T&T: Vortexes

[Gary Bell]

yesterday Roger B. commented:

I would really like to thank you for the information you provide on cruising
the PNW.

The logs, deadheads, fog, rain, wild animals, lack of pump-out facilities,
expensive (if available at all) diesel should deter all but the most hardy
cruiser.

Now you add vortices, rips, races, overfalls, rapids, standing waves,
moderately large tidal ranges it's just too much.

and Gary adds:

Let's see, anybody heard of the fuss crossing the Columbia bar?  There are a
couple of others of lesser fame which can still be dramatic from time to time
-- LaPush, WA, and DePoe Bay OR come right to mind.  We regularly loose
commercial and charter boats on the bars at Tillamook, Bandon, etc. etc..  If
the Coast Guard painted tiny silhouettes of a fishing skiff on the sides of
their boats every time they dragged some hapless sport fisherman home they
would never need to repaint their hulls!

Don't forget all the active volcanoes, ash falls and the like (although you
will have to stop off in Hawaii to see hot lava actually pour into the sea).
We live on the right hand edge of the Pacific Ring of Fire (the East Pacific
Subduction Zone, where the North Pacific tectonic plate is being shoved under
the western edge of the Continental plate, producing lots of 'interesting'
geological effects).  Then there are the giant underwater earthquakes and
tsunami.  The famous San Andreas fault and the newly described Eastern Pacific
fault run a hundred miles or so off the coast; are predictably violent (the
last tsunami of which resculpted the PNW coast and devastated Japan in 1700);
and which are remarkably periodic (right at 300 years apart for the last seven
or eight events).  Hereabouts we all learn the sound of the tsunami warning
system and practice following the tsunami escape route signs.  The gigantic
wave test facility at Oregon State University demonstrated that an 80
centimeter deep water tsumami wave, traveling at several hundred miles per
hour, would crest and break onshore well over ten meters high.  Really
dramatic demonstrations.

Add in a few unsympathetic Native American fishermen and cannery operators who
hog up all the diesel fuel after the public fuel dock closes.  There are also
periodic whale migrations followed by a flotilla of whale watching boats; not
to mention the controversial Native American whalers, who are in turn followed
by their own flotilla of official and amateur anti-whaling challenge boats.

Oh, I don't believe Marin mentioned the bleak weather.  Here we renamed the
seasons:  fall becomes the Rainy Season, winter the Cold Rainy Season, spring
the More Rainy Season, and of course summer is now Road Construction.
Naturally marinas, jetties and aids-to-navigation also fall in with Roads if
there is a break in the rain.  The good news however, is that whenever you
come to the PNW, there is only a tiny chance of snow, and for better or worse
we leave our boats out in the weather year around.  We haven't frozen the
Columbia River in something like a decade, and even then, most boats and
marinas escaped serious damage at break-up.

You suggested we were a bunch of "hardy cruiser"(s), I suspect it is mostly
denial.

Roger continued:

I can't wait to visit this exciting area as soon as I have sorted a few
family matters.

Please keep me up to date with information of any other exciting attractions
of your region. Are you sure you don't work for the Washington State Tourist
Board?

Many thanks

Roger Bingham
France

and Gary closes with:

Alrighty then!  Let us know when and we'll try to turn some of the
decommissioned lighthouses back on for you.  Will you be coming in through the
Suez and over the Pacific or over the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal?


Gary Bell, Chairman and founding member,
Pacific Northwest Boosters
(they just call me "Booster Chair")