Month: March 2010

Posted on

Places you sail past: Bloedel Reserve

Insert your boat here

One of the positive aspects of being more landlocked this winter than we had planned has been the opportunity to visit some places that have, by dint of coastal geography, been places that we have generally found ourselves sailing past rather than stopping at and visiting. Whether their appeal simply hasn’t been obvious from the water or there aren’t suitable anchorages in the vicinity, it turns out there are a lot of parts of the Puget Sound shoreline that deserve greater attention than the simple glance from on deck that most passing boaters afford them.

One of those places is the Bloedel Reserve. Located on Bainbridge Island along the shore of Port Madison, the former private home and estate of Prentice and Virginia Bloedel is now a lovely park and museum open to the public. You’ve probably gazed on its idyllic grounds many times on your way to or from Agate Pass, but perhaps, like us, you didn’t realize what it was you were passing by. If that’s the case, it’s time to rectify the oversight: Bloedel Reserve is worth a closer look.

I forget the rules for forest paths in Region A... is it white, right, returning?

The Reserve is 150 acre combination of pristine nature, carefully manicured garden, and stately man-made structure. A planned walking tour from the gatehouse (vehicle traffic is heavily restricted, so plan to walk, about two miles if you stick to the recommended paths) will take you through grassy fields, past duck-filled ponds, into an elegant turn-of-the-century chateau now used as a visitor center. From the visitor center, a turn past a waterfall takes you into the Japanese garden, and then into a moss garden. All along the way you are assailed with what I can only imagine, based on the looks on my wife’s face, are a cornucopia of botanical delights. It’s all just weeds to me… but I did notice that the rhodies were blooming, an early-season treat for those who put stock in such things.

Tree sweeping a pond
New Beaufort Scale: When tree brushes water into ripples, it's Force One

The entire Reserve radiates tranquility. Were it warmer out, I could have laid down on a bench and gone right to sleep, and I imagine that some people do. It’s a bit like sailing in out of the way places… just the wind, nature, and you. It’s a different sort of nature, though, a softer sort, with more (but quieter) noises, and a sense of life in progress all around you.

We were lucky with our timing. In order to preserve that pervasive sense of quiet calm, the Reserve limits the number of simultaneous visitors. During the tourist season, reservations are recommended, which can be made online at the Reserve’s website.

Timing is one thing, accessibility another. You’ve been sailing past the place all these years for a reason, right? The closest anchorage is inner Port Madison, but you would have quite a hike even assuming you could find a good spot to dinghy ashore on the north shore there. As close as it is to Agate Pass, one could anchor in Poulsbo and catch a bus to Bainbridge Island fairly handily, but that would necessitate a transfer at some point. The best bet is to moor in Eagle Harbor and catching the number 94 bus (see the Kitsap Transit website for more information) from Winslow, which runs right past the Reserve.

And then next time you sail past you can point to the solid white chateau on the hill and say, “Hey! I’ve been there.”

Posted on

What’s on your life vest?

I always find it interesting to compare gear and outfitting among different crews I come in contact with. Even more interesting is the thought process and the experiences that inform those choices. The Internet presents some fascinating and detailed perspectives from sailors all over the world on how and why to equip yourself and your sailboat, but I am always most curious about what folks who are sailing the same waters as I am are doing. There can be some significantly different conditions from region to region, after all, and something taken as gospel on, say, the Florida coast, may not make a lot of sense to Northwest sailors, and vice versa.

So since Tim Flanagan at Navagear and Captain Richard Rodriguez at Bitter End have both posted recently on their choices for wearable emergency strobes for their PFDs I thought I would throw my own selections into the ring. I come to the conversation to find Rodriguez swearing by the AquaSpec AQ98 and Flanagan currently using an old ACR Firefly 2 but wavering between the AQ98 and the ACR Hemilight 2 for an upgrade.

I think both are in the minority among local sailors in wearing a strobe at all, at least from my extremely unofficial observations around the Sound, but it’s a minority that Mandy and I are also happy to be a part of. We both have ACR Firefly Plus lights velcroed to our lifevests at the shoulder, together with a plastic rescue whistle tucked in and tied off to the lanyard. Mandy, not coming from that peculiarly male tradition of pocket-knife ownership, and facing the same problem as female sailors everywhere, a lack of pockets, also has a small Gerber Paraframe tethered to hers… although I will probably replace it soon, having discovered that Gerbers are a bit crap when it comes to nautical knives.

We’re in another minority in wearing plain old fashioned life vests instead of inflatable PFDs (you were probably having some trouble visualizing how we strapped a bulky ol’ Firefly Plus to the shoulder of an inflatable harness, weren’t you?) but we’re happy to belong to that as well. They’re bulky, they’re ugly, they’re uncool, but there is absolutely zero chance that they will go in the water and fail to float.

That simplicity and reliability was also a factor in selecting the Firefly Plus. They’re not SOLAS or even USCG rated, so I don’t mean to imply the construction is superior. But they aren’t just a strobe light; the other end of the unit is a plain old flashlight. Hands-free lighting on deck is important for sailors and like most, we have headlamps on board for that purpose, but we find that it’s easier to use our shoulder-mounted Fireflies. They are already with us, won’t get knocked off, and are easily switched on and off (too easy, sometimes; if they have a failing it is the potential to be turned on accidentally). I don’t think we have pulled our headlamps out of the locker in years.

Because we use them so regularly, we never have to wonder if the battery has gone dead or if the light has broken. They take standard AA batteries you can find anywhere in the world and we always know they are ready to go in an emergency.

I’m not blind to the appeal or advantage of inflatable vests or micro-strobes. The freedom of movement and light weight can be safety features in and of themselves, allowing safer and easier movement on pitching decks or in restricted cabins. Some people are also more likely to wear the devices in the first place if they are less obtrusive, and none of this stuff does you any good if you don’t wear it.

In our particular circumstances, I like the trade-offs, though. Neither of us mind wearing the gear, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing for certain that it will all work when we need it is worth whatever small inconvenience it may introduce.

So that is my reasoning and our personal safety gear. What’s on your PFD?

(Edit 3/25/10 – Grammatical corrections)

Posted on

Should you have to pay for rescue?

So I was watching CNN the other day and they were running a story about some folks in Spartanburg, South Carolina who experienced a small kitchen fire, and decided to fight it themselves because of a previous CNN story reporting on a neighboring jurisdiction in Cherokee County which had passed a law that would allow the local fire department to bill the insurer of victims to recoup the costs of fighting the fire. The law, as I am given to understand it, is not particularly onerous and doesn’t affect uninsured victims in the least (which, at least in Washington, would seem to make it unconstitutional), but the news being the news and people being people, that apparently wasn’t communicated effectively. Nor was the fact that the law didn’t affect the town in which these folks lived. The message that got through was “If the fire department shows up, you’re getting a bill.”

Of course they then had the local fire chief on, explaining that had some neighbors not called when they saw the incident developing, the whole house might have burnt to the ground due to extension through the attic, and the gentleman inside with the garden hose would likely have died in that event.

I bring all this up on a sailing blog for a couple of reasons. The story about American sailor Keith Carver, ship-wrecked in BC this past month, has illustrated how the foolhardy or inexperienced sometimes get themselves into places where they require rescue through bad decisions. This isn’t news; if you trace the web of events leading to any rescue scenario, you’ll likely find a trail of bad decisions along the way, and it is really only in the degree of badness that any distinction can be made between experienced and inexperienced sailors.

But the fact that some obviously bad decisions are sometimes involved has lead to a movement of sorts leading to laws of the sort that Cherokee County passed (and since repealed) seeking to compensate rescuers for coming out and saving the damn fools that made those decisions. This is more common in wilderness than urban rescue, but with many jurisdictions both urban and rural scratching for funds with their tax bases hard hit by the recession, it’s an attractive trend. New Hampshire’s Fish and Game Department has billed survivors of rescue attempts regularly for the past three years, while eight other states have laws on the books allowing such billing but only do so sporadically.

What has surprised me is the degree to which many sailors support this concept and even advocate its adoption by the Coast Guard. A case involving a German crew rescued two years ago from a dis-masted vessel in the Gulf Stream off the Atlantic Coast resulted in a firestorm of debate on some sailing boards over the rescue of people who put themselves in harm’s way or mis-judged the severity of their situations in calling for aid.

This surprises me for a number of reasons. First, that the concept has a chilling effect has been long posited by serious rescue organizations, who are generally forthright and clear in telling people that they should call freely and early if they are in any doubt as to their situation. People who do search and rescue for a living don’t expect victims to be thinking clearly; they would rather you allow them to make the decision whether or not rescue is necessary. Introducing pay-as-you-go rescue will result in more deaths, and paradoxically, more danger for rescuers, who won’t get calls early enough to effect easy rescues, but instead will hear from victims only when the situation finally becomes desperate. This is not a unanimous view, of course, but my own observation has been that people who are full-time professionals are more likely to hold it than, say, a game warden who gets roped into the role.

Second, it betrays a tremendously simplistic view of how bad things happen at sea. I was surprised more sailors weren’t aware of the so-called decision funnels that generally lead to a disaster. It’s human, perhaps, to latch on to information that seems obvious from an armchair after the fact and say “I would have done this differently!” but most disasters result from a slow accumulation of minor decisions, few of which seem serious or controversial in isolation, but each of which restricts subsequent options, eventually funneling the victim toward danger. Some environmental impairment of cognitive function is also a common factor; you can see things there in your comfy armchair which might not be so obvious on a pitching, slippery deck in the dead of night.

The flip side of this is that, should the chain of events be interrupted early in the process, it can appear that the call for help was frivolous or needless. If you call for a tow with a dead engine in calm conditions it can look a little histrionic; should the wind pick up, a freighter bear down on you, or the tide shift you toward a rocky shore, you can bet that whoever comes out to get you will be wishing you had called when it was still calm and easy to resolve the situation. Discouraging people from making those calls is simply going to make things more dangerous and more expensive in the long run.

Third, we (sailors) already have pretty robust and time-tested traditions for dealing with these situations. When lives are in danger, anyone capable, consistent with the safety of their own crew and vessel, is obliged by law and custom to render assistance. To deal with the possibility of frivolous calls for assistance, salvage law provides for the compensation of the rescuer in situations where the rescued vessel is not, in fact, lost. The intricacies of Admiralty Law on these points is far beyond me, but the principles are clear and historic: aid is rendered when asked for without expectation of compensation. Compensation may, however, arise from property recovered in the course of rendering that aid… an implicit hedge against those who might cry wolf.

Of course, it is still frustrating for tax-payers to see their money going toward saving people in foreseeably avoidable situations. Last week, a kite-surfer near Tacoma had to be rescued by firefighters when the wind died, stranding him far from shore. The wind being what it is, one has to wonder why this possibility, and making contingencies for it, didn’t enter the surfer’s mind ahead of time.

Even more frustrating are those situations in which the contingency plan seems to be calling emergency services. The advent of reliable modern communication equipment has lead some adventurers to skimp on safety gear and training and rely on a cellphone and rescue service helicopters in case the going gets tough. Local author Jon Krakauer in his book “Eiger Dreams” describes just how seductive this can be when he describes a rough day ice-climbing in France. There, rescue bills seem more common, but so does insurance covering them… making it less “rescue” than “retrieval,” more on par with our Vessel Assist subscriptions than with emergency services.

Personally I am a fan of the existing maritime rescue system, flaws and all. I don’t think the Coast Guard or other emergency services should be in the business of sending out bills; I think it creates negative incentives all the way around, both within those agencies and among those who might need their help. The price of bailing out the occasional idiot (a group among which I unreservedly include myself; perhaps that’s a bias!) is something that we should collectively agree to bear, because any of us may be the idiot (or be worried about being seen as the idiot) next time. The thing about emergencies is that, by definition, you don’t see them coming, even if someone else does. I suppose there is some perfect person out there that is better than all the rest of us and would never get caught unaware; for everyone else, it seems to me we should chip in without enmity until our time comes.

Posted on

From near-death to jail

I have often wondered, in passing, what happens if you wreck and are rescued in a foreign country before clearing customs. Now I know: you get arrested.

This story has already been making the rounds on nautical websites here in the Pacific Northwest, on Three Sheets among others. So far, though, all that has been covered has been the fantastic survival story of Keith Carver, a 56 year old American sailor from Tucson who was shipwrecked on the coast (sort of; we’ll get to that in a minute) of Vancouver Island a week ago and rescued by chance by a passing helicopter ferrying a physician between remote communities on the West Coast. Carver survived the five days since he had come ashore by eating lichen.

How he came to be washed ashore near the northern tip of the island in the first place is as fascinating as his survival thereafter. With a friend, Carver had come to Washington in mid-February to purchase a 40 foot cement sailboat, intent on sailing it down the coast to Mexico. The plan itself gives an indication of the likely outcome to those familiar with weather along the northwest coast in the winter. And indeed, after a few days clear sailing out the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the pair were caught off-shore in a storm they claim blew them well up into Canadian waters. During the course of the storm, Carver’s friend broke his arm, and they put in at Tahsis to get him medical attention. A good samaritan drove the friend to Campbell River for help. Carver, apparently not having had enough, put back out on his own, only to run into another storm system a day later, which seems to have pushed him even further north.

His vessel disintegrating around him, he decided to make for Port Alice, but never got there… 20 kilometres from the village, he abandoned his boat and barely made it ashore, with no communications or survival equipment. He planned to walk in the rest of the way, no great feat across 20 klicks of Arizona desert, perhaps, but near madness to anyone looking at a topographic map of the area and familiar with the dense, swampy forests of the region.

Only good luck and sharp eyes of helicopter pilot Wayne Goodrich saved Carver, who ended up in the hospital at Port McNeill, from which he was released today, and promptly arrested by the RCMP on suspicion of entering the country illegally.

Well, no kidding.

“We have reason to question his admissibility and that’s why we’ve detained him. It’s got nothing to do with him being shipwrecked,” says Corporal Derek Lagan, which is a bit like saying “We arrested the guy for shooting the victim. It’s got nothing to do with him pulling the trigger.”

As I said, I have sometimes wondered idly what might happen if one were forced off-course or wrecked or otherwise found oneself in need of assistance before formally clearing in to the country… speculation encouraged by a particularly annoying evening spent dealing with US Customs merely for being a couple hours late due to mechanical difficulties. I shudder to think what might happen if we had been adrift, or god forbid, put ashore, anywhere other than a designated port of entry during regulation hours.

Despite that experience, however, I suspect that rescued sailors generally receive a more amicable welcome than Carver, and there is probably some contingency for clearing in even if you hadn’t intended to enter but were compelled by emergency or force of nature. I suspect that in this case, the RCMP finds something fishy in Carver’s story or background, because when I first heard it, I thought it was a little fishy, too.

Now, I don’t want to discount the sorts of strange things that the ocean can do or the seemingly odd decisions that any of us might make under stress or in exigent circumstances. But having covered some of the same ground this past summer, a few things seemed odd right off the bat.

Tahsis, for instance, is not someplace that one simply stops off if they happen to find themselves in need of assistance off the coast of Vancouver Island. Tahsis lies at the head of a substantially long fjord; you have to work at getting to Tahsis, and either of the two ways you might get there require passing other settlements or manned Canadian Coast Guard light stations along the way. If you had injured crew, you could get them help hours sooner ducking in at Esperanza (itself a long way from the coast) or the Nootka Light right on the coast.

Carver also managed to get a long way north for someone trying to get to Mexico. We had to work pretty hard last summer to cover that same territory, going the opposite direction. No doubt the wind was behind him, but he still had to have been making pretty good time to go all that distance. And why not run back in to closer ports once it all started? A day’s sail south from Tahsis has you closer to Tofino and other sheltered anchorages in Clayoquot Sound… if you’re getting hammered and pushed off course why wouldn’t you duck in there, or even back to Tahsis, a familiar port, instead of heading for Port Alice? At the very least, you might heave to and at least try not to get blown that much further from where you were headed originally. (Edit 07MAR10: More intrepid investigators than myself have dredged up weather records for the period in question and, in the words of this Seattle PI article, found “…nearly ideal sailing conditions on the day he claimed he was shipwrecked.” Of course, one man’s ideal sailing conditions are another man’s small craft advisory; still, it casts more doubt on the idea that he was blown uncontrollably so far north)

Speaking of which, Port Alice is up a lengthy fjord itself, past another Coast Guard light station, and a much closer village at Winter Harbour. Carver may have been shipwrecked, but contrary to the headlines, it wasn’t exactly “on the coast.” (Edit: I see now in the second article that other sources are saying he was found some 30 klicks from Kyuquot, which is on the coast; it’s unclear how this reconciles with Carver’s statement that he was within 20K of Port Alice)

I don’t wish to be too judgmental, or suggest that anything untoward was happening. All those decisions, individually, can be explained away through desperation, other difficulties left un-detailed in the news articles, inexperience, or excessive stress and fatigue. I’ve made enough terrible decisions myself to not be too quick to condemn those made by others. It’s very different when you are out there in the middle of it, after all.

What I will say is that I can see how all those things taken together might rouse some suspicions in the mind of your average Mounty, however, perhaps sufficient to justify holding Mr. Carver on some readily available immigration charges long enough to dig a little deeper into his and his friend’s journey. At least, I like to think that is the motivation, even as I hope that Carver himself is no more than he appears, an unlucky sailor who ran into a string of difficult circumstances and escaped by the skin of his teeth.

Either way, I am anxious to hear the rest of the story on this episode. I’m sure it will be equally fascinating. And I hope I am not shipwrecked before clearing Customs anytime soon!

Posted on

What’s your coverage?

There are certainly ranges of coverage available in marine insurance today and I am frequently surprised at what clauses are available and at what cost. Family medical, hurricane haul-out coverage, fuel-spill liability, dock contracts, fishing equipment coverage… you name it, there seems to be a clause covering just about every eventuality, no matter how remote, and often at surprisingly reasonable prices (at least, as reasonable as anything else having to do with boats).

But where, oh where, can you get coverage against lawsuits over the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (NSFW)?

I know that I’ll be reviewing our policy with a magnifying glass after that shocking wake-up call. What’s your coverage?