Three years ago, Quadra was running south toward home after spending much of a summer exploring Southeast Alaska. One significant leg of that return voyage was from Duncanby Landing on Rivers Inlet in British Columbia to the marine resort at Sullivan Bay. Essentially, it was an ocean crossing.
We left Duncanby just after sunrise to find gentle swells from the northwest. Encouraged, we turned onto a southerly course that aimed at Egg Island and its lighthouse. A few miles short of that landmark I glanced seaward and was shocked to see a huge swell bearing sharply down on our starboard side. I swung the wheel for a better angle and watched in awe as the bow lifted higher, higher, higher. I’d need a ladder to reach the foredeck.
The 42-foot boat began to heel to port and I sensed the bow was going to fall the same direction. My mind screamed broach!
Fortunately, the boat kept moving steadily ahead and we slid almost out of control down the back side of that swell – and immediately began rising on the front of another.
From the top of that mountainous sea I could see an endless procession of its brothers and sisters rolling in from deep Pacific waters. Quadra struggled up over the next, renewing my fear that we were going to be swept into the trough and buried under tons of water.
As soon as it passed, I spun the wheel hard to port and jammed the starboard throttle to the stop. The boat spun quickly, just in time for the next monster sea to slide beneath us. With Plan B in mind, we ran for a protected cove in Smith Sound. That southbound coastal trip normally can be run in eight hours or so. It took us five days because we needed to hide from those huge seas.
I have been boating 30 years and occasionally have been concerned, maybe even worried, by bad sea conditions. Until that day I never had feared for my life.
This is a long-winded explanation of why this year Quadra didn’t make it up that length of coast, rounding the ominously named Cape Caution. If my memory is correct, it would have been my tenth passage around the cape. This year, we tried three times and we turned back each time in the face of uncomfortably large swells rolling from the northwest. The Canadian weather forecast that day suggested low swells and light winds for our early morning run north.
But as we neared Allison Harbor the small swells began to grow until we were facing five and six-foot rollers just off the port bow. We were rising and falling harshly and I finally slowed from six knots to about three, but the pounding continued. Radar showed a faster boat overtaking us at perhaps 12 or 14 knots. As she pulled even with us a mile off I saw that her frothy bow wake disappeared as the boat was slowed to cope with the seas.
I knew it would get worse as we reached Slingsby Channel, which carried ebb flows from Seymour Inlet into the ocean. The collision of that ebb with ocean current would generate ever bigger and confused seas. Because we were running at reduced speed I knew we also would face normal afternoon northwest winds of 15 to 20 knots before reaching Duncanby and I expected they would worsen sea conditions.
We turned into Allison, an anchorage I never had used. It’s a good hiding spot, with room for a small fleet of boats.
Early the next morning we returned to the Pacific and turned north, to feel the slam of similarly large seas. After struggling for a while, I gave up again and we turned into Miles Inlet. It was a port of refuge on the trip south in 2006 and it was a welcome stop this time.
Entering Miles reminds me of opening a door into a long narrow hall. The channel is about two boats wide, except for an indent to port a short distance in. I anchored in that indent three years ago and we dropped the hook there again. After several hours we pulled out and found seas even more intimidating. Back to Miles. This time we ran to the end of the T-shaped inlet to drop the anchor. One branch of the T running roughly westward has a noisy rapids. We took the Walker Bay toward the rapids and charged through, using all eight horsepower generated by my 18-year-old Johnson. We turned back quickly and bounced off a few rocks getting through. Later, as the tide dropped, the rapids became a waterfall.
Our third and final try came the next morning. Sea conditions had not changed so we gave up and turned south. We ran with those rolling seas behind us for several hours before they began to fade as we came abeam of Blunden Harbor. Sea conditions were sloppy as we reached Wells Passage and turned inland.
I have no apologies for being overly conservative. Since then, I’ve related my experiences to other boaters who say that they never stop, are willing to plunge ahead into sea of eight, ten or twelve feet. Good for you, I say, but it’s not for me.