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