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This is a new film from the National Park Service portraying the lush/stark/beauty of our islands and extolling the virtues of conservation.

The voice over is Kevin Costner, a local boy. How local? Costner attended elementary school at McKevette School in Santa Paula, California, Cabrillo Jr. High School and Buena High in Ventura, though he graduated from Villa Park High School in Villa Park.

But Kevin isn’t the star of this show; this is all about landscape and cinematography. I’ve watched the film a couple of times. It’s actually best set to mute. Kevin is superb, but the script is … well, not to my taste.

So, pour a glass of wine, click on the image of Arch Rock over to the right and begin thinking about buying a new camera.

It’s about a half hour long and should inspire you to visit the islands some time between now and the winter gales.

See you on the water.

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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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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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A Hunter sailboat catches fire, sinks at Frenchy’s 7/8/2010

The Coast Guard and Vessel Assist responded to a report of a burning vessel last week. The preliminary report said that the captain was sailing alone, had anchored in Frenchy’s Cove and had started cooking on his rail-mounted barbecue.

The captain reported that he fell asleep and awoke to find the boat in flames. He abandoned ship in a small skiff and was picked up by a Good Samaritan. He was subsequently transferred to a Coast Guard vessel and returned to the mainland. He suffered no substantial injuries.

The following day, Vessel Assist, Ventura refloated the vessel, policed up the debris and towed it back to Ventura Harbor.

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Comment

That had to be one scary experience for the captain. We’re hoping he was well insured and glad that he wasn’t hurt, at least not badly. We’re also very thankful that Capt. Rob of R Escape has mounted a fire extinguisher on our boat about 5′ from our barbecue.There are also two in our galley area below.

Cooking is the number one cause of fire on diesel powered boats and a stove without an adjacent fire extinguisher is a big oversight. In the case of a rail-mounted barbecue, it’s probably impossible to safely turn off the propane when the stove is engulfed in flames. But there are three ways to turn off your galley gas – the burner control, the solenoid and turning off the tank in the lazerette. Definitely a topic worthy of a crew briefing.

I’ve always been confident that I could survive cooking with a rail-mounted barbecue, afterall, it’s mounted on the rail outboard of the boat. With the top on it, it’s not likely to flame the bimini. Of course, I try not to fall asleep (or pass out) while I’m cooking as I’m partial to rare beef and unblemished gelcoat.

I’m fairly sure that there are more lessons to be learned from this incident.

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Sail Channel Islands

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The squid fleet is having a hell of a time keeping their boats afloat. About two weeks ago the Fishing Vessel Lady Francis (thought ladies spelled in Frances) ran aground in Smugglers and Sat. night, the F/V Donz Rig ran aground trying to find her way into the harbor.
 

The Fishing Vessel Donz Rig***** is supported by supplemental buoyancy bags and surrounded by oil booms. At least two Vessel Assist boats, a Coast Guard vessel and a few other boats accompanied the wounded lady back home to Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor.
 
I’ve been trying to get the CG to tell us what caused these incidents as there might be a lesson for us all to learn. Think of it – Lady F went aground on Santa Cruz Island on a no-wind night with visibility unrestricted and under a full moon. How’d that happen?

 Donz Rig apparently bounced off the north jetty trying to negotiate the turn into Channel Islands Harbor, began taking water immediately and beached herself on Hollywood Beach.

Actually, I can see how that could happen, particularly to an out-of-towner.
 
It may take an appeal under the Freedom of Information act, but we mariners need to know the multiple causes of these accidents or we’re liable to repeat the actions ourselves.

more when I learn more

and now I’ve leaned more

****Turns out that the boat towed in Sunday was Donz Rig on her way to the shipyard. Sources in the harbor say the crew thought they were entering Ventura Harbor, spun around when they realized their mistake and clipped the north jetty, ending up aground on Hollywood Beach.

There was a small – a couple of gallons – of diesel discharged during the event.

F/V Lady Francis was reportedly towed from Smugglers to a Ventura shipyard for salvage last week. Sources say that was a particularly long ride at a max. speed of 1.8 knots.

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