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Yesterday the moon was the closest it gets to the earth– 359691 km and today there is a New Moon.

So what(?) you say

Since you’ll most likely be home and not near or on a boat, a mighty shrug is all you need to convey your interest. But if you are near the water, you’ll see the greatest tidal range. In our marina, the low tides will find a few boats sitting comfortably on the bottom for a couple of hours. Look for masts canted to one side or the other, those are the ones in the mud.

We really don’t worry much about tides here. Our range is skimpy compared to much of the world — somewhere in the six foot range on a full or new moon, but for the next day or so it’ll be closer to nine feet, with the low a foot and half below datum (-1.55).

Low tide -1.55

It’ll be a good idea to favor the center of the channel and keep a closer eye on the fathometer as you transit near shore.

But what’s the problem with high tide? How can that cause a problem?

Hi tide +7.14

It’s a low probability worry, but a little surge could turn these floating docks in to, well, boats. That was one of the big factors in boat destruction in Florida in the last big hurricane.

The Florida disaster wasn’t because of a perigean tide, but it’s easy to see that the risk of having the marina drift off to sea is higher on these days.

Without mentioning all of these facts, NOAA has compressed it all into a coastal flood warning for today. They’re not forecasting much flooding, fortunately. We wouldn’t want to have to scramble to get underway with turkey on the table.

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving. You probably don’t care that this is my favorite holiday, but it is, principally because there is no holiday song that must be sung today.

BTW — there’s a hybrid solar eclipse, but we won’t see it.

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Bayliner -- though not the specific one in question

Two boats went aground two weekends ago.

A Bayliner slid onto the beach in mid-afternoon just northwest of the Channel Islands Harbor entrance and a sailboat headed for that harbor went aground about three miles south of the harbor and somewhat south of the Port Hueneme pier at 0215.

Though the accidents are seemingly unrelated – a powerboat, a sailboat, day/night – both captains might have benefited if they did what the big boys on the big gray ships do prior to entering port: they set the special sea and anchor detail.

Lessons from the incidents:

The key lesson from the big boys is that they consider going in and out of port special, especially hazardous. The Special Sea and Anchor Detail comprises top personnel in every location that affects safe navigation. From the bridge to engine room, the watch-standers are the best and most experienced personnel on the ship – the best helmsman, the best nav team, the best engineers running the power plant. They are generally the most experienced and their qualifications are manifest in training records and gold hash marks on their dress blues. And the captain himself is on the bridge running the operation.

My experience aboard Nimitz taught me that entering and leaving port are never routine operations. Each is carefully planned and deviations from the plan are studied and critiqued afterward. The team, although they’re the best, is in continuous training and is prepared to handle the unexpected, from a runaway reactor to pirate attack. All systems are constantly monitored and in the days before GPS, the DR position plotted at least once a minute.

So how does that apply to the two hapless recreational captains a few weekends back?

Day/Powerboat

The Bayliner’s engine quit, and that requires immediate when close to obstructions or the surf line. Had this captain mentally prepared for entering port, he would have briefed his crew and readied his equipment.

What equipment? The ground tackle – anchor, rode, swivel, safety wire and attachment point. He would have made sure that it was ready to deploy instantly and showed his crew how to do that. As that story unfolded, he finally got that done, but only after the Vessel Assist Ventura captain offered that advice on channel #16. It never occurred to him before that.

Had he been prepared and acted expeditiously, he’d have kept his boat out of the surf and not gone for a dangerous swim when he got thrown out of his boat in the rough water. Fortunately, no one was hurt and Capt Randy Davis of Vessel Assist Ventura saved the boat from catastrophic damage.

Night/sailboat

It’s a bright night with a full moon and unrestricted visibility. There is a slight swell and not enough wind to sail. There is a crew of two aboard. This Hunter 36 is fully equipped: GPS, chart-plotter, radar, depth sounder, compass, hand-bearing compass as well as a chart table containing nav gear and local charts.

CI Harbor NW corner, Ormond Beach Power Plant SE corner. Sailboat grounded 500 yards NW of power plant.

The run home to Channel Islands Harbor is several hours long but the Hueneme Light was most likely visible within an hour of their departure. Certainly more than one of the oil platforms was visible when they got underway. Navigation couldn’t have been easier. The only obvious hazard they faced would be traffic in the coastwise traffic lanes between them and the mainland.

The captain put the crew on the helm and headed below to take a nap. It was late and he was very tired. He left instructions to wake him in a half hour. We don’t know what he told the crew about looking for traffic, what heading to steer or if he showed the crew how to adjust the lighting in the chart-plotter, which shows the ship’s position, land, fixed obstructions and points the way home.
According to sources, the captain woke up when he was thrown from his bunk. He raced to the cockpit to find the boat in the surf south of Port Hueneme pier.

They had collided with the Continent.

They abandoned ship and called for help.

Fire and police departments responded, the Coast Guard showed up. A helicopter flew in.
Vessel Assist Ventura drove up. They put a swimmer in the water and attached a hawser to the boat. They towed it out of the surf, got a pump aboard and headed for the harbor, making arrangements for the Anacapa Shipyard to stand by to haul the boat out as soon as they got there.
Before hitting the Continent, this boat was worth about $200k. Damage to the keel and hull make it doubtful that it will be worth fixing.

The crew tried to do the captain a favor by letting him sleep longer than he’d instructed. It was also reported that as he maneuvered around what he thought was Platform Gina he ran aground. His analysis at the time was that he’d mistaken the Ormond Beach power plant for the platform three miles offshore.

He didn’t see the surf in the light of the full moon – apparently, didn’t look at the radar -apparently, didn’t have the chart-plotter on – apparently, didn’t see the lights of Port Hueneme or the condos on the beach. And then he mistook a power plant for an off-shore oil platform.

You’ve just got to wonder what sort of preparation these guys did.

You’ve also got to wonder if investigators are believing any of this.

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Mai Tai ashore at northwest end of Channel Islands Harbor near the world-famous Rudder Room. Photo: Rob Walton

It’s always easy to pass judgment when you’re viewing the wreckage the day after. Nice to look at it in the light of day and pontificate. And I’ve heard a lot of that (and done a fair amount myself), but as we used to say in Naval Aviation: There’s no point in having accidents if you don’t learn something from them.

Discounting, at least for the purposes of this discussion, the obvious preventatives – waiting until daylight so that he could see, or turning away from the beach when the depth gauge showed 15 feet or so, what are the other actions he could have taken?

Let’s just say that he had to come in that entrance and that he had to make the approach fairly close to the beach, how could he have set himself up better? How could he have used his GPS better? How might a hand-bearing compass have helped him out?

A quick aside – the captain did do some stuff right: He did deploy the anchor, but the rode parted; they did call in a Mayday; they were wearing life jackets and they successfully walked ashore.

We met a guy on the beach digging near the keel the day after the incident, who told us that the owner of the boat “sold” it to a passer-by, a guy simply walking the beach. Digging guy was walking guy’s friend. They were going to excavate before trying to tow it off the beach.

If the owner did actually unload the wreck and pass the pollution and clean-up responsibility to someone else, well that was one very excellent move.

There’s a bottle of champagne going to the best answer on how the captain might have prevented this accident by using a fundamental navigation techniques. Something you learned in ASA 105 or similar basic nav class.

Put your answer in the comment section below.

//

BTW – here’s the link to the Ventura County Star story. the story isn’t great, but the comments are fun.

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Forty-seven foot Motor Life Boat (MLB) underway from Channel Islands Harbor on a Search and Rescue mission

You could be the next one chosen by fate to be at the right place at the right time for a mariner in distress.

I read the Coast Guard news a couple of times a week, and it is a rare story that tells of mariners in trouble near the coast who are rescued solely by the Coast Guard.

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Most reports credit a Good Samaritan with finding, rescuing, towing, fighting fires and dragging folks out of the water.

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It’s usually our fellow boaters who are rescued, but Good Samaritans have rescued a fair number of non-mariners who have somehow found themselves in the water (think fishermen on the jetties.)

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We hear Urgent Marine Broadcasts nearly every weekend telling of unknown mariners in  unknown positions hailing Mayday on Channel #16 and then requesting all vessels to keep a sharp look out and report sightings.

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Two Januaries ago, I was out on a clear crisp day when a fishing vessel called Mayday and added that they were just off Sycamore Canyon, which is close to Pt. Mugu, just a few minutes away from Channel Islands Coast Guard Station.

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Their second transmission was “Glub, glub……”

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All went silent.

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Dennis Dreith, the Bosun, and Dave Lumian of ASA fame were part of the Good Samaritan rescue of a British yacht.

The Coast Guard boats arrived on scene within 20 minutes or so, called off the Mayday and the Urgent Marine Broadcast and reported that a Good Samaritan had rescued the crew.

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The boat had, in fact, gone to the bottom.

Chances are, if you’re in a sailboat, you’re not likely to speed to the location when the Coast Guard actually provides one. More likely, you’ll become a Good Samaritan by surprise, when someone gets in trouble who is quite close and you’re suddenly the on scene commander.

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It’s happened to us twice in the last couple of years. Both were fairly low-key affairs with no calls to the CG.

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In the first case, a novice jet skier fell off his machine just outside Ventura Harbor. We noticed that he was struggling to get back aboard. We made a close pass and asked if he needed help. He said he didn’t, but we kept an eye on him anyway. Twenty minutes later, we could see that he was still struggling, so we returned and asked him again if he needed help. “Now would be good,” he said.
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We rigged a towline and he attached it to his machine. He had a little trouble getting up our boarding ladder, probably due to hypothermia. But he made it. Had he tumbled back into the water, I had another line ready with a bowline that I could have used to assist him.

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Our second incident requires a good bit of time and several beers to tell with full effect, but the short version is …
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We were anchored at Fry’s on the north shore of Santa Cruz Island. We’d set the bow toward the beach. Our French Plow bow anchor, with about 150 of chain rode, was about 40 yards off the beach and the stern anchor, which is a large Fortress, was in about 30 feet of water with about 200 feet of rope rode.
We were solid and very proud of the slick job we’d done.
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Near sunset, a yacht larger than our 46 foot Jeanneau shows up. She’s flying a Union Jack and has a fairly large crew. This is where the story can get very long – they spent more than an hour trying to get anchored. If it wasn’t their bow anchor that wouldn’t set, it was their stern. They tried to anchor to our starboard, tried forward, tried aft, tried port. Then they tried forward and port and managed to foul their prop with their stern anchor rode.
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Now they were well and truly screwed. It was dark. The Coast Guard and Vessel Assist were at least an hour away and their boat was easing in toward the rocks.
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They hailed us, asking for advice. We were stuck for an answer.

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The first rule for Good Samaritans is don’t get your ass in crack. Don’t do anything that will jeopardize your boat or crew. Don’t become a victim who needs rescuing. Think before you act and have a plan that allows you to escape.
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So here’s what we did. Since we were very solidly anchored, we told them to run a line from a stern cleat to our boat. They cobbled together enough sheets and halyards to reach us. We put their line on our main winch and cranked them away from the rocks, which also set their bow anchor. We kept cranking until we’d pulled them half the distance to us.
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In effect, we were their stern anchor. We kept the line on the winch so we could rapidly adjust if tide, wind or current became a factor and we placed our biggest, sharpest knife adjacent to the winch. If we had to get loose, we wanted to do be able to do it in a hurry.

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We set our anchor-drag alarm for minimum distance and one of us stayed at the winch all night. We’d also established a game plan for the night.
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Should we need to break free. The anchor watch had his whistle close at hand and would signal with multiple blasts that the rest of the crew needed to get on deck. One of us was assigned to drive the boat and mind the winch, another to pay out bow rode and the third to weigh the stern anchor. We discussed all the contingencies, including various wind and weather conditions that would make us alter our plan. For instance,  a strong onshore breeze would have meant weighing the bow anchor first.  Then we split into watches, keeping an eye on our movement – we were only 20 yards from shallow water and a rock wall to starboard – and on our pals.
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Fortunately, the weather remained settled. Just after dawn, the Brits suited up and dove the prop. A huzzah went up, when they pulled the line clear. I’d read about huzzahs, but this was the first I’d ever heard.

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Just before they collected their line from us, they brought us medals, a citation and a note from the Queen.
Actually, it was better than that: They brought us a bottle of very nice gin.
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I don’t think there’s anything in the Good Samaritan’s Handbook that says you can’t accept a gratuity. Is there?

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Capt. Dan is skipper of the Yacht Sancerre and owner of Sail Channel Islands, which offers charters and sailing lessons near the – guess what – Channel Islands of Southern California.

Capt. Dan

Sail Channel Islands

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The Brig Pilgrim is the setting for Richard Henry Dana's tale of California sea adventure in "Two Years Before the Mast."

Two Years Before the Mast

sat unread in the rail in the forepeak of Wiley for a dozen years. I don’t know where that book went. It may have turned to dust over the last decade of sailing, but I got interested in the book again a couple of weeks ago when I found it in the FREE listing in my Kindle.

And so I dived in again. My first attempt at the book got me not much further than page 50, but I’m just about done this time around and have found it fascinating.

It’s certainly an important book to anyone interested in California history and it’s a great place to come up with trivia to amaze and confuse even the MASTER RATER, THE RANGER and the other denizens of Channel Islands Harbor.

I can’t quite get my memory around this one, but I’m trying to memorize these lines. Don’t know when I’ll launch them, but there will be an appropriate time, possibly involving beer, to do that. Here it is – I think you have to yell this in a commanding tone, so I’ll be practicing that – the commanding tone – on the dogs:

Set up the lee rigging, fish the spritsail yard, lash the galley, and bring  tackles upon the martingale. Bowse it;  bowse it to windward, lads.

Other than lads and set up, I haven’t a clue what any of that means. But I do know what it means to face the Southeast storm that he talks about. Repeatedly.

After “doubling” The Horn, you’d think that weather wouldn’t be much of a bother to these seamen, but when they were in the Santa Barbara Channel in the fall they prepared for it every time they anchored. In fact, when anchoring in Santa Barbara, they’d set the hook three miles offshore at this time of year.

What’s more, they’d rig the anchor so that it could be jettisoned when the wind kicked up and backed to the Southeast.

My Santa Ana strategy is not quite so conservative. I am ready, however, to leave a stern anchor behind on a buoy if needs be. Nor do I snug in to a far western wall when in Pelican, Alberts or Willows as I would in summer. Plus we make more frequent weather checks than we do at other times of year, going on deck to check for eastern breeze, east or south swell or dry decks.

In an emergency, we’re ready to jettison both anchors, but unlike Pilgrim, we have a power windlass. But the biggest difference is that Pilgrim was a square rigger, capable of getting not much closer than about 70 degrees of apparent wind. They’d have to backwind headsails to fill the mains and topsails, so they needed plenty of room to the lee to make that maneuver. We, happily, have a mighty Yanmar, which we fire up at the first sign of easterly wind.

We were surprised (twice) by unforecast Santa Anas last year. Until then, we had great confidence in NOAA. If they don’t mention Santa Anas, you’re not necessarily safe. If they do forecast a Santa Ana …. they’re not often wrong. In either case, have a plan, brief your crew and check the weather throughout the night.

Click to learn about the replica Brig Pilgrim

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http://www.sailchannelislands.com

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The next time we get a Tsunami warning, we’re not going to dither. We’re going to do one of two things if we’re in Ventura:

1. Get underway and get to deep water
2. Get to high ground.

This video from the 1994 Thai Tsunami is very instructive. For one, it shows that the first wave is not necessarily the worst wave. Watch the video for at least a minute. The second wave shows up at 53 seconds.

Tsunamis are probably widely known as tidal waves because they look tidal in that a lot, a whole lot, a veritable s-load of water comes ashore. The wave may be only a couple of feet high, but it can be on the order of a half mile long. And initially, it’s moving at 500 mph. Compare that to towering surf, which around here gets to maybe 20 feet, but runs back maybe 100 feet. And it trucks in at -what? – 20 knots?

A lot of us now realize we have never seen anything like a Tsunami. Nothing remotely like a Tsunami. NOAA warned us to stay away from beaches and out of the harbor.

So those of us who ran to the harbor and waited on the boat for this monster to come crashing in the other day were lucky that this Tsunami was trivial. Had it been something on the order of the second wave in the video, folks sitting on their boats would have been in for a fight for their lives.

However, if they’d been in deep water, they might not even have noticed.

Next time I’m either getting underway or heading for Ojai.

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American Pride probably looks a little pitiful – at least her crew will – after running aground in in Rainbow Harbor in Long Beach.

The Coast Guard reported that another tall ship’s crew finds itself wondering why they can’t move ahead. Ooops we’re aground!!!

According to the Coast Guard, it was a “soft grounding,” and she floated away on the rising tide.

Here’s Rainbow Harbor (Marina). American Pride lives at pier 3b. That looks pretty tight. I wonder who is responsible for monitoring shoaling … or the depth sounder, for that matter.

The Coast Guard is investigating the cause.

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Score this video.

The Ropers – Wayne and Bill – joined the Boatswain and me when we set sail on 15 Feb. As everyone knows, you can’t sail in winter. That is unless you buy some beer, a couple of pounds of steak and then throw off the lines. Remarkably, the boat floats just fine in February and the sails seem to work, too.

Bill Roper caught this Gray Well as he sounded between Anacapa and Santa Cruz Island

We headed for Santa Cruz thinking we’d overnight in Pelican anchorage on the north shore. However, we were distracted by whale spouts and sailed south for a closer look. We got within a quarter mile of a pod of three, but were unable to close the distance under sail. It was getting a little late in the day and we wanted to be in anchorage with a couple of hours of daylight left so that we could perfect our bow & stern anchoring technique.

The night was warm and the New Moon made it perfect for stargazing. Then day #2 rewarded us with a spectacular sunrise. It was warm enough by 0700 to kayak in shirtsleeves.

We had anchored in Coches Prietas, which is a very popular anchorage. I rarely go there because it is so popular, some times attracting 20 boats or more. But this night only one joined us and they did not actually get into the anchorage with us, preferring to ride to a single hook a bit outside. Though it’s easier by far to set one hook, we had a much more comfortable ride inside the reef. We watched other boat’s anchor light traverse an arc of ± 20 degrees. That couldn’t have been fun for long.

Winter Morning Coches Prietas Santa Cruz Island

In the morning, we set out in kayaks to explore the beach. This is the site of a Chumash village and we think we spotted the midden where their ancient garbage dump is located. The island is greener than we’d ever seen with water flowing in all the creeks and trees and flowers, including lupine in full bloom.

We got underway about 1100. Wind was still calm and seas absolutely flat: a perfect day for whale spotting. Once we were in the Anacapa Passage, we found several pods. As we were only making 5 knots, the whales had to come to us, which they did. There are a couple of excellent seconds of video and several great stills that Bill caught with his Canon.

We had to motor all the way home. We hate that, but if it was the price for hanging out with the Grays, it was well worth it.

The weather is lousy today and forecast lousy through the weekend. Winter sailing is great in SoCal, you’ve just got to pick your days.

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NASBLA – you just think you’ve heard of them. But, no, it’s not the nasty guys; this is the National Association of Boating Administrators and they have some questions to ask in the form of a (fairly) brief test. With the wx forecast to be foul beyond what we Southern Californians will usually tolerate, you should take the opportunity to go through their online training or download the state’s course in a .pdf

For those of you who were ASA trained, you originally met these requirements. But ASA no longer includes all of the info in their courses, nor did the old courses cover all of the now-required material. A good move by the ASA as the new law requires a lot of knowledge of jet skis and other issues far removed from sailing.

In any event, it’s a good review and you should mention that you’ve completed the course when you renew your boat insurance – they may give you a discount.

If you download the .pdf and want to get your boater’s card, you can obtain a Scantron form to take the test by e-mailing a request to sbetzler@dbw.ca.gov or by calling (916) 263-8183.

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F/V Lady Frances aground at Smugglers. USCG photo.

It’s been a tough fishing season for the squid fleet and brisk business for Channel Watch Marine, the local Vessel Assist team. Lady Frances, above, is in the shipyards now, but not for repair. She’ll be cut up and most likely end up in a landfill. Another squid boat nearly sank due to rusted welds in the shaft log, and Donz Rig, another squid lightboat, nearly sank in Channel Islands Harbor last week.

Donz Rig in Bellport Marine Anacapa Shipyard. photo: capt. dan

Lessons for the rest of us

The near sinking of Donz Rig brings home a couple of valuable lessons. According to the owner, the captain got underway in fog that reduced visibility to 100-200 feet in Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor. He was the lone crew, and, as he neared the detached breakwater, the fog thickened and visibility was further reduced. The captain estimated he could see 25-50 feet. Unsure of his position, he was at idle and dead slow when he clipped the breakwater, opening a gash in the bow. He beached the boat on Hollywood Beach.

Lessons learned?

The owner says the primary lesson is “If you don’t know where your are, stop. Drop the anchor if you have to.”

Fishermen’s livelihoods depends on their ability to sail in nearly all conditions. We weekend sailors, on the other hand, can stay home. On the third hand, I’ve been caught in similar conditions when the marine layer moved suddenly. Donz Rig would have had a better chance if there had been a second crewman to monitor the radar and chartplotter. Zero-zero fog, particularly at night is tough to handle in the open sea. In close quarters, it requires thorough planning. Had the captain charted a heading from the end of the south jetty to open sea and then adhered to that heading, he’d have escaped damage. If he’d stopped as the owner mentioned, he would have reduced his risk. If he’d been able to monitor the radar closely, he could have avoided the breakwater.

So, four lessons obtain:
• Know where you are by eyeball, by radar and/or gps
• Know where you’re going. We always chart an escape course when we’re at anchor. If everything goes to hell at night and we get blown out of an anchorage we know and will steer a heading to safe waters. If you’re heading out in weather so rotten that you may not see harbor obstacles, make sure you know the heading from the last landmark you’re likely to see to safe water.
• Pick your weather and set reasonable limits commensurate with skills and experience
• Take crew
A fifth lesson, somewhat tangential, be ready to sound your fog signal.

Lessons from Lady Frances

F/V Lady Frances (apologies to the owner who did spell her name correctly) under tow by Channel Watch Marine/Vessel Assist. Photo Capt Paul Amaral

Oh, the hapless Lady Frances: A calm, windless night. A full moon. And yet she found herself on the rocks, her anchor still in the hawse.

What happened?

Best guess – after a long, hard day, the helmsman fell asleep. Amazingly, they’d cruised through Smugglers/Yellowbanks where 20+ boats lay to anchor before sliding onto the rocks.

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