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| FV Tradition |
A NOTE: I've posted a number of articles about boats here and just about all of them express my joy at life on the water. Even the difficulties in retrospect are fond memories. I only made one trip I regret taking and it has been bothering me for years. When I ran across one of the other participants the other day and the anger boiled up in me again I decided maybe it was time to tell the tale.
When I first considered writing this story, I wasn't sure where to begin. Events affecting the outcome occurred over most of a decade. I finally decided to start with the first incident, though it won't seem connected, so here goes.
I met a woman friend of a friend in Valdez, Alaska, in the early to mid 80s. I'm not sure of the date or exact place, probably in the harbor on the docks. As our friendship developed one day she told me about a horrid experience she'd had sailing. She had gone out on one of those learn-to-sail charters in the Caribbean and been treated poorly, even ridiculed. She told me the operator had said she shouldn't be on boats and some day she'd kill somebody. It had crushed her as she had that dream of living on a boat that we all had. As it was early for the tourist season I suggested taking her sailing on a small boat I was pretty sure I could borrow. She jumped at the chance and a day later we sailed out of the harbor and spent three cold days on the water, even enduring a snow squall along the way. The best part was we had a good time. Given the weather we began writing Jimmie Buffett a cold-climate sailing song. We were going to call it Carhartt Sailors. The upshot of it all was she had a good time sailing and her dream came alive again. A year or two later she bought a small sailboat and lived on one or another for the rest of the time I knew her.
By the early 90s I had married, moved off the boats and taken an office job, still close to the water as a manager for a fleet of oil spill response vessels. Before I took that job I did a short charter on Tradition, an 83-foot fish tender/longliner, ferrying some folks surveying spots in the bay for a potential natural gas facility.
Apparently I did a good job because the owner, who also owned one of two fish-processing operations in town, asked me to take the boat south to the Puget Sound area for the winter. I jumped at the chance and because my new occupation wasn't totally established yet my employer said OK. That trip was a story in itself so I'm not going to dwell on it here. Enough to say we ran into foul weather along the way and it took longer than I expected. But we got it delivered, and had new stories to tell so it was all good.
The downturn in this story arrived the following spring when it came time to bring the Tradition back to Alaska. It. started out fine when I was invited to take the trip north but soured quickly.
The owner had hired a new captain, an engineer and one crewman who were to stay with the boat through the black cod commercial fishing season that was coming up shortly. He said he was a little uncomfortable with the captain and asked me to go along to keep an eye on things. A boat trip sounded like just the thing after a long winter in an office and once again the employer let me go.
After a flight to Seattle, I met the owner in his office and he explained his concerns and also there was an issue about a woman the captain wanted to bring along. Guess who. That's right my sailing friend from a few years previous. The owner didn't want her to go. I told him he couldn’t go wrong allowing her on the trip. I said she was a good hand and any boat she sailed on would come back in better shape than before she came aboard. He eventually capitulated and let her go.
He also told me he wasn't sure about the captain; described him as young, brash and perhaps overconfident with little experience in Alaska waters. He had come north during the recent Exxon Valdez oil spill and stuck around looking for work. The owner wanted me to evaluate the guy and be there in case there was any problem. I was already a little hesitant. Then he drove me to the boat where preparations were well under way.
The skipper who had run the boat before me also came by and handed me a box of charts for the trip. When I had run it there were charts aboard but he told me they had disappeared somehow. So we went aboard and I sensed an immediate cold shoulder, even from the sailing woman which surprised me.
I wasn't aboard 10 minutes when I noticed a problem. Heading south the previous fall we carried a small van on deck. The previous skipper had pad eyes welded to the deck — loops of heavy steel which were used to anchor chain binders to the deck and which were then attached to the vehicle, holding it tightly in place. You really don't want a full-sized van rolling around on deck in a storm. Instead of using the pad eyes and binders this guy had simply wedged a few pieces of lumber between the van and the gunn'els. With any kind of rough weather bouncing the boat around those would have fallen and we'd have a loose vehicle on deck. In addition he'd placed the van over the only access to the aft hold, so if something went wrong we would not have been able to access the hold.
For the most part during the preparations I wandered around, helping where I could. At one point I offered to go up in the wheelhouse and organize the charts to which the sailor woman replied "oh, we don't use charts."
"What!!?"
She pointed out a cruising guide for that coast, a copy of which I also owned, but was no substitute for actual nautical charts. For example the charts in it are miniaturized versions of the real thing and each carries this disclaimer: "Not to be used for navigation." The scale was so tiny you could not use it to find a safe way into one of the many small bays along the way in case you sought shelter from a gale, nor could you fix your exact position with any accuracy It also carries advertising and lists the amenities in various ports in case you wanted to find one that held a sushi bar. As far as real, accurate navigation they are next to useless. I hid the box of charts my friend had given me, ready to haul them out if they were needed.
We had one other clash before we left. I was told to make my bunk in the forepeak and I firmly refused. This boat is light in the bow and any sort of waves turn the forepeak into the inside of a drum. No way I was going to sleep there. The crewman and the engineer had the other two bunks. I even offered to hot-bunk with someone rather than sleep there. Also I might have felt a little stuffy about it, too, being the owner's rep and all, not that it seemed to matter. Eventually the crewman gave in and moved to the forepeak. I kept trying to tell myself I was here for a boat ride. Fortunately we didn't spend much time shoreside while I was on board and within a day or so we departed.
It felt good to be under way heading for the Canadian border, a trip I had made several times before. The calm didn't last long, just until I first took the helm and the captain and I entered a conflict that was to continue for the rest of the trip. This takes a little background. In a twin-engined vessel both engines should run at the same rpms. This can be achieved a couple of ways. One is to match what the individual engine's tachometers tell you. The second is by using the harmonic that comes in when both engines are matched — two-part harmony if you will. I knew from my previous trip in this vessel that the tachometers at the helm (or one of them) were off, so I relied on the harmonic. There were two tachometers in the engine room as well and on the previous trip with my crew minding the helm I had gone below and when my harmonic came in, those two tachometers were synchronized. That confirmed it for me.
So when I took the helm the first time, the captain just about screamed at me that the engines were out of synch because the tachometers didn't match. I tried to explain it to him but he was so angry he wasn't listening. I even moved the throttles so the tachs matched but he still didn't get it. It was a disagreement that was to last for the entire trip. [Thinking about it later, I guessed in the short time the new captain had run the boat he had synchronized the engines by aligning the two helm tachometers and had gotten a different harmonic than the one I heard.]
Shortly after we departed and all along the way I noticed occasional slights and disinterested or no reactions to my attempts to add comments to the general ongoing conversation. It was obvious they didn't want me there. As all I had wanted to do was take a boat ride, I ignored them for the most part in an attempt to enjoy the trip.
With good weather and calm winds and water we progressed along the Canadian Coast for about a week and landed in Ketchikan, Alaska, ostensibly to take on some supplies. With little to do there since the famous harbor bar (Shamrock?) had closed I wandered around the boat and eventually went down into the engine room. Figuring I should do something to honor my commitment to the owner I started pulling the dipsticks on the two main engines and the two generators. I had experienced a problem with lubricants on the way south and hoped it had been repaired. The starboard main was the last one I checked and to my horror when I pulled the dipstick there wasn't a drop of moisture on it. We had an engineer on board for crying out loud and he had let one of the main engines run dry of oil. I took the dry dipstick and showed it to the captain. He mumbled something about a previous operator telling him he never had to check the oil. Who in the hell does that? On boats I ran I checked the oil morning and night. Offshore I would shut one engine down while we ran on the other, checked the oil level, and then switched to check the other. On this trip we were about to head out into the Gulf of Alaska for a 350-mile run offshore on a main engine with no oil in it. What did the captain do? He gathered the crew and said very firmly from then forward only he and the engineer were allowed in the engine room. Sometime in that period the engineer decided to repack the rudder shafts. These are held in pipes that come up through the hull in the lazarette and occasionally need material stuffed into them to prevent too much water coming in. A little is good for lubrication
But the conflicts weren't quite over yet. We proceeded north through the Inside Passage. Now,
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Admiralty Island is in the center. To the left Chatham Strait leads into Icy Strait then into the Gulf of Alaska. Stephens Passage on the right of the island leads north toward Juneau then in a roundabout way into Icy Strait.
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there are two main routes running north and south, Chatham Strait and Stephens Passage. Chatham is the outer, shorter route on the west side of Admiralty Island, wider and sometimes more vulnerable to weather. Stephens on the east side of the island, is generally calmer but takes a longer route around the north end of the island to reach the gulf. By the time you enter either one you already begin looking at weather in the gulf for the crossing. All looked good ahead.
I woke from a nap and looked out over the water, clear, flat, calm, green — Stephens Passage. I went up to the wheelhouse and I hope politely asked why we were in Stephens Passage. I was told everybody goes this way. His lack of knowledge about Alaska was beginning to show. Everybody doesn't use Stephens Passage unless they are going to Juneau. Everybody going farther north uses Chatham. In at least a dozen trips in either direction I only used Stephens once and that was the previous fall when heading south I went into Juneau for fuel.
I mentioned that it was about four hours longer this way. He said he wanted to time the arrival so we would dock in daylight. I shook my head. There was also the question of the cost of fuel adding four hours to the trip.
It's general knowledge that if you have a good weather forecast for the Gulf of Alaska, you go, no timing your arrival, just get across the gulf. The weather can change any time. I had spent the better part of 36 hours at the helm of a 40-foot sailboat in 50+ foot waves learning that lesson. Fortunately the weather held as did the starboard engine and we docked in Valdez in daylight.
Several people were on the dock including the owner, the previous skipper and my wife. I had to get something from the lazarette and discovered water up to the middle of my thighs. So much for that engineer. We had gone across the gulf with our rudder shafts leaking into the boat
I grabbed my stuff and the box of charts for my friend and left the boat. I hugged my wife and walked over to the owner whom I knew was expecting something. I told him I would come by first thing in the morning and I think he could tell by the frustrated expression on my face that I had a lot to tell.
I returned early the next day and walked into his office. He pointed to a chair and I sat down, looked him straight in the eye and said, "I'd fire them all right now."
Then I told him everything I've written here. "They were too stupid to realize why I was on the boat in the first place." They were gone by noon. Then he asked me if I would run the boat through the black cod season. I had to decline. I don't know anything about commercial fishing for cod.
And now to bring this story full circle, I learned after the trip that the sailor woman whose faith in herself and sailing I had helped renew and who wouldn't have been allowed on this trip if I hadn't advocated for her had told the owner when my name came up during early negotiations that I was "on boats for all the wrong reasons." In retrospect I think that insult was the biggest disappointment of all.
A friend's comment: Sharon Wright
Here's the story about those big waves in the Gulf of Alaska
Tradition icing up on the trip south the year before
Messing about in boats — more sea stories
A FOOTNOTE: In 2007 the Tradition sank at a Whittier, Alaska dock. Apparently it has been on the beach there ever since. Here's that story
