[PCW] Rough West Coast Weather Cruising (long post)

[Candy Chapman and Gary Bell]

Dennis Raedeke was saying:

We hit a severe storm. If I had
waited, <SNIP> after looking at the weather, the trip would have
been fine.  If we are doing this for enjoyment then we have to boat in season
and even then work around the weather.  Haste does make waste.

I have been off the Oregon coast in 20 foot seas, going down wind in Wild Wind
IV. It was a good ride. At the time the port engine was down. That is another
story.  The problem out there is when the seas get bad there is no place to
hide. The river entrances are so bad it is more dangerous than staying out. We
were happy to get into Crescent City CA.

I would like to hear comments from the people on this list that are from that
area.

Yes, Dennis, much of the coastal waters of the west are pretty 
inhospitable in any sort of particularly windy or bumpy weather, from 
Neah Bay all the way to San
Francisco.   We do get some pretty rough weather too -- last December we 
broke the moorings on two of our big NOAA offshore weather buoys in 
100mph winds and 70 foot swells.  And there are darn few attractive 
harbors to start with.  All the potential harbors of refuge are closed 
by the CG when they get too boisterous, although just off the top of my 
head, I would consider Gray's Harbor, the Columbia bar, maybe Newport, 
Coos Bay, and Crescent City the later ones to close.   All of them are 
white knuckle crossings in poor conditions.   The ones with significant 
river flows involved (Columbia bar most particularly!!) change 
dramatically with the state of the tidal currents.  I always time my 
arrivals and departures with lower slack water, I consult the CG 
frequently for bar conditions, and have Plans B and C available.  I have 
also crossed the Columbia bar a number of times when it was still as a 
pond, or nearly so.  In the case of the Columbia, the CG of course has 
it's base at Cape Disappointment, with it's national training base for 
bar and surf lifeboats there because they feel it offers the finest 
opportunity to train their crews on the most deadly bar in the nation.  
(I'm not talkin' about that tavern in Illwaco...).   In every case, 
contact the CG about any refuge needs, they are way beyond superb at 
saving our butts from disaster.   The lifeboat crews say that they have 
to go out, but they don't always have to return. 

Running offshore should always be a safety option, although I prefer to 
stay closer to onshore resources with the slowest course/speed that is 
acceptable, rather than bolting for the deep water (issues of fuel 
conservation, radio range and proximity to rescue services).  
Additionally, hereabouts the far offshore weather/wave situation is 
seldom much better than closer in.  You have to go a really long way out 
to get into truely deep water and those Bearing Sea storm swells still 
run out there too.  Holding offshore is likely to be a substantial wait 
too, with diminishing resources and in the case of the Columbia bar, 
worries about the steady flow of merchant shipping. 

I need to mention another BIG issue when transiting the onshore area, 
crab pots/lines/floats.  They are everywhere, and don't even imagine 
that the so called pot-free lanes for shipping, or anything else for 
that matter will save ya.  Get way out, offshore.  Particularly so in 
better weather when the desperate crabbers, etc. are setting huge 
strings of pots.   The 100 fathom line is my criteria, and even then, I 
find some, so a SHARP lookout, prop. spurs and good weather/wave 
forecasts, with adequate safety margins all around are my criteria.  I 
would never run any closer than 100 fathoms in the dark, and in spite of 
the fuel burn involved, the farther out the better.  Given that the 
whole region is forested and gets a bunch of rainfall, logs are a 
significant problem too.  The blue water sailboat set bound from the 
Straits of Juan de Fuca, Columbia bar or even SF Bay for Hawaii and 
points south generally head more or less west a bunch to pick up 
friendly winds/currents, getting well offshore before bending 
southward.  BTW, the continental shelf slopes are pretty consistently 
wide and gradually sloped all the way up the west coast, so the old 
timer fishermen (pre GPS) used a fathometer to tell them how far 
offshore they were, and LORAN to tell them how far north/south -- there 
is/was a really good chain running up the west coast to give the avid 
LORAN user a nice northing position.   The currents offshore and out 
quite a ways are dependably southward, and in the 1-2kt or more range.  
That, together with seasonal Northwesterly winds and swells out of 
Aleutian storm systems define the common uphill and downhill notion. 

Wintertime hereabouts, the boaters don't haul out for cold weather, but 
we confine ourselves to cruising the southern half of the Inside Passage 
behind Vancouver Island, all of Puget Sound (San Juans, Gulf Islands, 
etc.) and for those of us in the Columbia system, we have good water all 
the way to Lewiston Idaho!  Power boats my size (PDQ34) and most 
sailboats generally limit our 'outside' transits to mid April through 
mid September, give or take.  Bold small boat skippers catch good 
weather windows outside that -- sometimes.  Larger, or especially more 
seaworthy power boats (Wild Wind IV included) can transit offshore 
occasionally into November, and as early as March sometimes, but 
generally only in remarkable weather windows, as well as with a couple 
of rabbit's feet and abundant reserve fuel aboard.   The public fuel 
dock in Neah Bay was closing for the season the day I got there -- Sept. 
15.   Larger commercial traffic runs up and down the coast year around, 
and is only rarely closed out on the Columbia bar, for example.

Transit is the general idea for most of the coastal cruising here:  
heading to and from Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay, etc..  There are 
some folks who cruise up or down the coast itself, but they are almost 
all sport fishing out of even the smallest coastal harbors.  Charter and 
commercial fishermen run in and out of every nook and cranny on the 
coast (Google Earth to Depoe Bay, OR, zoom in and check the photos 
around the bridge!) but only with hard won local knowlege and 
experience.  We loose plenty of boats and people along the coast, 
usually quite dramatically.  In spring and summer it is usually foolish 
sport fishermen and in winter its luckless commercial fishers.  The four 
seasons nearshore here are:  'Boy, Its Almost Like Summer Out Here,' 
lasting from about July 4th to mid September;   'Gosh, Winter Came Early 
This Year,' running into late October; 'Real Winter,' (sometimes called 
'#$%^ Winter') running through early March and 'Geeze, Won't This Crummy 
Weather Ever Stop?!' from March through early July.  Beware of Sucker 
Breaks too -- apparent weather windows that slam shut just as you are 
about to set out. 

There are several professional delivery skippers hereabouts who can 
share their abundant experience.  Email me off-list if you would like a 
reference. 

In short, I enthusiastically support your stated and implied assertions 
that there is no such thing as too much experience and that questions of 
success or disaster are largely determined by choosing the season and 
taking advantage of the weather.  'Go with the flow' and 'Don't fight 
the trends.'

In my experience, our power catamarans do particularly well offshore 
here, given our unique ability to select among higher or lower speeds 
and their attendant fuel economies to make tightly scheduled bar 
crossings and distant destinations or to accommodate shifting weather 
windows, for example.   I have almost twice the comfortable coastwise 
range of my friends with monohulled trawlers if I travel at their 
speeds, or the option of up to twice their speed.  Our catamarans are 
wonderfully immune to rolling in the nearly omnipresent mix of fairly 
heavy northerly and westerly swells, and do so without the challenges 
and hassles of powered stabilizers or paravanes.   The great visibility 
and the comfortable, open, light and airy accommodations help keep 
skippers, Admirals and guests from sea sickness.  OK, my boat does look 
like a wedding cake on a sled, but I like it a lot.  I look forward to 
offshore passages between the Columbia and Puget Sound.   I hope to 
spend next summer boating there.  The transits are no sweat for an 
adequately prepared skipper who respects the conditions.   Flexible 
schedules and attitudes; backup plans; a good sense of humor and 
particularly abstinance from indulging in excesses of testosterone will 
get ya through just fine.  

That's my (typically long winded) view from here on the Columbia anyway,

Gary Bell