“Anybody listening? Jager? True North? Anybody??” The words carried an urgency that caused me to leave the pit where I was pulling gear with a leap, to run to the wheelhouse and grab the radio mic. Steve’s voice, usually cool and well modulated, like the radio announcer he is, was pitched a little higher than usual; something unpleasant was happening. “I’m in South Inian Pass, and I blew the tide. We’re in the Washing Machine, taking water over bow and stern. If I don’t contact you in two minutes, you know what to do!” Well, that was a bit of a problem. As mentioned before, South Inian is one of the places you don’t mess around with. When the tide ebbs, it collides with any ocean swell at 12+ knots, and the result is a chaotic jumble of water, often not survivable. I’m told that there are 58 recorded deaths in South Inian Pass; our first venture through last year sure got my attention. The story Steve told us later in the week only adds to the air of deadly respect mariners have for the two mile stretch of water.
Fishing a larger boat this year, he was able to hire a couple of deckhands, two girls he went to school with. One of the hands had to get back to Sitka, and a tender from Sitka was sitting inside Icy Strait, preparing to return and unload. Arrangements were (hastily!) made to rendezvous and transfer the passenger for a ride back home. Several boats had already made the jump to the Inside (as we call Icy Strait, opposed to Outside which is Cross Sound and the outer coast) at the correct time, the beginning of the flood tide. If you wait until the beginning of the ebb, you are in trouble. The last minute decision to meet the tender put Steve at the last possible moment to attempt the Pass. The message we heard tells the result – he was caught at the decisive moment. The three previous days had been spent tied to the dock in the Cove, along with most of the other boats, waiting out one of the seemingly endless storms we’ve had this year. Lovie and I had ventured out into Cross Sound to fish, and were fishing in some large ocean swells generated by the storm. The combination of a large ebb tide and large ocean swells is not one that boded well for Steve. He decided to gamble on the run, and made a start. Once he committed, the currents and waves were chaotic; after about two minutes, he knew he was in for a ride. It was as if the whole thing exploded – he looked out and his stern was completely under water. A glance out the front showed a similar situation on the bow. Waves slammed him from all sides simultaneously, and a porthole window blew out. All the gear on his deck was washed off, including his pit cover. He reached for the mic, and made the call. There is nothing anyone else can do for you in this situation. We began to pull our gear, watching the clock. If he didn’t call, we would call the Coast Guard and begin to patrol across the 2 mile stretch at the mouth of the Pass, looking for floating debris and survivors. Connley, fishing about 45 minutes away on the Inside, got on the radio, also ready to pull gear and run down to do what he could. Steve just pointed the Ebb Tide up against the ebb, put the throttle to full, and went. He told his deckhands to be ready to get wet; just grab something and hold on to the boat when it went, because there is no way anyone would find them if they were separated from the vessel. The wooden boat most likely would not sink for a while, but would be totally awash, giving some safety to the crew. He was a bit worried about planking above waterline; a trip on the grid a couple of weeks before had confirmed that the below waterline wood was in good shape, but the upper section needed quite a bit of work. This doesn’t help the worry factor, either!
An eternity later, he made progress into a calmer section of water. We all breathed a big sigh of relief. Standing at the dock here in Hoonah yesterday, we noticed a repetitive pumping of the bilge; a seam has opened up somewhere, but for now his pumps keep up. He has a big rework planned for the winter, and will fix it then.
We made the plunge a couple of days later, along with Kirk and Jason on the Jager – we carefully timed the tide, and made it without incident. Even on a decent day, the swell and tide made for a very confused sea, but we wallowed our way through with no problem. I made a short video that I’ll try to get on YouTube; it really doesn’t do justice to the feeling of being there!
Link To Video - South Inian Approach
Inside – we’ve spent a week here fishing out of Hoonah; weather is a lot nicer here, only a couple of days stormed in, and flat calm the rest. The fishing, for us, has not been hot. We’ve barely caught enough to cover food and gas, but we feel like we have to keep trying until season ends on September 20. If we don’t pick up a few more, we plan to fish our way on around to Peril Strait, up to Salisbury Sound, and then to Sitka at the end of season. Hopefully we will catch enough to get a plane ticket back to Montana for the winter! Not our finest year, financially.
Friends to fish with are one of the bright spots. A storm coincided with Labor Day, so we had a cookout in the blowing rain, rafted with the gang at the docks at Hoonah. Steve cooked burgers and pork ribs; potato salad, beans, brownies, cinnamon rolls, and hot coffee. Not too bad for a blustery evening, at the end of summer.
I had a revelation this morning; Lovie and I were consoling each other with the fact that we had each other, and we’ve had quite an adventure together. I commented that it wasn’t necessarily fun, but it was definitely adventure. I just realized – Lewis and Clarke, Shackleton, Peary; all wonderful adventures to read about, but probably not to be considered “fun”. Fun and adventure only go together at Disneyworld, where the illusion of mortal peril can be invoked to adventure level, yet in the background of one’s mind there is the understanding that the danger is minimal and the duration is short. In 15 minutes, we’ll have cotton candy and watch the puppets, along with 10,000 other people. It’s awfully hot on the asphalt today, isn’t it? What’s for dinner?
Adventure is different, folks.
Fish on.
No comments:
Post a Comment