Dangerous Waters: Wrecks and Rescues off the BC Coast, by Keith Keller, Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, BC Canada, 2002 Paperback 296 pagesAuthor Keller introduces this great read with the phrase: “Their Own Stories, Their Own Words.” Over a period of years he conducted some 77 interviews with people who had been rescuers or rescued. His research condensed into the 24 stories within this book, a book I’m here to tell you, is hard to put down! While most of the rescued he writes about were commercial fishermen who tend to push the envelope more than recreational boaters, the sea can, and will, put any and all of us into analogous situations.
Upon releasing my death grip on my nice, safe bed after I finished this book, I reflected upon the significant improvements that have been made in maritime safety. In almost everything from communications to PDFs to survival suits, those going to sea today have many more aids than they did during the 1970s and 80s when many of these rescues occurred. Hypothermia remains the major killer for boaters, but at least now, when boaters are able to utilize EPIRBs and survival suits, the odds are better.
If you look for the “mistakes” that these fishermen and boaters made, you certainly can find them. But any experienced boater knows that “mistakes” often find us before we make them. I came away from these tales impressed by man’s willingness to risk life for others when one’s own death stalks nearby.
Keller splits the book into two sections, the South and the North coasts of Vancouver island. Place hardly matters it seems, very bad conditions can and do happen anywhere around the island:
Coming into Bamfield on a winter’s night, a sudden snowstorm hits, disorients the skipper, a fishing boat goes on the rocks, the life raft punctures, the crew climbs up the mast only to be swept away by 30’ waves up onto the rocks. “It’s just a tiny rock, and then there’s about 5’ of water then there’s a tiny islet. Not very big at all - maybe 30’, 40’ out of the water. . . It was one of the hardest things I had to do: get back into the water and go that 5, 10 feet to get to this bigger rock. But I did it and climbed up the side of this and I got to the top, and I found a little hole in the top. And I just curled up in a ball and sat there. I had bare feet and ice was forming on the tops of my feet. . . I realized I was going into hypothermia. So I was forcing myself, every little bit, every ten minutes, fifteen minutes, to stamp my feet, keep moving.”
“First of all I was scared because I didn’t know whether we were at low tide or whether high tide was going to drown me. That was one of my concerns.” “I guess in about an hour or so, I hear this whap, whap, whap. It’s a helicopter, and they come over with what they call a Midnight Sun light and it lights up everything. “ “. . . They bang (the rescue toboggan) on the rock, which is very smart, because these things build up tremendous static electricity and can easily electrocute you. . .” “It bounced off the rock and I grabbed it and jumped into it and up I go.” “And they go search (for others) backing this helicopter into tiny ravines along the shore, scaring the bejesus out of me. . . The pilot can’t see anything - he can’t turn on any lights ‘cause he gets vertigo from the snow.” “We get up to 200 feet, and get snow in the intake and the helicopter falls out of the sky. It comes crashing down and think, Oh my God, here we go again.” The pilot manages an autorotation but then . . . “Plunk, in the water. . . So there we are sitting just off Cape Beale, which is sheer rock cliff, in these waves. The inflation goes immediately into effect and they send out an SOS. It’s bobbing quite nicely. . .”
Meanwhile, a Coast Guard lifeboat is on the scene: “We didn’t have much choice as far as I was concerned. There was people who needed help so we went in there and picked them up. It was a little dicey getting in. We took a breaker broadside going in - just lifted me right up on the rocks. At one point the boat was up on the curl of the breaker right flat on its side. I was looking straight down through the window and all I could see was bare rock. And all I thought was, this is going to be one hell of a crash. Just then the water flowed in underneath us and kicked me sideways for forty or fifty feet. No contact. “
Back in the floating helicopter: “We bobbed there for, I guess, half and hour anyway, then all of a sudden this (C.G.) Zodiac pulls up to the door of the helicopter and we just dove into it and go to the Coast Guard lifeboat and they just gun it right over the reef, the same way they got it in.”
The cutter experienced mechanical problems and has to return to Bamfield, but the Coast Guard crew returns in an older boat. The lighthouse keeper can still hear the lone survivor calling but he is lost to sea before the Coast Guard can find him.
“Two things I learned from that. One is that when push comes to shove, it’s not every man for himself. It just doesn’t happen. . . Even when you know there isn’t a prayer of surviving, you fight for every last second . . . No matter how ridiculous it seems.”
That’s one story. Here’s Another about sport fishing on Nitinat Lake on South Vancouver Island: “I made a couple of mistakes which I normally don’t do. Number one, I didn’t look at my tide book and number two, I didn’t listen to the weather report. . . I didn’t realize that they had a huge storm on the west coast itself. . .” “I got up and made breakfast and we went down the lake (Nitinat), my oldest son and I. . . It was beautiful blue, dead flat like glass. When you come down the lake it funnels down to a little narrow gap, fifty feet wide. Long and narrow, about 500’ long, then it empties out into the ocean. So you’ve got these waves coming in and this river roaring down and hitting the waves. I went down through it and looked at the waves and I couldn’t believe how big they were - huge, the biggest waves I’ve seen in my entire life. I turned around right now and got the hell out of there, up into this little bay and sat there. . . They were monsters, at least 35’ high - 35’ - 40’ high. Huge.”
As they wait a boat goes by and doesn’t come back. “I said, they must have gone out through Canoe Pass. Than’s an area where you can get through, sneak by all these big waves in behind these rocks.”
“So I went out, my motor in reverse, and I was pointing downstream, looking at these waves. That was the biggest mistake I made, right there. I should have had my boat turned the other way, pointing upstream so I could go forward.” “There’s a grey area in there, they call it the point of no return, and I was in that. And I knew it. And I was in trouble. I didn’t panic. I said, Geez, we’re in trouble. . . I said, I’ll wait for one of these big rollers to lay down in front of me and I’ll sneak over the top of it, and I’ll wait for the next one to crash down and I’ll sneak over it. That’s how the guys get out: they time the waves. But I wasn’t used to those big waves and I blew it. . . There was so much air in the water - that there was no thrust to my prop. When I gave it full guns to go, the boat just sat there. We’re doing 4,000 rpms and we’re sitting still, the boat’s just slowly moving forward. So I’m sinking quickly into these bubbles. All of a sudden it grabs the solid water and it starts to climb this wave. By this time my timing’s way out. I’m underneath the crest by this time. The crest is over top of me.”
“The wave came up and it took the cabin right off the boat. I remember my boy yelling, “We’re dead.” I just saw a huge blue wall of water in front of me, bluey-green. I looked up but couldn’t even see the top of the wave, it was so high. That’s the last thing I remember. It took the cabin right off, took the windshield, took us with it and threw us out of the boat. There was a pile of boats behind us and they said they never saw anything like it in their lives. The boat was right upside down, and the wave threw it through the air about 50’ or 60’. The wave came down on top of it and just blew it to pieces - nothing left of it.”
“When I woke up I was on the bottom of the ocean, going around and around. All I could hear was gravel smacking the side of my head. I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. . . I swam and rowed my arms and kicked like a bugger and all of a sudden I popped to the surface. But again I’d come up into the foam - I had four or five feet of foam above my head so I didn’t know where the wave was. . . I could feel myself going up, up, up and I knew a wave was going to hit me, but I didn’t know when so I didn’t know when to take a deep breath. Then bang, back down to the bottom again. This happened three or four times. . . By this time I was pretty beat up. My face was all cut by the glass - when the windshield hit my face. My arms felt like putty. . . I knew I was in trouble and I knew I was hurt because all the muscles were torn off my neck and I couldn’t hold my head up. It was just flopping all over. . . The last time I went down I remember hitting sand, real soft sand, and then sliding over an edge and going down real deep. . . The last time I want down it was pitch dark. There were absolutely no light rays at all. It was dead, dead quiet. You could hear a pin drop. Actually it was quite pleasant - really, really quiet and peaceful down there.”
Rescued by a friend who finesses his way through the waves, he says; “let’s go fishing. You’ve saved me. I’m saved. I don’t want to go through this all over again. (Go back up the lake for medical assistance) I pleaded with him and begged. I said, Let’s go fishing for a couple of hours - they’re catching fish out there.”
“I was in bed for eight weeks. I pulled all the muscles off my head all around, and off my shoulder. The only thing holding my head on was my bones. . . The doctor said he had no idea why I wasn’t a quadriplegic.” “It was the end of the season. I hadn’t caught any fish at all, hardly. I’d spent a lot of money fitting this boat up, wanting to catch this ultimate salmon, and I was prepared to take on anything. I took a chance, and I shouldn’t have done it.”
And if those two selections aren’t enough, there are tales where kayakers founder, vintage tug boats sink, a cruise ship catches fire, a life raft squeezes through reefs, a 110’ boat mixes up lights and hits a Cape Caution reef at full speed - in a winter storm, a fish boat’s cabin windows are blown in by 40’ waves - on and on, you get the picture. The book, the tales, constitute a non-stop action movie, one filled with bravery, endurance and courage.
Hopefully, you’ll never have to endure the terrors described in this book. But if you get even a bit wiser from a reading, you’ll have paid for the book cost many times over. It’s a great read.
Reach of Tide - Ring of History: A Columbia River Voyage, Sam McKinney, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, a Northwest Reprint, originally published in 1987 by Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland Paperback 114 pages
A boat trip to span North America winnowed down to a neo-exploration of the Columbia river tidewater and eventually gave birth to this book. Sam McKinney, boater, explorer, author, teacher and historian set out in 1985 in a boat he built for $650 to retrace significant early explorations and settlements of the lower Columbia. As a personal reflection of what he sees and learns, the book’s focus flows easily from geology to history to personalities to place. In short, it’s a charming book about a man wandering around the lower Columbia recording what he sees and feels and discovers.
He begins, appropriately, bobbing amongst the waves just off the Columbia bar looking Eastward, imagining what the first European sailors were thinking as they faced the same broad river mouth. Then, on the same day and same course as Captain Robert Grey aboard the Columbia Rediviva, he enters the river and it’s history.
Beginning with the details of man’s efforts to control the actual river bar over the past 200 years, he describes the early surveys, the jetty building and the on-going dredging without which, he notes, “ . . . the inland ports of the Columbia would be river towns without access to the sea. Because of them, the cities of the river region have an open water route across the river bar to the world.” In other words, no jettys, no dredging - no Portland!
Next he’s hanging out with river pilots, watching their tense transfers from the pilot boat to waiting ships, noting that even with the wonders of modern technology to aid them “. . . there is still that moment between pilot boat and ship where there is nothing but ocean. It is a gap that must still be bridged by human hand, foot and judgement.”
Then on the to Coast Guard station off Cape Disappointment. As you might expect, it’s a busy place, averaging around 150 requests for assistance during the winter months, a number that surges upward with the opening of the summer sport fishing season. Official scrapbooks contain “. . . dreary and monotonous reports of carelessness, faulty equipment, and poor judgement.” The majority of the Coast Guard rescues (and body recoveries) are of sport fisherpeople. The station chief tells McKinney that they “. . . Just want to get that fish; they just want to catch a salmon. . . It’s strange . . . Sometimes I just don’t understand them.”
McKinney retraces the Lewis and Clark arrival at the river’s mouth during the darkening winter of 1805 and their crossing from the north shore to what would become Fort Clatsop just south of modern Astoria. While he finds the place dreary at best, he reminds us that for men who had been living outside for over a year, a warm (relative), dry (relative) fort must have been comforting.
“Astoria and hard times are old comrades” writes McKinney. It’s a town with solid memories of what it was supposed to be - “. . . The center of an empire.” Today, McKinney writes, Astoria sits on it’s peninsula, upon it’s rich history, waiting to “. . . stir our dreams with visions of things possible. It waits only to again be discovered.”
Then McKinney begins his exploration of the downriver communities, which to me, constitute the best part of the book. Beginning with Ilwaco, using two old maps, he works along the north shore visiting communities still holding on and others long returned to nature (hard to believe in our rapidly filling greater Puget Sound). After recounting Ilwaco’s strange ups and downs with the charter fishing business, he’s off through the shallows to Chinookville (abandoned) and Chinook (preserved) where a few families live as their ancestors did in a community that hasn’t boomed or busted, just persevered as a commercial fishing town.
With constant references to Lewis and Clark journals, he works East, taking time to lunch in Hungry Harbor. Then on to Knappton, Portuguese Point, Frankfort, Deep River, Gray’s River, communities initially roadless and so isolated that “. . . each was an island unto itself. Each made its own recreation and social life. Most were relatively self sufficient.” McKinney points out that the largely Scandinavian population of these roadless towns seemed content with the spartan restrictions of isolation. It wasn’t that different from their lives in the old country.
Altoona, a now gone fish canning town with a great name, once got milk from Helge Saari who delivered to customers by boat, his comings and goings controlled by the tide. Within days of the first road reaching Altoona in 1942, Saari’s business ended and he died - just like the town.
Approaching his next stop over the original access medium - that is water, “I located the silted-in channel entrance to the little community that lies at the junction of three waterways, Skamokawa Creek, Brooks Slough, and Steamboat Slough.” writes McKinney, “Years ago, these waterways were Skamokawa’s main street, and the town was called the “Venice of the lower Columbia.” Sadly, the highway destroyed the orientation of the water fronted town.”
Arriving next at Cathlamet, a county seat and relatively lively town, McKinney is fortunate to meet with the grand daughter of an original pioneer. She fills him in on the many ethnic groups she grew up knowing, painting a picture of a vibrant and rather exotic community. Then to nearby Puget Island, the author traces down the phonebook names - Bergseng - Hegstad - Kaukkanen - Ostervold and Marvin Blix, a fellow wood boat builder who disdains fiberglass boats by pointing out that, “A boat shouldn’t come in a five-gallon can.”
Crossing the river to the Oregon side, McKinney visits Clifton, a village set back from the river on the Clifton channel. Here the descendants are of Mediterranean stock - Greeks, Yugoslavs and Italians, the stories he hears are different. “We had two saloons then, a saloon and a dance hall in the lower part of the town and another saloon in Greek town.” They imported boxcars of grapes for wine making.
“In the short journey I made around the shoreline of the lower Columbia River, I passed the sites of 28 communities, some still trying, but most of them gone. That sets a record of the dead or dying community for every three miles I traveled. Today, such a loss of human communities would probably be considered as a social disaster.” But then, “No one - outside of the villagers themselves - really cared whether they lived or died. Quietly, without fanfare, they came into existence, and quietly without eulogy they disappeared.”
Leaving towns for mid-river estuaries, the author spends time wandering through the 20 odd islands that make up the Lewis and Clark National Wildlife Refuge. Thirty five thousand acres of water, tidelands, mudflats, bars, marshes and a preponderance of creatures that live in the mud. He loves it. He takes naps. He listens to the wind. He observes. He describes the dynamics of such wetlands, from the mud dropped by floods to concentrations of worms of up to 75,000 per square meter! “Our minds cannot comprehend such abundance. We are also slightly repulsed by the snapping, sucking, squirting dark terror and anarchy that crawls, wiggles, and burrows in the muck of mud and in the green ooze of water. It is here that the food chain begins.”
He describes some of the 175 species of birds that inhabit the refuge. And he shares his love of the natural force of the place. “I went out in my boat to confront the first storm of the year blowing in from the Pacific. I tied the boat to the shore of a tiny grass-rimmed inlet and laid there in silence as the storm howled over me, creating a wild ocean of waving grass. I go there as a visitor and leave behind only the quiet wake of my boat. It is a place to be visited, to be seen. And to be left alone.”
There is an information packed chapter on the early years of salmon fishing along the lower river. It’s a great story, about one of the places that actually helped invent the process of canning fish. He tells of the sailing gillnetters that once plied the waters as well as those people without boats who developed a method of horse seining the fish right off and up the beach. He describes the efficient fish traps, so good at trapping fish that they were eventually banned through pressure from fishermen. And he points out that around the turn of the 20th century there were 2,500 fishermen working the river with only 13% listing the U.S. as their birthplace. Their legacies remain.
In the final pages of the book McKinney travels upriver to Portland. I found his explorations along that section less inspired. Interesting still, but without the romantic excitement of his downriver wanderings about which he writes:
“Two weeks on the river and I was only fifty miles upstream. My wake had it been recorded, would have revealed a slow, wandering track of curiosity - islands explored, old townsites discovered, and unnamed channels followed. I had left foot prints on sandbars and on mudbanks I had left the imprint of the boat’s keel. These things, the small unexpected adventures, are the best part of a journey.”
How true.