into. Thanks SO MUCH for reminding us all that dangers while cruising come in many forms!

    Rob Evans

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to comment; we look forward to reading your feedback. Don't forget that you may also contact us directly at delviento@hotmail.com (please type DEL VIENTO in the subject line)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...