Cascadian Bar Crawl Part I: Grays Harbor and Columbia River
The Pacific Coast of the Pacific Northwest, Cascadia to some, is stunningly beautiful and rugged for visitors, but for boaters this stretch of planet Earth is also hazardous. One of the defining features of the coastline of Washington and Oregon are that despite the several sheltered rivers and bays on the charts they are all accessed by bar entrance crossings. These bar crossings are so named because the river mouth flows over, and helps create, shallow sandbar systems that represent obstacles for mariners to navigate.
But the challenge is not simply a matter of navigating the ever-shifting sandbar mazes. The geomorphology of the shallows, power of the outgoing river currents, and ever turning tide pulls interact with incoming open ocean waves and highly variable winds to produce a variety of sea states that can be extreme. At times these forces align in our favor to create idyllic crossing conditions that are as pleasant as a cruise over a pond. More often these natural forces conspire in other ways to create towering walls of water, vicious boat sinking currents, and dangerous nightmarish conditions. US Coast Guard (USCG) observers are stationed at all these entrances to issue regular bar reports restricting or closing the crossings as necessary even to the largest ships. There is a reason that the USCG National Motor Lifeboat School trains their surfmen along the Columbia River bar. They also run their 47 Motor Lifeboats that can survive 360-degree capsizing in these conditions. If that doesn’t speak strongly enough to how hardcore these waters can be you can (safely please) storm watch from shore to see for yourself.
I recently realized that, probably due to naivete, I’ve crossed several of these Cascadian bar entrances over the course of the last decade or so without giving it too much thought until now. These often-spontaneous experiences varied across sectors from a commercial albacore tuna fishing gig to an Ocean Alexander delivery. So we begin my Cascadian Bar Crawl from the most northerly crossing to south starting with the Grays Harbor Bar.
Grays Harbor Bar – Chasing Longfins
Note from author: Name of boat and captain were changed to respect privacy
“We shouldn’t be out here,” captain Jim Biggs’ white-knuckle grip on the helm of his all-wood albacore tuna troller the F/V Ground Tackle said it all. We were shooting over the Grays Harbor Bar out of Westport, Washington in foul conditions. At night. Ground Tackle kept course but was thrown this way and that as we brawled our way out to the open Pacific to chase albacore, longfins, for the last autumn month or two of the season.
I was struck by a horrifying realization.
Ground Tackle is a terrible name for a boat in a storm crossing a bar.
The immaculate vessel could’ve been a museum ship down to the original Detroit diesel engine. Built by a Norwegian immigrant Jim referred to as Sig, probably short for Sigurd, the Ground Tackle was quite possibly nearing a hundred years old. She was a sightly, ultra classic ship with white topside paint and red trim. The Ground Tackle would’ve been right at home among sisterships in Norway with her proud bow, slim beam, and canoe stern. Jim told me that he started working for Sig as a teenager and just never stopped, ultimately getting the boat when Sig passed away some decade past.
“Coming out here was a bad idea,” he growled as we rocked this way and that. Was that an accusation? It sounded like one. You chose this was the subtext.
To get into the Pacific Ocean from Grays Harbor—a large bay on the central Washington coast that contains fishing towns like Aberdeen and Westport—a vessel needs to exit the bottleneck entrance. Like all the rivers of the Washington coast, the entrance is a bar, meaning there is a system of shallow sand bars under the water. One need not worry about running into them when minding the channel markers, but they create epic, and often impassable, waves when the tides, winds, and ambient sea states aren’t favorable.
Think of a bar entrance like a traffic light. For us on the Ground Tackle leaving Grays Harbor, the light is green when the tide is slack, the winds are low (or at least not blasting in our faces from the west), and the ambient sea state of the Pacific Ocean is mild. The light turns red when the tide floods (coming into the bay against us) or ebbs (amplifying the incoming waves), the winds are howling into our faces. The US Coast Guard monitors these infamous bar entrances, issuing limited entrances (ex. vessels over 24-foot only) or closing the whole thing down as needed on a regular basis.
I’d call our traffic light yellow. We went for the slack tide properly but the wind was in the near gale range on the backend of a storm. The seas weren’t the worst but still whipped up from the aforementioned action. The coasties probably issued a restricted bar entrance but we were around 50’ and large enough not to be restricted.
To my surprise, Jim had outlined our go versus no-go options when I, a near-green 25-year-old, arrived at the dock earlier in the day with a duffle bag over my shoulder. The go versus no-go decision was purely captain stuff, I thought. But no, Jim laid out the variables—tide windows, the storm that just passed, wind information, etc.—to me.
“It’s probably pretty nasty out there for the next tide window, but will get calmer,” he said. “If we wait for tomorrow’s tide window, it’ll be nice out there but we’ll have wasted some time. What do you think?”
What do I think?
I was his only crew to finish out the 2015 albacore season with, a gig that was to eat up the month of September and maybe October—or beyond if the fish were on and we were getting rich. We met dockside on the first day of the job, the whole arrangement set up through mutual acquaintances and phone calls. Jim had gone through three different deckhands over the summer, a fact I probably should’ve read more into. For me, the paddle guide summer season on Bainbridge had come to an end. The sundrenched, summer romance, dreamy lifestyle had left me with about one grand-worth of savings. My life was a purgatory of “irons in the fire”: oceanography research that may get published, graduate school applications, snooping around for writing related jobs that didn’t suck. If I could play tuna mercenary for a month or two and bring home $10k—or more!—I’d be in decent shape for a while. I could take a breath.
I’ll tell ya what I think, Jim!
“Let’s go get ‘em!” I slammed a fist into my palm for emphasis.
“Yeah?” Jim asked skeptically, but my upbeat new deckhand attitude was contagious. Sweet summer child. Engines roared to life and we were off into the setting sun. If it worked out, captain would feel good he made the right call. If it didn’t? My bad. So into the breech, Ground Tackle! Our poor choices became apparent as the night fell upon us and the bar chewed us up.
“Bad call coming out here,” Jim kept muttering, the blame-the-deckhand subtext heavier with every utterance. “Soup’s on if you’re hungry.” I took the prompt to get out of blame range. He had thrown a pile of veggies and venison into a huge pot on the cast iron diesel heater-range before we left. The giant beast of a unit must’ve been the original, the hundreds of pounds of hot iron glowing most of the time to heat the cabin interior, cook food, and boil water. The sea state was rolling the boat dramatically and I was doing the crew dance to stay upright. Barely. I managed to ladle myself a bowl, keen to get some nutrition into my system. I was going to need the energy.
The soup was scalding hot and the metal bowl immediately becoming first-degree-burn level to hold.
Yeee-awww! I whelped, the radioactive soup sending me dancing with pain. My animal brain forgot to maintain my sailor stance and I was boldly chucked across the galley, the scald falling onto my chest. I writhed, thrown by the seas back to the floor. The soup and my sizzling chest and neck a lost cause, I rolled under the table where I wedged myself among cardboard boxes of Idaho Yukon Gold potatoes. I lay there with the spuds for a minute or two laughing like a complete maniac. Joker all the way.
We crossed in one piece but one could learn a few things from our experience. Wait for that calmer next tide window. Maybe don’t go out at night. Mind the scalding soup. Me? I learned that Ground Tackle is a terrible name for a ship in a storm.
Columbia River Bar – Delivery to Portland
Delivery captain Chris Couch skippered his charge, an Ocean Alexander 58, with easy, calm confidence as he approached The Graveyard of the Pacific—the Columbia River Bar. What would be daunting for captains unfamiliar to the area is another day in the office for him. The boat’s delivery from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon is routine. It’s his proven track record of delivering yachts through those often-treacherous waters unscathed for which the region’s yacht brokers and owners are repeat clients. This particular run takes captain Couch about 36 hours.
I, along for the delivery, had never crossed the Columbia River Bar. The concept was both exciting and anxiety inducing for someone raised in Oregon with Columbia River Bar horror stories from history, like the Astor Expedition, and modern tragedies of fishing vessels lost with all hands in the newspaper. According to Oregon State Parks, the more-than-infamous stretch of water connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Columbia River is the final resting place of approximately 2,000 vessels since 1792.
“The first thing you need to think about when picking out a delivery captain is to pick somebody with respect for the weather,” said Couch. Being extremely picky about ideal weather windows is central to his ethos, especially when it comes to the Columbia River. He’ll patiently wait at the dock for weeks if that’s what it takes. “I can’t stress enough to them (clients) that we have to be flexible with timeframes… I try to add at least two or three weeks to their schedule to give me enough time. It can be difficult to explain this to them, but once they get their boat safe and sound, they never complain.”
Our delivery trip was no exception. Captain Couch patiently remained on standby in Seattle for as long as it took for a calm weather pattern to set in for his 36-hour transit. When it comes to this kind of boating, there is a case to be made that speed isn’t just for fun—there’s a pro safety argument to be made for ocean cruisers to possess some sprinting capability.
His explanation for why the Columbia River Bar is so hazardous was straightforward and based on rationalizing basic oceanography. Conditions are affected by the incoming swell and wave height and the speed of the outgoing tidal current (ebb). As the swell and large wind waves approach shallow water, they decrease in speed, steepen, and gain height. This intensifying of incoming wave energy is magnified when it runs into a strong ebb tide. The two forces are a perfect toxic marriage for a boat that create high energy currents and towering walls of water.
“Plan your trip departure or arrival to coincide with the slack or flood tide,” advised Couch. Crossing the Columbia River Bar is not a creative exercise and following the channel markers strictly is vital. “Do not cross shoal areas. Stay in the channel at all times. You can quickly find yourself being set outside the channel. If crossing during strong ebb current, outside conditions should be no more than a five-foot-long period swell or a three-foot chop.” Captain Couch doesn’t cross at night if he can help it. Why compound the variables?
When in doubt, one can hail the US Coast Guard via VHF on Channel 16 for a bar report. One should tune into the VHF broadcasted bar conditions as standard practice anyway as the US Coast Guard will restrict and close the bar based upon the weather conditions. Being closed out of the bar means heading further offshore and waiting.
All this information whirs in my head as we pass the rugged headlands of the upliftingly named Cape Disappointment to port. Captain Couch carefully sets up our transect a few miles out to line up with the channel markers perfectly. No autopilot for this assignment, the captain’s hands are firmly on the wheel. He then shoots the line—we’re going for it!
My inaugural Columbia River Bar crossing would be a more exciting story if Captain Couch wasn’t so good at his job. We ply forward in very reasonable conditions, neatly minding the channel between North Jetty and South Jetty to enter the peaceful river under gray overcast skies. Seagulls lazily drift overhead and a handful of working boats pass by going in or out as they please.
“Want to take the wheel?” Captain Couch offered. I eagerly took hold to maintain course. We were through and if I didn’t know better I wouldn’t have thought an epic crossing of any kind had just taken place. Such an experience speaks volumes to Captain Couch as a real deal waterman. As far as my impression of the Columbia River Bar was concerned, just because a graveyard is where the dead rest doesn’t mean the place is evil. Knowing and following nature’s rules is the key.
Stayed tuned for part two of Norris’ Cascadian Bar Crawl!
SIDEBAR SHOUTOUT: The Checklist
Professional delivery captain and published poet Chris Couch produced a handbook to help boaters prepare for long distances. Titled The Checklist, the handy resources is available online.
Cascadian Bar Crawl Part III – Bound Again for San Francisco, Coos Bay and Umpqua River Combo
Cascadian Bar Crawl Part II: Failing to Get to San Francisco via the Yaquina Bay Bar to Coos Bay Bar
