WISHFUL NAVIGATING

By Dr. Robert E. Plucker 

When Margaret and I finally decided to make our first trip to Southeast Alaska in our new boat, “Greta,” we did not have radar or GPS (Global Positioning System). GPS was not in general use in 1993. We figured that if Margaret’s father, an Illinois kid fresh off the farm could navigate a fish-boat to Petersburg from Washington without any high tech gadgets like radar and GPS, we could, too. We had a forty-pound stack of marine charts, a compass mounted on the boat, another hand-held compass, dividers, parallel rulers, good binoculars, the good old-fashioned stuff that will get you where you want to go.

Bob, the captain of his own ship.

All went well, up to a point. From LaConner to the Canadian Gulf islands, through Georgia Strait and across Queen Charlotte Sound, we were feeling plenty smug in the shelter of Calvert Island, northbound through Fitzhugh Sound.

So on a truly fine early summer day, we were motoring out of Fitzhugh into Fisher Channel, expecting to make a left turn into Lama Passage that would take us to Bella Bella, a native village and refueling stop for us. John, our nine-year-old son was struggling to get his assigned math problems finished so that we could mail them back to his school in LaConner. To jolly him along, I offered him imaginary rewards of thousands of dollars if he could finish by the time we came abeam of the next channel marker on the left.

John worked away; we kept getting closer at our six-and-a-half-knot sail-boat speed, closer and closer. When the mark was on our port beam he had not quite finished, so we agreed on another chance, at the very next port-side mark. Back to work he went, concentrating partly on the problems, mostly on sighting the next mark. I consulted the chart and kept watch for the mark as well.

When we reached this next mark, I saw that it was very near a left-turning channel, decided that this was Lama Passage and turned into it. The next mark would be on the right-hand side of the channel, and it was, but it appeared to be just a small bit out of place. It could have been the angle at which I was seeing it, so I started looking for the next marker on the left side of the channel. There it was, but even more misplaced. The following starboard mark was even worse, but still within the boundaries of what I thought could correspond to the symbol on the chart. Still another disquieting factor was that the boat’s depth sounder did not show the same water depth as was on paper. We pushed on.

Of course I was guilty of mentally trying to reconcile the differences in marker placement, water depth, heading, land formation and all, with what my eyes should have told me was dead wrong. When we got to a very sharp turn to the right, so sharp it looked as if we were running into a rock cliff, and nothing approaching that configuration of the channel showed on the chart, I finally got the message: we were lost. Margaret, who had been below, fixing lunch, knew at a glace. Lost.

Now the dilemma: if the location of the boat is not known, how do you follow the directions on a chart to where you want to be? Fisher Channel has, I believe, three possible left-turning channels branching off from it, each of them sharing a few similar features. Lama Passage, where we should have turned, has some shoals but no truly dangerous obstructions. The others, according to the chart, were strewn with potentially lethal rocks. They were shown on the chart, but if you do not know what channel you are in, it makes no difference what rocks are indicated. There were no identifying signs except for the channel markers and I had persuaded myself that the first three or four were close enough to be correct. If it had not been for the number of rocks and other dangers shown on the chart plus the fact that we were getting low on fuel, we could have relaxed and waited for another boat to tell us where we were. But it is hard to relax while searching for a panic button to push. Our rascally son was having a belly laugh or two because Mom and Dad were lost. For him it was just part of the whole adventure.

We cautiously moved ahead to the rock cliff, looked through the hole-in-the-wall to the right, and miraculously, there was a fish-boat in the narrow channel about a quarter of a mile off near the dead end. We approached, asked him where we were, and were told that we were in Roscoe Inlet. We looked for Roscoe Inlet on our chart; no such place. At last it was found on a different adjoining chart, as we had unknowingly sailed off the first one. Knowing our location, it was not easy to find a short-cut, Troup Passage, to reach Dryad Point, a place just above Bella Bella where we could get the next fill-up of diesel oil.

The ironic part of this adventure was that John and I were concentrating so hard on the correct mark, but using that awareness as being only the foal for a math problem and the imaginary rewards. That mark, the one we were watching so closely, was the one showing Lama Passage.

The moral of the story is that the chart symbols and the actual channel markers, depth measurements, landmarks and compass headings all agree completely. Wishful thinking will not put you in the right channel.

Photos by Jean E. Straatmeyer