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By Petty Officer 2nd Class Sara Francis
— Spring 2005
A beeper went off in the dark. Lt. Danielle Wiley, supervisor
at the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment in Kodiak, Alaska, looked
at the clock. The red 3:00 a.m. beamed. There had been yet another grounding.
The trooper vessel Cama’i
left St. Herman’s Harbor in Kodiak at 9:35 a.m. An hour later,
Wiley and I were in the Ouzinkie Narrows. It was raining hard. Fog was
heavy. The GPS indicated the grounded boat’s position nearby.
All at once the fog shifted like someone had pulled
back a curtain. In front of us rested the 70-foot wooden boat Waters.
Its bright blue hull loomed on the rock pinnacle. It was almost perfectly
upright, as if Neptune himself had set it there.
We circled the scene carefully. The Number 4 dayboard
was broken off the mounting. It lay on the rock. Blue hull paint was visible
on its red surface.
Waters had been
en route to Kodiak from the Katmai Coast for supplies. The tide was high
at the time, nine and a half feet. The skipper stated later that he had
slacked the boat’s speed in the narrows because of the weather, and
that his reduced maneuverability combined with the tidal current to drag
the boat sideways onto the rock. He said the strong eddy had surprised
him because he had found no mention of it in his copy of The United States
Coast Pilot. He also said the dayboard wasn’t visible until the Waters
was upon it.
He and his crew had smartly plugged the fuel vents before
departing for the nearby Ouzinkie village in a skiff. They arranged for
salvage with a local operator, but he had no luck the following morning
in a high tide just over nine feet. Next, the fishing vessel Alpine Cove
tried to tow the Waters off the rock, but the current prevented steering
and put too much strain on the towline. Finally—several days
after the grounding—the tug Kodiak King
got the Waters off the rock in a nine-foot
tide. The damage consisted of an inch-deep penetration in the hull, caused
by the dayboard’s stub. Water seeped through the damaged caulking.
Divers from the nearby village made temporary repairs, and theWaters cruised
to Kodiak, where the staff at Fuller’s Boatyard hauled her out.
Meanwhile, I thought about what the skipper had said:
He believed the cause of the grounding was tricky currents combined with
scant information in the The United States Coast Pilot. It’s a series
of nine volumes that contain supplemental information hard to display
on a nautical chart, compiled by a division of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. You can order the Coast Pilot or download
parts of it from the Office of Coast Survey
(chartmaker.ncd.noaa.gov/nsd/coastpilot.htm).
Near the rock where the Waters
grounded, the Coast Pilot indicates that currents can set a boat into
danger quickly—but it doesn’t elaborate on tidal direction.
What’s worse, the deepest water lies just off the rock, so the Coast
Pilot recommends favoring the rock over the nearby shoals. Add to that
some recent tectonic activity, and it was possible that changes in the
hydrography had altered the flow of water in the narrow passage.
Wiley eventually determined that the skipper’s
decision to enter the narrows during a period of extremely limited visibility
was the cause of the grounding. The decision required reduced speed, which
reduced the boat’s maneuverability. This particular skipper should
have known better, since he was familiar with the area. He even mentioned
having towed other vessels off the same rock.
To prevent future accidents, Wiley contacted NOAA and
suggested providing additional information about the currents in the Coast
Pilot. Until the updated version of the Coast Pilot becomes available,
the best advice for recreational boaters is to pay attention to tidal
charts, watch the currents, and cruise only with good visibility.
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