Naming the Boat

by Dr. Robert E. Plucker

            It's a common thing among people who own boats, work boats or pleasure boats, to name them after their wives, girl friends, daughters, or even some combination of both their names. Since our boat is named for my wife, I am one of hundreds, probably thousands whose wives’ names are painted somewhere on the boat. But there is some history behind my selection of a name.

            Let's start way back with my very first boat. My former wife and I were attending a play at the Seattle Center, "The Sea Gull" by Chekhov which is an acclaimed play, but which Barbara and I found to be slow, talky, and tiresome. We walked out at the end of the second act, and I remarked to her that the annual Boat Show was on at the Arena (the last year before moving to the Kingdome). We could walk over and see the boats, especially one I had seen advertised as being very inexpensive and brand new from the Reinell plant at Marysville. Skipping over the details, we wound up coming back the next night to put down an initial payment.

            This was not a very well designed sailboat, but I learned to make it go where I wanted it to go under sail, at least most of the time. This boat was named Echappee, which means "Escape" in French. It is also a term for a specific move in ballet and a specific kind of melodic figure in music. A good name for a music teacher's boat. I think this boat was a good one for me because if I could sail it, I could sail anything. Reinell quit producing it rather soon.

            Echappee II followed some time after Barbara and I separated, and then divorced. I was looking for a boat that would sail better than the Reinell (nearly all of them did) and would be suitable for me to live aboard as a kind of hermit, as I had sworn I was never going to look at another woman. I looked first at the Newport 30 Mark II. It was beautiful, and "spoke to me" as they say. The dealer did not have one on hand to sell, but I could order it and it would be ready by the time boating season started. The other advantage was that I could order a dark blue color for the hull and could have a water heater and a space heater installed for comfortable living.

            Yes, I did look at some other boats, some new, some older boats, but none appealed to me as did the Newport, and the Newport man was willing to take the Reinell in trade. The name Echappee still appealed to me, so the new boat would be named Echappee II. So I took the old Reinell down to Seattle one Saturday afternoon in the fall and settled down to wait for the Newport to be delivered several months later from southern California. I was living alone in a trailer on Camano Island and was feeling lonesome and blue, in part because my wife was not going to come back and in part because I didn't have a boat and I was living less than a block from water. A brilliant idea hit me: I would buy a dinghy and go rowing out in Saratoga Passage. A poor substitute for sailing, but it would have to do for all winter and part of the spring.

  

Thanks to www.sailboatlistings.com

            I bought the dinghy in Mount Vernon on the morning of December 31. The salesman said he would deliver it to Camano Island that very day. In the meantime one of my men students, his sister and a couple of her friends planned to come over in the early evening to take me out to dinner for a New Year's treat. They came a bit early and I was not changed into my going-to-dinner clothes. I went into the little trailer's bedroom to change, and while I was there, the man came with the dinghy, a nice double-hulled extremely stable Livingstone boat, 7 feet. Kent, the male student had gone off with his car to get a forgotten camera, and so that left me in the trailer with three attractive young college women. What must that man have thought as he saw me coming out of the bedroom, buckling my belt, looking a bit unfinished! How does this guy handle all these women at the same time?

            As it happened, in the next couple of days, when my telephone was finally installed, I became aware of a young lady who had been singing in my church choir for a time. She was the one who chirped right up with her telephone number when I was complaining about not knowing anyone in the 387 calling area. "You know me!" she said, brightly.

            My resolve to never look at another woman seriously broke down about as fast as the walls of Jericho in the Bible story, and I began to wonder if there really was a married life after my previous married life. When it came to naming the dinghy, I puzzled over it and decided that it was premature to name it "Margaret", because I was not sure of my feelings toward her, or hers toward me. It would be dangerous to name it for an ex-girlfriend. But I wanted to honor Margaret in some way, and although I was unwilling to commit to the full name at that time, I thought with my German roots, I could call it Gretchen, or Gretel like the famous Australian racing boat, or maybe Greta. Yes, that was it. I liked the name Greta, and although I would know it was named for Margaret, probably no one else would know.

            So I rowed it around every now and then in the mornings and late afternoons, and enjoyed it. I may even have given Margaret a row or two in it, I don't remember. In May my new Newport 30 was delivered, and I was satisfied with the Echappee name for it. This was a wonderful boat, and I loved it for the next 16 years.

            During the winter, I kept Greta, the dinghy, on the beach at Utsalady Bay, as it was nice to have it on hand instead of having to go down to the Everett Marina where Echappee was docked. During one of the first couple of winters, somebody came with a pickup truck, I suppose, and stole it. There was a rumor that it had been sighted under a dock at Ketchikan, but I was not about to go up there and look for it. So I had to get a new dinghy, just like the old one. This became Greta II.

By this time, Margaret and I were married.

            We used this dinghy for a number of years, and then one day it disappeared. I thought it had been stolen. This time I replaced it with a truly classy little tipsy dinghy with beautiful wood trim and wonderful rowing characteristics. The Livingstone boats are extremely stable, but they are hard to row. This little boat was not stable, but was a dream to row. Greta III.

            One day while I was walking on the beach one of our neighbors on the island asked if I could load up a beat-up old Livingstone boat on my truck and carry it to the dump. It had washed up in front of her beach house, and it looked as if someone had deliberately tried to sink it. So I hauled it up on shore, took a long look at it, and decided that I could probably repair it so it wouldn't be too much of an eyesore, and it would carry a lot of stuff. It was a 9-footer. This one became Greta IV, but it was finally sold for $50.

            Greta III was lost through my own carelessness in tying a knot in the towing line. We lost it on a rather stormy day sailing between Victoria's Oak Bay and Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. The line did not part, but the knot came loose. Somebody in the Canadian Gulf Islands probably wound up with a very pretty little Greta III.

            But all was not lost. Somewhere in there, I forget just when, Greta II was located back on Camano Island, not so far from where I thought it had been stolen. Now I believe that it simply floated off, but I am still rather upset with the fellow who took possession of it for not attempting to track me down. My name was painted inside the hull. Anyhow, I got it back, and much later it got sold to a fellow in LaConner who said he could restore it.

            So all this dinghy gain and loss took up the space of the 16 years we owned the Newport. After thinking about it for maybe twelve years and several false starts, Margaret and I decided to get a new, bigger boat, and we would live aboard. Daughter Holly was off to Philadelphia in college, and our young son John did not object, so we sold our house and started to buy the boat.

            I recently read an article that claimed the boat chooses you and you don't have a chance to resist once the boat has made up its mind. The boat in this instance was an Ericson 34. It was a year old but had never been privately owned. Of course Margaret and I looked at a number of new and used boats after seeing this Ericson, and we had been devastated when we heard that the company had gone out of business and there would be no more E 34s. What joy when we heard that Pacific Seacraft would resume production on the 34, and I believe the boat we bought is Hull#2 from Pacific Seacraft. This is the boat of our dreams; after 12 years I still drool over it.

            No doubt after all these years of marriage to Margaret and the raising of two children together, I could have come right out and named the boat Margaret, as any right-thinking boater would do. But I had become fond of Greta as a name, and so that is the story of Greta I, Greta II, Greta III, and Greta IV, but now we are calling our Ericson just Greta, not Greta V. It seems appropriate.

Our present dinghy has never been blessed with a name.

My Losing Battle with the Hood Canal Bridge

by

Dr. Robert E. Plucker 

         

            Not long before Margaret and I got married, I traded my old not-so-wonderful sailboat (plus a bunch of borrowed money) for a wonderful new sailboat, a brand-new Newport 30 with a special order dark blue hull finish. Perhaps all new owners think their boats are the prettiest in the harbor; I was convinced of it. This was the terrific boat that I planned to live aboard as a virtual hermit for the rest of my life, until the charming Margaret changed my mind, at least about the hermit part.

            In late l976 when I was trying to get a loan to buy the boat, banks had been quite competitive, and the advice current at the time, was to go to several lending institutions and shop for the best interest rate. I found that I got as good a deal as anyplace from the bank where I had my checking account. I considered it to be "my" bank.

            "What's going to be on this boat?" asked the loan officer.

            "What do you mean?" I said, "There has to be a deck, a tiller, a mast, the usual stuff for a sailboat."

            "But what special goodies?"

            "Well, not so much, hot pressure water for a shower, a toilet, kerosene stove, cabin heater, you know."

            "How about sails? What kind of sails will there be?"
                               (Since when have bank loan officers been interested in sails?)

            "Main, working jib, and a l50 percent genny, each of these with one reef point."

            "Don't you want a spinnaker?" asked the banker.

            "No spinnaker, they're much too expensive, and meant only for racing. I don't intend to get into racing."

            Says the banker, "You'll regret not having one, and you can pay for it by adding the cost to the mortgage on the boat. If you had to finance it separately, you'd never get around to it, and it would be much harder to get a loan for a single sail."

            Says I, "I don't need it, I'll be just fine with what I have."

            Banker: "If you wait, later on your wife won't let you get a spinnaker."

            Me: "But I'm not married."

            Banker: "You'll get married, and then your wife won't let you have it."



A spinnaker sail

            What kind of banker is that, who talks you into frivolities that you don't want or need? This bank officer, it turned out, did not own his own boat, but had done a good bit of crewing aboard a friend's boat in Seattle, another banker who had a 40-footer. So obviously, I needed a spinnaker, and this loan officer was not going to let me leave the bank without it being included in the mortgage loan. I never did get into a formal race with that boat, but I suppose that all sailors attempt to get as much speed out of their boats as they can. Margaret and I found that a spinnaker is a great sail to have for just going from place to place when the wind is right, and going fast is more fun than going slow.

            There are three floating bridges that I know of that cross parts of the water in the Puget Sound region. They have at least one high-rise section built up off the water, usually close to shore, but in deep enough water so that good-sized ships can pass underneath it. The floating part of the bridge would stop all shipping if there were no high section built in. Margaret and I had an encounter with the floating bridge across Hood Canal, a finger off Admiralty Inlet which is a part of the Puget Sound area. We had done some sailing in this place and were acquainted with the wind patterns, tidal currents, and areas of submerged rocks and shallow water. I had owned the previous sailboat for a year and a half, and thought I knew what I was doing. Margaret had had some experience sailing, and knew a good bit about boats in general.

            So the first summer we were married, we took off from Everett Marina on a sail south down the Hood Canal and all went pretty much according to plan. When we got to the floating bridge across the Canal we had a light following wind, and were able to sail under the high part of the bridge which is next to the eastern shore. No difficulties at all, the wind just pushed us through. We had fun looking up at the top of the mast thinking that it surely looks as if the mast is too tall and would catch on the roadbed far above. But this is just an illusion, and the charts tell you how much clearance there is. We had perhaps fifteen feet more space than we needed.

            After spending a day or so at the far southern end of the Canal, we headed north for home in Everett. We were making rather leisurely progress, as the wind was coming at us, and we had to beat our way. When we got to the bridge the port tack that we were on led us straight to the bridge high-rise. The current was against us at maybe two knots. But we were making some progress in spite of the wind and the current and I thought with my skill as a sailor, and the boat's very good upwind sailing characteristics, I could sail right under the bridge as before. The course we were on put us nicely through the "gate" of the bridge, but it meant an immediate change to the opposite (starboard) tack once past the bridge, or go aground on the east shore of the Canal.

            Sure enough, we got under the bridge, through the "gate," came about smartly to the starboard tack and two things happened. The wind died, and the current took over. With no wind we could not charge off in this new direction, and I was horrified when I saw that the current would bring us broadside to the floating part of the bridge and pin us there. There were murderous looking bolts sticking out from the side of the road-bed, six to eight inches long, just waiting to punch holes in the side of my beautiful special-order dark blue hull right where we would surely hit. What to do? Why, turn on the engine, of course. In my panic, I twisted the key much too strongly and broke it off in the lock. So we were doomed. We did have presence of mind enough to use the last few seconds of freedom to stuff life jackets, cushions, whatever we could find including the dinghy between the dreaded bolt-heads and the dark blue hull.

            This saved us from having the holes punched in the port side of the hull, and we were OK temporarily. If I had been less panicky, I suppose we could have stayed put until the tide reversed the current and we could float free, but no. I had it in my inexperienced head that it was imperative to get away from the bridge right now! I don't remember taking the sails down, but I suppose we did. I had never hot-wired an engine before, but after some tinkering, I got the little Yanmar 12-horse-power engine fired up, and tried to plan how to get away from the bridge without getting terrible scars all the way along the port side, as the current kept pushing us toward the bridge deck and its awful bolts.

            We settled on a plan of getting the dinghy placed so that it was between the bridge and the boat close to the stern so the boat would be able to back partly away from the bridge deck instead of parallel to it. I was so inexperienced that I didn't know that almost all boats are near-impossible to back where you want them to go. I didn't know that a single screw boat most often backs to port, which would have been right into the bridge instead of away. By an incredible stroke of luck, it turned out that the Yanmar was set to use a left-handed propeller, and so would back to the starboard. Of course I didn't know that either at the time. So at full power, Echappee would have a fairly strong pull to the starboard, away from the bridge deck, as well as backward. Pure luck!

            So that part, no thanks to me, went fairly well and we got away from the bridge with only two minor scrapes in the gel-coat. But here we were, going backward in a circle, gaining speed all the time, Margaret nervous as she could be, at the tiller. Now moving astern in a circle with a tiller can be a terrible problem as the water pressure on one side of the rudder becomes so great that it is well-nigh impossible to straighten it out. I was hollering at Margaret to slow down, SLOW DOWN, but her nerves and reflexes seemed to be at a standstill. The boat kept backing in a circle until it was headed stern first directly at the so-solid floating part of the bridge where we had been pinned. It dawned on me that at that speed, Margaret would be unable to straighten out the boat or turn it in a different direction. I dashed frantically from the bow where I had been pushing away from the bolts, across the foredeck and into the cockpit, grabbed the shifter, shoved it to "ahead", the Yanmar still at full power. Echappee must have gotten to within six inches of crashing stern first into the same place where we had been pinned, then took off forward away from the bridge. If we had hit it at full throttle, more than five knots, we would surely have crushed the stern and probably sunk in maybe ten fathoms of water.

            Moral of the story, do not sail upwind under a bridge with the current against you.

Photos by Jean E. Straatmeyer

AGROUND

The events of May 31 to June 1, 2002

By Matt Davis

[The Son-in-law of Dr. Robert E. Plucker]

First off, you need to understand that I hate sailboats, especially white sailboats.    And that’s why I erased the rock from Bob’s charts when I knew he was heading to Sullivan for the night. Alas, some plans are destined to fail.

A year after Greta's grounding, John went back to the site and took this photo of the rock in question.
He very graciously sent it to me so I could use it here.

Holly had just started to re-alphabetize the books and I was settling down on the couch with my laptop to check the news.

Then the phone rang and Davy Gross the harbor master was on the line.  Sweat started to bead up on my forehead. My first thought was, “Oh, no.  He wants me to get my trailer out of his yard, and I still don’t have an air pump, or a jack.”  I was a bit relieved when all he had to say was that Bob and John had run aground in the Greta. 

That was a close one. 

He added that the Fjordland and a few other boats had talked to him and that they were in no immediate danger.  Holly was very worried.

Holly and I headed straight to the Haines boat harbor, and to the Windbreaker to look at the tide-book.  It was seven when we’d gotten the call, so our first concern was for the height and time of the next tide.  After seeing that Friday evening’s tide was 14.1 feet and Saturday’s morning tide was 14.4 feet, we knew they’d have an additional 0.3 feet of water on the next high tide; we breathed a sigh of relief.  Thank goodness it wasn’t an 18 foot high tide they’d run aground in, or they’d be stuck on the rock until the 23^rd of June.  If that’d been the case, they could possibly have been in very dire straights, as the bi-daily rising and falling of the tide would leave ample time for the boat to be dashed on the rocks.  Immediately, Holly wanted to know the exact time they’d gone up on the rock.

Matt Davis' fishing boat "Windbreaker"

We got on the VHF, “Greta, this is the Windbreaker.  Greta, this is still the Windbreaker.” We switched to channel 12.  I really wanted to take the boat out for a spin and needed a distraction, so I was eager to head out.  Holly definitely wanted to go too, because she’s always ready for a fun-trip.  The next high tide was going to be at 5:32 am, so we had plenty of time to get there and take a picture for the paper, offer some moral support, perhaps give them a brush to scrub the underside of the boat, then get back to town by 9 am for the Saturday morning garage sale rush.  We made a quick decision to head down to Sullivan.  I offered Bob, “Do you want us to bring down some Root Beer and chips?”  He declined, without even a hint of a smile in his voice and we said we’d be leaving town within the hour and would see them shortly thereafter.  I forgot to ask about the exact time they’d run aground.

We needed sleeping bags; Holly needed her contact supplies.  The boat was fueled up and ready to go.  We didn’t bother with any extra food, but brought along the radar, the chart-plotting GPS, and the binoculars, so we could get set up to navigate in case it got foggy or otherwise nasty. 

As we headed out of the harbor it was getting dark, black clouds were starting to pour over the eastern mountains and it was starting to rain.  We passed by what looked like a commercial charter boat at the transient dock with the owner and his family aboard.  He opened the window and flagged us down.  Concerned, I started to pull alongside to hear him out. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing.” He said, “I’ve been listening to the VHF and I was just wondering, are you Matt?”

“Yes.” I said.  “Has anything else happened?”

“No.  But good luck out there.  I’m going to stay tuned in.”

“Thanks,” I yelled back.  And we headed on out of the harbor.

With all the local people listening in on VHF channel 16, and with all the scanners out and about, I didn’t want to call Bob and John every time we rounded a new corner, pulled in a dock line, or used the bathroom, so I decided just to call him when we got past Seduction Point, if all went well.

Holly was very brave of course.  I hadn’t thought about it at all until I noticed we were both being drenched as we plowed along into the small waves that seemed to be growing by the minute.  I looked down at her on her cushion as we motored along and said, “You’re really brave.  You know that?”

She smiled up at me nodding her head, “Yup!”

“The weather’s not too great out here.  Did you notice those clouds?”  I pointed off to the southeast.  “As a matter of fact I can’t imagine a worse night for this type of a trip.”

 “Oh, I can.” She said.  “We could have a strong south wind with pouring rain.  It could be pitch black or foggy too, like when we went fishing on that Sunday in September.  This isn’t so bad.  This is wonderful.  I like being out on the water.  It reminds me of when I was a girl and we’d go out in the sailboat.  I Like that.”

“Hmmm.  I guess you’re right.” I said

“Yup.  It’s perfect.  I’m not worried at all.  Lots of expecting mothers would be staying at home, ‘I’m not going out there with my baby! I’m staying right here where it’s warm and safe.’ But for me, I’m not afraid of the water at all.  The boat is safe, the water is reasonably calm.  They’ll be glad to see us.  It’s going to be a great trip.”  She smiled again.

Then I thought to myself, “Yes, Life is good.   It’s at times like these when things could be dark and morbid, that I look at Holly and ask her what she thinks.  She smiles and talks for a while, then again I think to myself, ‘Matt: You’re a lucky man.  She’s a special girl, with a neat family.  Keep her happy Matt, just keeeeeeeeeeeeeepppppppp her happy.’  Life is amazing.  We go for MONTHS at a time and when we look back, it’s all a blur; same old, same old.  Then BOOM, something happens and you know you’ll remember it forever.  Good or bad, you’ll never forget it.

We got to the boat around 11 pm. And it was so dark we could barely see any of the details of the hull. But what we could see looked very, very sad.  Here was Bob’s beautiful sailboat up on the rocks, and from where we were at a very low tide like it was quite far out of the water.  Looking up at Greta on the rock like that, we couldn’t help think to ourselves, “What in the world were they thinking getting up on the rocks like that?  Look at all that beach and all those rocks.  Look at the angle of the boat; the angle of the mast.  Wow.  What were they thinking?” 

We asked them where we should spend the night and they explained how to get to the place they’d been trying to get to. So we went there to anchor up. We found a nice safe semi-secluded spot on a gravel beach in about 24 feet of water.  I dropped the anchor and we decided to get back to them at about 4 am. 

At about 12:30 AM I heard a loud BOOM or a CLANG.  I was instantly awake and soon up out of bead, out of the v-berth, and looking around out the windows in the cabin.  Afraid that we’d run aground too, I quickly realized the chances of that were slim, as the tide would be rising now, instead of falling; the low tide being at 12:06 am.  I jumped up and down, like I’d learned to do when the boat was on the grid, to see if we were floating. It bounced reassuringly.  I’d tied the anchor securely.  Checking the radar, our position relative to the shore hadn’t changed.  The soft rain was still tinkling on the boat.  It was peaceful and nice.  I relaxed.  Then I remembered that I’d left the bucket off of the exhaust so I donned my boots and climbed up to the mast to replace the bucket and keep out the rain.

The alarm on my wristwatch hanging from the electrical panel in the starboard v-berth blared annoyingly at 3:30 am for twenty seconds, 40 bleeps.  I counted them like I always do, I counted 38, so it had taken me a second to become alert.  Then I woke up Holly.  She saw the bright diffuse morning light pouring in the cabin windows and was quickly alarmed and alert. “Matt, Matt, what time is it?  Are we too late.  Have we slept too long?”

            I hadn’t rolled over or opened my eyes or touched my watch or done anything but wonder, how was it that I came to think this was going to be an enjoyable trip, heading out away from town like this.  Without opening my eyes or pulling my head from the bag I said, “It’s 3:30.  Why did we have to get up two hours before high tide, if it only takes 45 minutes to get down there?  I want to sleep till 4:15.”

            She was out of bed looking around out the cabin windows.  “No, no, no.  We need to go right now.  They’re probably already awake, wondering where we are.  Let’s get down there right away.  Are you sure it’s not 7:30?  What if we missed them?”

            I rolled over, and without opening my eyes reached out of the bag and unclasped my watch from the wires.  Looking at the watch, I said, “3:31.  Do we really have to get up?”

            “Yes, Yes, Yes!  Let’s go.  Let’s go.  Pull up the anchor.”  She was already getting out the cereal to eat some breakfast.  “Pull up the anchor!”  I crawled out of bed.

The morning was bright and clear with friendly little tufts of fog and clouds on the nearby mountains, the dark ominous clouds of yester-night were gone, the water was as calm as a street puddle in the rain; millions of drops forming concentric expanding circles on the grey surface.  The sound of the nearby waterfall was steadily droning on into the still crisp morning air blending with the rain tapping on the cabin roof.  Out on the deck, at 3:50 am, with the anchor up, the boat running smoothly, and rain gear bundled all around us, we headed south again to see what there was to see.

At the first glimpse of the Greta I cut our speed down to a near idle; Holly and I were astonished at how far it was from the beach and from any appearance of rocks.  The thought came to mind.  ‘What in the world is that rock doing out here in all this water?‘ 

On closer inspection, the mast was still at quite an angle.  Getting out the binoculars, I could see that no one was visibly up and about. 

Then our own wake hit us. Being nearly at a standstill, we began to bounce around quite a bit.  I thought about calling Bob and John on the VHF right then, but decided against it.  They’d deduce it was our wake as soon as it hit them. Who else’s wake could it be at 4:20 am, after all?

Then our wake hit the Greta.  We were quite alarmed!  The mast started to rise and fall dramatically against the mountain, time and time again.  Holly grabbed my arm, “Look what we did to them, they’re starting to sink!  Look at the mast!  It’s going down with each wave.” She got quiet.  “It’s getting lower and lower.”  A bit taken aback, I looked at the mast.  Sure enough, she was right; the Greta was sinking deeper with each bounce.

I said, at nearly a whisper, “Do you think we should call them now?” Holly was silent.  Then I thought better of it.  “No.  Let’s not bother them now; they’re busy enough as it is.  Going down that fast, they’re surely in a panic over there. Let’s hope they find that damned leak.  They must be going crazy over there…”

“Yeah, just leave them be for now.”

After a few minutes of morbid silence, I looked at the hull, rather than the mast.  We’d moved on down-current of them quite a bit, and the hull was still fully visible.  “You know,” I said in a quiet tone, “maybe it’s just an optical illusion, or a geometric illusion… or whatever?”  Picking up the binoculars again, I was sure.  “Yeah, we’ve just been pulled along by this tidal current.  They’re not sinking at all.  It’s just the mast and the mountains playing tricks on our perception.”  Thank goodness.

Soon after that, we relaxed and hailed them on 16, then switched to 12. 

My first concern was to NOT get on the rocks myself. So I gingerly floated up next to them with my eye on the fish finder and Holly’s eye on the fathometer in the cabin as a back-up.  John and Bob told us that the rock was almost entirely to their starboard side, and that they wanted to be pulled off stern first, rather than by going forward.  Making a quick mental note, I backed away from them and got on their port side.  Then we pulled away and started doing an informal ‘chart’ of the waters nearby, in attempt to find a safe route of egress, and also to get used to the current in the water.  If what they said was true, we’d have to be careful about maneuvering around them and about pulling them off the rock because the current would naturally want to pull us directly onto the rock.

After about 35 minutes of exploring the nearby waters with the sounders, it was clear, with John and Bob standing on the deck with ropes in hand appealing to us to come near enough to throw a line, that there would be no waiting for the high tide.  They wanted us to start pulling right away.  They wanted a line thrown now.  They wanted us pulling on them steadily.  No more fussing around.

It took John three tosses for Holly to get the line, then about eight failed tugs to get the job done.  It was necessary to set up a quick way to change cleats in order to steer the Windbreaker, and John came up with a quick method that we wound up using.  After that, it was all fairly simple.  We steered the boat with the rope and the cleats and the current, until we were straight off the Greta’s aft then gave a quick hard burst of the throttle to the Cummins diesel.  The combined efforts of the Greta’s engine and the Windbreaker’s, along with the rising tide, all worked together to haul them free. 

It was a wonderful site to see John and Bob, smiling with hands in the air, and victorious hollers all around, as she came off the rock.  I kept pulling them for a few minutes at quite a high rate. And I had no intention of slowing down until we were all safe and back in the main channel.  Shortly, Bob started yelling for me to slow down, and John announced he was unhooking the line.  They didn’t need me anymore, they claimed.  Holly pulled in the line very quickly so that it wouldn’t wind up in the props, and we were off for home.

Photos by Jean E. Straatmeyer and John Plucker

A NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN

Or

(Why My Blood Pressure is so High These Days)

by

John Plucker

[Son of Dr. Robert E. Plucker)

            First of all, I would like to point out the little-known fact that I never supported an afternoon departure.  For entirely selfish reasons, I gently tried to persuade my father that it would be much better to head South at 3:00 on the following morning.  It is important to keep this fact firmly in mind for the rest of this narrative, regardless of any other dumb things I may have done in the next 24 hours.

            The weather was really quite balmy as we steamed south that day.  I was laid out in the cockpit on a heap of pillows, and was well on my way to an afternoon siesta.  I remember thinking that it was a shame that every time I went on extended sailing trips with my family I always ended up sleeping most of the time.  This all becomes very ironic in retrospect, of course.

            The weather went downhill fast as we rounded Seduction Point.  The sun went down and the waves came up in a matter of minutes.  Using a tiny triangle of the jib, we screamed across the main channel, where we hoped to find shelter in the lee of Sullivan Island.  There turned out to be no lee, and we turned due south, now going head to head with the seas.  Our progress slowed to a crawl, causing Dad and me to seriously discuss the possibility of turning back for Haines.  We decided to continue until we reached a safe anchorage or ran down to a half tank of fuel, whichever came first.

            I think we intimidated the weather with that little conversation, because both the wind and waves slacked off considerably at this point.  So spirits were high among both officers and crew as we headed for our anchorage at the South end of Sullivan Island.  In our defense, the Rock which we were cruising towards in our sweet ignorance was not on our chart, nor had anyone ever stopped to mention any navigational hazards as they extolled the virtues of this little cove.

(This story would be so much easier to write if I didn’t have to stop every paragraph or so to explain why we were the victims of many complex factors other than our own stupidity)

            Both Dad and I saw the depth sounder jump up to a depth of only 15 feet.  But in the time-honored tradition of never-cry-wolf, neither Dad nor I took the instrument seriously.  After all, this piece of junk had been feeding my family a line of crap for years, scaring us half to death with patches of warmer water and stray halibut.  This particular time, Dad responded by easing up on the throttle (which is nothing like what he would have done if he had truly believed what the depth sounder what reading).  I am ashamed to say that at that moment, I walked to the railing, peered into the water, and said in a predictably flippant way, “I don’t see any rocks.”

            Approximately five seconds later, we struck the Rock.  The entire boat lurched as six and a half tons of sailboat slammed up against an utterly stationary object.  Anyone who has ever grounded an expensive yacht knows how that single moment of impact turns your blood to ice for one eternal moment.  For everyone who has been so fortunate as to not wreck an expensive yacht, I can only say, try to image the way the driver of a car must feel when he senses his wheels begin to slip on ice as he rounds a corner at 70 miles an hour.

IT’S A BAD FEELING, I TELL YOU!!!

            So Dad and I spent the next hour or so in a more or less totally ineffectual effort to free Greta from the Rock.  As it turned out, all of our scurrying around was only paddling us farther and farther up that creek which we all know so very well.  There was no way in hell that we could have brought Greta out on the far side of the Rock; arse-end first was our only option.  We did not know this, so ended up doing everything in our limited power to work our keel farther up on the Rock.  At the end of the first hour, it had been established beyond the shadow of a doubt that the tide was ebbing, and we had a long wait ahead of us.  As a sign that we were resigned to our fate, Dad and I dropped the sails.  Our angle of heel remained the same, and morale (which I had previously estimated as being at rock bottom) dropped.  I turned off the depth sounder then, since there wasn’t really any question of how deep the water under our boat was at that point.

            Dad got on the VHS, calling for the Haines Harbormaster.  He couldn’t raise the guy for a while, but as soon as our predicament had been voiced aloud on the radio, the phone started ringing off the hook.  Boats up and down the Canal offered aid, advice, and general moral support to us.  Which was nice.  Eventually Matt Davis, my math teacher/captain/bro, hailed us from his gill-netter, the Windbreaker.  It was so good to hear his voice, my blood almost started to thaw.  When he offered to bring down some Root Beer and chips for the party, I laughed my first hysteria-free laugh of the entire ordeal.  Dad allowed as to how some company might be nice, and Matt and my sister Holly were steaming our way two hours later.

            While the tide was still ebbing, I jumped out into the water and shoved some fenders between the cruel rock edge and the hull.  I don’t know whether it did a shred of good, but I felt much better knowing that I had at least tried.  Finally, there was nothing productive left to do.  I became aware of this before Dad, and he walked aimlessly around on the walls until he started making me nervous, and I ordered him go read a book in the quarter-berth.  I had brought my Discman along, and listened to every single song on the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack.  It occurred to me that of all the people involved in producing that soundtrack, most likely none of them had ever been in my present situation, and how lucky they were too.

            The water continued to ebb from the Rock until we were lifted completely out of the water, and soon Greta was laid out on her side at about 50 degrees, her bow pointing slightly upwards.  The pair of pants I had worn into the water earlier that evening were hanging from the door of the head at a ludicrous angle, and Dad and I watched water stream off the cuff and splatter against the stove.  Now we could finally get a good look at the cursed Rock that had imprisoned us.  We were run up on the very corner of a gnarly looking reef about the size of the infield of a baseball diamond.  It was HUGE, covered with pointy outcroppings, and seemed thoroughly malevolent.

            So we waited, and watched, and worried, and waited some more.  Matt and Holly arrived on the scene around midnight, just after it had finally gotten dark.  Everyone except Dad was terribly disappointed that there wasn’t enough light for Matt to snap off a roll or two of embarrassing pictures.  My feeling was, seeing is believing, and I would never get the appropriate amount of sympathy without visual proof of what dire straits we were in.  But no pictures were taken that night, and as a result, I am still waiting for sympathy from my hard-boiled friends.

Sailboats look desolate when not upright in the water. 

            I didn’t sleep much that night, which came as no surprise to me.  As Greta had lifted out of the buoyancy of the water, and more and more weight came to rest on the Rock, both Dad and I fully expected the hull to crack under the strain.  Either the Rock would punch through the side of the hull  (in which case we would sink), or the keel would snap off  (in which case we would first capsize and then sink).  As I lay in the V-berth, I had been seized by a totally irrational fear that if I moved any part of my body farther towards the bow, the entire sailboat would lean that way like a teeter-totter, and some vital structure would finally give, and Dad and I would find ourselves treading water, hanging on to the remains of our beloved boat.  So I scrunched myself into as tight a ball as possible, and spent the rest of the night with my knees pressed firmly into my neck.  It is entirely possible that I drifted off for a few minutes every now and then, but for the most part, I remained wide awake, patiently waiting for the shit to hit the fan.

            (Incidentally, that little expletive was regularly employed on board Greta that day.  I’m quite sure that both Dad and I heard the other use the “S” word more in the space of those twelve hours than in all the previous years of our entire lives combined.)

            Surprisingly enough, the proverbial “S” never hit the “F”, and morning found Dad, me, and Greta relatively intact.  Matt and Holly were circling our Rock by 4:00 that morning, so Dad and I rolled off our respective walls and went topside to say hello.  High tide was scheduled for 5:32AM, and was only supposed to be four inches higher than the one during which Dad and I had run aground.  Dad was fairly pessimistic about our chances for rescue (although he didn’t share the full bleakness of his outlook with me until later).

            I took a realistic stance, and figured that there wasn’t much chance that the Windbreaker couldn’t drag us off.  In my mind, the only question was how much damage Greta would sustain as she was dragged bodily off those wicked rocks.  Even though Dad and I had very different attitudes towards the whole rescue operation, we were both champing at the bit to get things rolling.

            Matt and Holly had other ideas, it seemed.  They were frolicking about, exulting in their rock-less boat.  Being intellectuals (not sailors), they naturally assumed that they should wait until exactly 5:32AM to pull us off.  Dad and I, who were a little more in touch with how thoroughly bad our situation really was, wanted to get a towing line passed to the Windbreaker as soon as possible.  If Greta didn’t come off the Rock on this morning’s tide, we would be stuck there until the high tide three days later.  Both Dad and I knew that neither Greta nor we could survive another 72 hours on the Rock.  The best we could hope for at that point would be some compensation from the insurance company.

            Eventually I was able to throw the tow line from Greta to Holly on the Windbreaker.  The first time Matt put some serious tension on the line, Greta rolled hard left, and I could see the pain in Holly’s eyes as she shouted at Matt to stop pulling.  Suddenly I realized how tough the whole experience had made me.  Twelve hours ago, I would have cringed at least as much as my sister, but at this point, I was willing to do whatever it took to rip this fat cow off the @#*%&^ Rock!         

            Dad and I shouted down Holly’s pleas for mercy and Matt gunned the engine again.  Greta was lurching all over, pivoting in place, leaning way over, and flopping on the keel from side to side, but we weren’t making any discernable progress against the Rock.  Finally, on what must have been Matt’s eighth or ninth run, we broke free, and slid down into the water.  Horizontal had never felt so beautiful before.  There was a current pushing us towards the Rock, so Matt kept on the throttle, dragging us a few hundred yards out of harm’s way.  We were all so excited to be mobile again that I think Matt would have hauled us backwards all the way to Haines if Dad had let him. 

            I untied the towing line, and Dad tried out Greta’s engine.  The silver lining of this particular cloud seemed to be that our prop and rudder had been spared by the Rock.  Almost all of the stress had been taken by our keel, and I fully expected it to sink like a chunk of lead at any moment.  But it didn’t, and we made it back to Haines under our own power.

            Then a bunch more stuff happened, but it’s all pretty anti-climactic, so this is the end.

[Note: Photos by Jean E. Straatmeyer

Bottom photo of a beached sailboat after Hurricane Ike - Bolivar Peninsula]

GRETA ON THE ROCK

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker 

                Alaska Airlines does not fly directly from Seattle to Haines; the closest stop is Juneau.  From there one gets to Haines by small plane, ferry, pleasure boat, fish-boat, tugboat, sailboat or whatever.  Margaret was returning home from Seattle, and John and I thought it would be fun to go down to Juneau ourselves and meet her, taking our sailboat, “Greta.”  To make an excursion out of the trip, we would anchor near the south end of Sullivan Island on the mainland side of the channel where the chart showed the symbol of an anchor.  This symbol is taken to mean "It's OK to anchor here."  So we arranged that Margaret would meet us at Auke Bay (Juneau) and we would triumphantly carry her home.

www.seaatrails.org

                With full fuel and water tanks, food, and sleeping bags we set out south under power, soon catching enough wind to be able to sail.  As we got to the far end of the channel between Sullivan and the mainland we dropped the sails to take advantage of the increased maneuvering ability of the boat under power.  We moved ahead at slow speed as we had never been in this anchorage before.  I had been warned by one of the old-time fishermen that there was a nasty rock near the anchorage cove, so we watched the depth-sounder very closely.  John told me that it was getting shallower, but that is what you expect as you approach a shore.  Suddenly the digital read-out changed from 30 feet, to l5, l0, and then to a horrifying eight.  It takes six feet to float the boat.

                We were moving at maybe two knots.  Conventional wisdom says that if you want to go to deeper water, you turn away from shore.  I did that, but the sounder read-out immediately jumped from 8 to 6 almost simultaneously with the sickening crunch of the keel hitting solid rock.

                Thinking that since we were headed out, probably we could slide right over the corner of the rock.  We raised sail and adjusted so that the boat would heel over as far as possible.  This is supposed to be a maneuver that gets the fin keel off the bottom and slightly reduces the draft of the boat.  So with sails and engine power John and I succeeded in perching our beloved "Greta" higher up on the rock, and totally immovable.  There was no damage, so far, except for embarrassment and the inability to get free.  In tidal waters like Lynn Canal you have no worries if the tide is fairly low and rising when you go aground; the rising water will lift you off in probably less than an hour.  We had the bad luck to go aground at very near the high mark, and of course the water level was already starting to drop.  This meant that there would be a wait of a bit more than six hours before the tide got as low as it would get.  Another six hours to rise, and after more than twelve hours we could expect to float away.  But wait!  High tide levels can vary from about 20 feet to less than 13.  Tomorrow morning's high would be only four inches above what it was when we hit, and we had already put the boat further up on the rock with struggling to get off.

                Would there be enough water depth to float us in the morning?  So it was by no means certain that our near-thirteen hours of waiting would get us free.

                We had had a fairly good wind sailing to the anchorage with its accompanying moderate seas.  I was glad when the wind dropped to almost a dead calm soon after we struck.  If the waves had been huge, the boat could have been partially lifted from the rock, only to come crashing down, creating unspeakable damage.  We had more than twelve hours of suspense, hoping the wind would stay calm, especially in the morning when the water would be almost high enough to float the boat.

                "Greta" has a thin fin keel sticking down from the bottom of the hull about four and a half feet.  This obviously won't hold the boat upright, and so it has to fall over to one side when there is not enough supporting water.  Since we hit the rock at high tide "Greta" was going to be totally high and dry by about half-tide.  According to the inclinometer, she wound up tipped to the port side by 55 to 60 degrees.  At least there was no need to put out an anchor.  It was a kind of puzzle getting in and out of the cabin as we had to pick our way on the port side of the hull, the floor now being more like a wall. 

                It was dark when the water reached dead low, but we were able to see that we had climbed onto a corner of a huge flat rock, about the size of a softball infield.  It had been completely submerged -- invisible at high tide but now completely exposed.  We were tempted to climb over the low side of the boat and walk around on the rock, but we found that it was extremely slippery with slimy plant life and we had no wish to break legs or other bones.  John had gallantly gone overboard while we were still partially afloat to stuff whatever we had for cushioning between the hull and the rock.

                The ironic part is that we had both a small-scale and a large-scale chart for the area.  The scale of the small-scale chart covered so much area that it ignored the rock entirely, but the large-scale chart dealt with areas small enough so that the rock could be included.  We were using the small-scale chart, the one that covered the full distance from Haines to Auke Bay, that's where we were going, wasn't it?  Why deal with a chart that covered only half the distance?   If we had been using the other chart, we would have seen the symbol for the rock, and could have seen that by turning toward the shore instead of heading out, we would have been in 30 feet of water.

                By our VHF radio we were able to inform various boats nearby of our plight and managed to get a message relayed to the Juneau airport to tell Margaret not to wait for us at Auke Bay.  As to immediate help, like dragging "Greta" off the rock, it was out of the question.  But it was great to get the sympathy, and the radio company of these other boats.  There is hardly a boater, apparently, who has never been aground somewhere at some time, and they feel for you.

                Alaska fishermen are a wonderful helpful bunch, but even if their boats had had power enough to haul "Greta" off the rock, much damage would have been done to the delicate fin keel, or the hull itself.

                My son-in-law Matt, a summertime fisherman, was also informed of our precarious whereabouts.

                So here we were--the fish-boats were all heading for home and it was late.  John and I went to bed, attempting to sleep in the V-shaped trough formed by the bunk and the port side of the hull.  I was in the quarter-berth and John in the V-berth in the bow.  John told me later that since the bow end was pointing up into the air in addition to falling off to the side, he was afraid to move for fear of having the boat shift position and come crashing down.  But I had my own worries. 

                Here I was, in my 70s; how much of this stress could I stand?  Would I have a heart attack?  A stroke?  Dare I ever consider sailing a boat again?  Am I kidding myself about being young enough to sail?  Will Margaret have gotten the message to not wait at Auke Bay?  If I have this heart attack, would John be able to handle the problem of getting the boat afloat again, and would I be dead or alive?  What if we fail to float off the rock in the morning?  The average highs after tomorrow morning would be lower and lower for several weeks, and we would be stranded there until the highs became high enough again.  Surely in that time strong winds would come up from the north, the least-sheltered side, and the resulting giant waves would crush beautiful "Greta".  I remembered the wonderful times Margaret and I had planning to buy her and my elation at being able to write out the check for $98,000 to pay for her, using most of the proceeds from the sale of our house.  Sure, I had insurance, but I just hated thinking of this beautiful sailboat which had been our home for four years, lying helpless in the face of possible ten-foot waves and fifty-knot winds.

                My son-in-law Matt, and daughter Holly decided they had to help.  Matt, who is the typical Alaskan "we're all in this together so we better help each other" type, got out in the middle of the night and took Holly and his fishboat out the thirty-five or so miles to see what he could do.  He and Holly were horror-stricken to see "Greta" completely exposed on this huge rock, lying on her side, mast approaching the horizontal.  We talked to them a bit on the VHF> radio and then set out to wait for the high tide at about five o’clock in the morning, "Greta" on the rock, and Matt's "Windbreaker" safely at anchor.

                The wait seemed like a month or more, but the time came and Matt's boat started running some exploratory circles to find out the limits of this more-or-less round, flat rock.  I watched, worrying about when would be the exact moment of the highest possible water.  I surely did not want to trust to luck to simply float away.  Matt just had to attach a line and tow/haul us off, because if we missed the opportunity and didn't get off on this one chance, "Greta" might be on the rock for several weeks and my worst nightmares would surely come true.  It appeared to me that Matt was entirely too slow and deliberate about getting a line across so that his big fishboat engine could save us.  Matt was just being careful that we both wouldn't crash into something.

                At last he came close enough so that John could throw him a line and he could start hauling.  My thought was to go for broke, turn on all the power we could muster and get "Greta" off no matter what.  Matt was the careful one and applied power cautiously in spite of my evident frenzy.  "Greta" was in a completely vertical position by now, and it felt to me as if it had better happen in the next few seconds or all would be lost.  I yelled at Matt, so did John, to pour on the coal, give it all the power he had.  We were doing the same with "Greta's" little three-cylinder Volvo.

                Matt's "Windbreaker" was pulling hard, at a slight angle; suddenly "Greta" twisted around a few degrees with accompanying ominous scrapes and protests from the fin keel on the rock.  Finally with a last-ditch burst of power from Matt's big Cummins diesel, we lurched into deep water.  We found that "Greta" would indeed still float, and if there was a lot of damage below the waterline it didn't seem to be immediately dangerous.  Matt cast off the line from the fishboat after towing us well away from the rock amid much cheering from John  and Holly, but of course I was the worry-wart and could hardly wait to get some diver to go down and inspect the bottom.

Haines just ahead

                Both "Windbreaker" and "Greta" got back to Haines before noon; next day Joey Jacobson came with his SCUBA gear to take a look at the bottom.  He was down there for a short time, came back and told us that he had searched for damage, but could come up with only a couple of superficial scratches.  Joey was right, as when we had the boat hauled out of the water a month or so later, we could hardly find the scratches Joey said were there.  How lucky can you get??

                John spent the next year in New Zealand, but when he came back, we took "Greta" back down to the Sullivan Island anchorage to get a long hard look at the rock exposed at low tide.  We were extremely careful, and were both amazed at how huge the rock was, and how close we had come to not hitting it at all.  We had nearly gotten through, between the rock and the shore.  We also thought that even if all had gone the way it was supposed to, we would not have liked the anchorage very well, too exposed to the north and not all that well-sheltered from the south.  We are not likely to anchor there in the future.

                Lesson 1.  Use the chart that gives you the most information about your immediate vicinity.  The big picture is OK, but it lacks important details.

                Lesson 2.  There is at least one location in the marine world where the deeper water is closer in to shore, not out in the middle.    

Bottom Photo by Jean E. Straatmeyer