Weather Kicks Up / long night in rough seas

woke from watch below to find the sea  had picked up a notch.

     The little red travel alarm sang me awake at twenty minutes to noon, after a wonderful deep sleep.  An old long underwear top hanging over the porthole to help me sleep during the morning watch below didn’t let enough light in for me to know if the sky had begun to close in, but the sea certainly had picked up a notch.  We were still trundling along at full speed, and from the sudden rise at the stern and subsequent sharp, long roll to port I knew we still had the westerly wind pushing us along our course.  Timing my move out of the bunk to avoid being pitched headlong into the wall on the port roll, I couldn't help feel thankful that at least the weather had not backed around to southeast, as one expects from a falling glass.  With her full stern, built like a brick shit house,  she just slid along with the sea in easy comfort no matter how hard the wind blew.  Bracing myself with a foot at either side of the narrow room,  I pulled up faded blue genes,  flannel cutoff cuff sleeve shirt, wool socks and the well worn Western Chief deck slippers; ready to take on the afternoon watch.

     Tom was sitting at the galley table eating a sandwich with his Ovaltine jar, half drained, sitting on the green table mat in front of him.  He looked up from the three day old Seattle Times we had picked up the morning before we left town, but didn’t say much as I shuffled through into the galley to rustle up my lunch.  Reaching for the railing around the sink to steady myself I saw a particularly large sea suddenly loom up, and felt the deck tilt to the port as the stern rose to let it by.  The bigger sea,  steeper than the others, tossed the boat with a quick jerk at the end of the swing, before coming back to starboard in somewhat of a hurry.  That was when my heart stopped a quarter beat.

     The bow of that heavy sein skiff lashed on deck moved a foot toward me when the deck made its sudden change of direction.  If that thing were to break loose in heavy weather, or in any weather outside the confines of Lake Union back in town, there would be serious trouble.  With that much weight suddenly shifting in the direction of a deep roll, the boat may not have enough weight below the center of gravity to counter the movement, and she could tumble over like a drunk miss judging the curb outside the bar at two in the morning.  And in the middle of the gulf the bottom of the gutter is a thousand feed under the keel.

    I instantly called to Tom, who sprang into action.  He shouted up the companion way for Phil to stop the boat and Jon to get his ass on deck immediately.  Without taking time to find our jackets or boots we hit the deck running.  Broken clouds allowed cool sunshine that didn’t soften the sharp wind coming out of the west south west, but it created a dramatic beauty to the scene.  White froth at the peaks of most of the seas that were marching toward us, as we meandered along under minimum power, just enough to maintain steering, avoid falling off the wind and wallowing in the through.  I half expected to hear the familiar strains of Richard Rogers’ Victory at Sea playing over the background, but all we heard were the scream of the gulls that always seemed to be around, and an occasional lower squawk from puffins that scurried out of our way.  With the engine idled down we could also hear the sound from the tops of the waves beginning to break into white caps, and the noise of the hull sloshing along in response.

     Before a new purchase could be completed with the chain a secondary lashing needed to be in place to keep the skiff from swinging again.  The chain that would never break under the weight of the skiff if it remained taught could easily part if it came slack then  jerked tight on the next roll. Someone grabbed a length of three quarter inch line from the storage locker and we began making a Spanish windless to replace the now loose chain lashing.  This is a lashing that starts with one end of the line tied into a loop, tied with a bowline knot,  the loose end of the line is threaded through a secure point in deck, then up and over the stout inner rail on the skiff, then through the eye so it can be pulled very tight in the other direction, back through the skiff rail again and down for a second turn around the pad eye on deck.  Then a taught line hitch is thrown about three quarters of the way up the bundle of lines.  A gaff handle threads through the middle of the lines, then twisted several turns pulling the lines extremely tight.

     As soon as this was completed the chain on that side was also moved to a more secure fasting place at both ends and the binder ratcheted tight again.  In the mean time Jon grabbed a few tools from the locker, hammers and nails and a saw.  A couple of long two by fours had been lashed to the side of the main deck before we left, and these were called into service to make an extra brace for the bow of the skiff that we nailed to the deck with twenty penny galvanized spikes.  Quick work in the nick of time saved us what could have been a real scare or worse if the weather conditions continued to deteriorate, and we were back in the warm galley still feeling the sting of the chilly wind on our faces.

     Back under full power, and fortified  two packets of Nestles chocolate mix in a mug of coffee, we climbed into the wheel house for the afternoon watch.  Tucking the mug into the small deep shelf on one side of the compass I instinctively tapped the glass on the barometer, and noted the needle fall a sixteenth of an inch.  Going back to lab barometers that contain mercury in a glass tube, the common term for changes in atmospheric pressure that herald weather patterns changing is that “the glass is rising or falling” and with the dial models that work on a mechanical connection between the indicator needle on the dial and a vacuum chamber, one can note movement with a gentle tap on the glass front.  An adjustable needle is always set exactly over the indicator needle, so that event he tiniest change in pressure is easily noted.  Rising glass indicates high pressure building, which is associated with westerly winds and clear weather, falling pressure means stormy winds and rain coming out of the south east.  Actually these weather fronts are large areas in which the winds are sweeping around anti clock wise, with the whole system moving from the north west   Pacific toward the south east, eventually sweeping over the coasts, dumping mist and rains that are responsible for the heavy forested country that extends from Yakitat, Alaska down to northern California.

Falling barometer in late February, with our asses hanging out in the middle of the gulf was not the best of news.  While we could easily ride the westerly all the way to shelter, a southeaster was another matter altogether.  With another thirty hours between us and the inside, every inch of it directly into the teeth of the gale, if a front caught up to us along the way, was not a fun prospect.  Bucking directly into wind and waves is the most uncomfortable direction a power boat can travel, and of course if conditions deteriorate the speed is cut as well, extending the thirty hours into gosh only knows what.

     From the perspective of the wheel house windows it quickly became apparent that the reason the boat was bouncing around more than one would ordinarily expect on a twenty five know westerly at our backs was that a much heavier lump was beginning to be noticeable coming at us from the south-south east.  A dark band of cloud very low on the horizon in that direction completed the weather prediction process, like it or not we were definitely in for some heavy going in the upcoming hours.

     After a short nap, cozied into his dark nest behind the deep green curtain Phil came cranked up the LORAN set to take a fix on our position.  A couple of simple steps spit out numbers that placed us on the chart very close to our estimated position, then he fired up the old RADAR set, that had been moved around the corner into the chart room to make a space for the smaller, easier to operate model that now sat on the right side of the wheel.  The old set had a 48 mile range, twice the distance of the new one, and according to the charts we should be close to picking up the top of Kayak Island.  The anemometer mounted high on the wall, just to the left of the cabin door was still hovering around fifteen to twenty five knots of wind, and we sere still making way at full speed without crashing too hard over the steadily building sea, but the last of the westerly wind very quickly gave way to the first gusts from the south.  Occasionally a bigger sea would froth up just to the top edge of the bulwarks in front of us, but nothing was tumbling aboard just yet.

     When the RADAR was tuned in to its maximum range our position was confirmed with a light green smudge at forty six miles off our port bow.  Taking his parallel rulers Phil drew an imaginary line from our position to a point five miles off Cross Sound and walked them over to the compass rose on the chart to get the exact course we needed to lay in for the next stage of the trip.  If the weather had not been threatening he may have let her ride along toward the coast several more hours before turning south, but the strategy now was to cut across and maybe, if luck held scoot into safety before the changing weather held us up in this god forsaken country.

     Ever the optimist, Phil allowed as how he expected it to lay down over night, and settled into his bunk for a nap before he came on watch at six.  By the time he crawled out three hours later things had definitely gone the other way.  The late winter sky seemed to meld into an early dusk, as clouds pressed almost down to our mast head and the wind had increased to a steady forty five with gusts touching sixty.  As the sea built our usually comforting radar image deteriorated to a speckle of wave tops with the ghost like bands of heavy rain  that pelted our little cabin in wind driven ferocity from time to time.   Even though we knew from his frequent chatter on the radio that Terrible Ted was close by in the Barbara Ann, we had long sense lost sight of him in the screen.

     We were pretty much jogging in place by now, maybe making a knot or two of foreword progress.    The automatic pilot was still able to keep her pointed in the right direction, although it took constant attention to make sure the boat didn’t fall off the wind in one direction or the other and take one of these huge seas on the side.  The trick to jogging is timing on the throttle and gear shift.  This is done by feel even during day light hours.  The boat will suddenly rise on the sea, indicating that the drop down the back side of that wave will be a hard one.  At the moment she digs into an oncoming wave, engine rpm is reduced  idle, and if it is a particularly steep one the boat is also shifted into neutral.  In the time it takes to do that she will be standing on her ass, with the huge mass of the foreword part of the boat momentarily hanging out in space beyond the crest of the rapidly moving sea.  Without hesitation she then plunges forward, down into the trough in front of the next wave.  This is the time you do not want the extra momentum of the engine pushing the boat ahead, which in that attitude would be nearly straight toward the bottom.  As soon as you feel the buoyancy of the boat overcome the downward momentum, power is gently applied to help her work up over the next sea and continue on her way.

     Throughout the early evening hours this process progressed in stages.  As things began to kick up the first response was to reduce speed from the seventeen hundred rpm at which we usually ran back to about thirteen.  This softened the entry into the building sea without slowing us down a great deal.  When the gale built another ten knots of wind, an occasional sea asked us to throttle back, but only once every few minutes and then it was usually only a slowing of the engine without having to also kick her out of gear.  By the time Jon came up as six for the change of watch we were out of gear plunging into the sea nearly as much time as in gear trying to make foreword progress.  Maybe, by then we were actually moving backwards in terms of speed over the bottom.

     When the boat was slogging along like this moving around in her was somewhat of an adventure.  Dinner didn’t seem like a practical idea, although there was still coffee on the stove.  Located close to the center of the boat, not that far above the center of gravity as well, the old radar range was the most stable point in our little world.  To minimize glare coming up the always open companion way from the mess room to the wheel house the lights in the front area of the mess room were kept off on the trip, with just a couple of low wattage bare bulbs glowing over the back part of the table, where we all sat anyway.  Around the corner in the galley the usual lights always burned, and the alley way outside the door, and the head was also kept brilliantly lit throughout these long dark nights.  The lights in the engine room below were never turned off, and Phil also liked to keep all the deck lights turned on while we were traveling, under the theory that the more light we could show the better we could be seen by other boats that may be crossing our path.

     You couldn’t really walk around without hanging on to something.  There is an infinite variety of angles at which the sea approached us and the boat never just bucked over the wave in perfect fore and aft motion.  The rise up a huge sea was usually accompanied by a hard roll to starboard or port, with the corresponding counter roll happening as she fell off the wave, slogging her way into and up the side of the next comber.  In the wheelhouse, Phil was at his usual station, braced in the door way which kept him in one place with a minimum of effort.  Stout little shelves with three inch edging on either side of the wheel provided convenient hand holds, and there was a place for hands and feet on the drop seat so that a guy could maintain his perch without fear of being tossed to one side or the other.

     Going below was an adventure, almost fun - if anything on a night like that could be called fun.  To go down from the wheel house to the mess room all you had to do was put one foot on the top step of the ladder, hang onto the black pipe hand rail, with your back leaning on the wall that enclosed the tiny alcove in which the passage was located. When the boat changed her direction at the bottom of a wave and worked up the face of the next, you could step back into space, steadying yourself with the rail, as you stayed in the same place for an instant  the deck below came up to meet your feet.  The sensation was of momentarily floating in space, with just a brief squeeze on the hand rail to insure a soft landing on the deck below.  To go up the process was just reversed, stepping off the deck with only a tiny pull on the hand hold as the boat fell off a sea, leaving your body in mid air with the boat falling away below you.  In a step you were back on the upper deck.  Not that good for coming up with a full cup of coffee, but a quick trip nevertheless.

     Another amusing thing was the large lazy-Susan in the middle of the triangle shaped table did a funny thing in heavy weather.  This contraption extended from the top of the table to the overhead, three levels attached to a length of galvanized pipe set into brackets top and bottom that allowed it to turn almost freely in either direction. As the boat lurched and jerked along in a heavy sea the Lazy-Susan took on a life of its own, turning slowly around and around.  The sea tumbling over the bulwarks above managed to find every possible point of entry into  the boat, and a fair amount of water was leaking through the deck onto the table.  As the lazy-Susan turned with the movement of the boat some of this leaking water was caught on the shelves and tossed aside, like a funny garden fountain, spinning along in the gloom of the half darkened room.

Copyright 2012 - Paul Petersen

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