Staying Alive, Green Water Over the Flybridge

[Capt. Mike Maurice]

August 1968?. Columbia River Entrance, Peacock Spit. 26' Chris Craft Commander Sportfisher. 6 people on board. SW gale without warning. Waves 4-5 feet high, breaking about 4 seconds apart. Every 2-3 minutes a breaker about 10-12 feet high, 21 over about one hour. Ground covered in that hour, about one mile, course about 180 mag., impossible to turn around.

Gas boat with twin 283 cubic inch Chevy engines, top speed 33 knots, special order reinforced windows.

Outcome: no damage, some spray in cabin. No other boats nearby.

Any attempt to turn and run would have rolled the boat over since the waves were so close together. The smaller waves were handled easily enough, keep speed down, don't get airborne, keep square to the waves, keep moving.

Now for the big stuff. Any one of them would have smashed out the windows, the next waves would have filled boat with water, it would have rolled over, the whole thing done in 60 seconds. It is not likely that the foundering would have been seen, due to the rain and wind. I should have had my cousin key up the radio and broadcast a warning on the radio, but I dared not take my hands off the throttles or wheel. And, I was not sure that I could coach him to use it and still maintain control.

So, now we have waves coming down from 5-10 feet higher than the windows and if any one of them makes a clean strike, game over. That's over 2000 pounds of force per square foot. Now we get down to the whole point of this story. How to keep the breakers off the windows.

The strongest point of the boat is the bow and the surface below the deck line. The trick was to get the breaks to spend themselves below the deck line, part the wave, and let the remainder roll down the deck. Gas engines rev up faster than diesels with turbos. The trick was to get the boat to stand on it's tail but not goose it so much that would get moving or more particularly, airborne.

Getting airborne is liable to break something, if not somebody. And that can lead to disaster. You have to restrain your instinct to get the hell out of there, and to take each wave one at a time, no matter how many there are. When you have green water rolling down the deck way above the windows and clear over the top of the flybridge, it's way past time to panic. In other words, keep cool.

When you see pictures on the internet of boats airborne you are looking at amateurs who have seen others do it or pictures of others and dramatic as they may seem it is poor tactics.

Our mistake was not noticing that the wind driven spray was obscuring the really dangerous water up ahead until it was too late to turn back. I have never made that mistake again.

The other lesson, when conditions get really rough, avoid stressing the boat. This all happened a long time ago, but you can imagine that the memory is as fresh now as it was then. And I have put it to good use. I hope this will help one of you.

I still marvel that the windows held.

[nonav]

I’m amazed at the tiny number of vessels who enter inlets are not pacing the wave speed, or keeping on the back of the swell if possible.

Just blast through and hope for the best.