For boats equipped with sails, wind on the ocean can be a wonderful thing. For boats that do not have sails, wind (especially a lot of it at once) can be one of the most tricky things we deal with. This was brought home to me on a trip I
guided at the Iceberg Lodge this past June, which was the first of many interesting (and occasionally terrifying) scenarios that Alaska handed out to the Iceberg Lodge this summer.
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| A lone kayak on Aialik Bay |
It was a
few days past the summer solstice, and I was out with another guide I’ll call
Jay and ten guests. We’d been scheduled
to do a trip across Aialik Bay to a cove on the far shore, but the guides who
went out to the beach to scout conditions and set up the kayaks reported wind
at our launch point. We decided that
we’d be better off sticking to a route that kept us closer to shore, and
informed our clients of the change in plan.
By the time we actually left the point with guests, the wind had died
down to almost nothing. Heading north along
the shores of the bay, we actually had pretty idyllic paddling conditions. After about a mile, the group came to the
southern tip of a small island, and we began working our way up its western
side, paddling in a wide, protected channel between the island and the mainland. Mostly, the island drops down to the water as a series of 30-50 foot cliffs, which are covered with wildflowers and are very scenic to look at, but useless if you're looking for someplace to land. We checked out some puffins, watched a few
murrelets popping up and down. About
forty minutes later, we reached the north tip of the island, and spent a few
minutes photographing the glacier at the head of the bay. Then we started paddling back south,
continuing our loop around the island by paddling back along the eastern, more
exposed side of the island.
After about
ten minutes, this began to look like a bad call. Almost immediately after we started south, the
wind began picking up. Halfway down the
island, we reached a sort of marginal landing beach. This beach is easy to land on in calm
conditions, but with any sort of swell or waves, it becomes very tricky to land there safely. I’d hoped to be able to make
a pit stop here, but the swell was picking up enough that I didn’t think we’d
be able to land there without courting problems. We kept paddling south. And the wind kept blowing, and the swell
kept growing larger. At one point, the
waves began coming in so rapidly that my first thought was that we were dealing
with a particularly weird boat wake. Of
course, it wasn’t a boat wake; there wasn’t a boat anywhere in the area that
could have created it. What we did have was the wind, and lots of it. I have never in four years of paddling in
the bay seen the weather turn that much that quickly. When we passed middle beach, the conditions
were mildly choppy, and by the time we got to the south end, we were paddling
in whitecaps and gusts, and I was pretty thoroughly alarmed. After leaving the marginal beach, I was thinking that it was just going to be a
slog getting back to the launch point because we were going to be paddling in a
headwind the entire way. A few minutes
later, I was thinking that we needed to get back on the protected side of the
island (where there was a protected beach we could land on), and
re-evaluate. A few minutes after that,
I was thinking that we weren’t even going to make it that far.
We went
from marginal paddling conditions straight into hazardous paddling conditions in the
space of about eight minutes. Fortunately,
there was one good thing about our current position. There was a potential landing beach on the
south tip of the island, and we were very, very close to it. The bad thing about this beach was that it
faced south, which meant that it was getting pummeled by the
incoming waves. Also, we were paddling
south, which meant that to get to the beach, we were going to have to turn
broadside to the waves. Basically this
meant that instead paddling directly into the waves, and letting the bow cut
through the wave, we were going to have to turn so that the waves were hitting
the entire length of the kayak. If you
haven’t spend much time in a kayak, here’s a quick fact: kayaks are not very
stable when broadsides to waves.
As soon as
we got within sight of the beach, I started yelling to the other boats that we
were making a landing on the south end of the island, told them to follow my
boat, and warned them that as we made our turn, the boats would feel less
stable until we got the waves back at our stern. (This sounded more comforting than what I
was thinking, which was that as we made the turn, there was a good chance that
one or more of the boats might capsize.)
The wind was loud enough at this point that I really did have to yell
just to try and be heard over it. Apparently
that wasn’t even enough, because Jay, faithfully tailing the back of the group,
went into loudspeaker mode and started repeating everything I just said for the
people at the back of the group. (He
later told me that from the back, I was barely audible even when I was shouting.) And then we were
making our turn, and the waves were slapping the side of my boat, pushing the
left-hand side up into the air as the wave crested beneath me, and then
immediately sucking the left side into the water as the wave passed on. There was perhaps a minute when I didn’t
dare turn around to look behind me because it was taking all of my balance and
attention to keep my own boat under control, never mind trying to keep track of anyone else. One good thing that the group had going for
us was that the clients were all in double kayaks, which are wider, heavier and
more stable than the single kayaks that Jay and I were paddling, which meant that
Jay and I were getting the rockiest ride. I still thought that one of the client
boats was going to biff it when they rounded the corner.
Another
stroke with the paddle, and my bow was finally pointed towards the beach. I could still hear Jay behind me hollering
instructions to the clients, which mostly consisted of trying to keep the boats
from bumping into each other as they made the turn. The doubles have wide turning radiuses under
the best of circumstances, and the waves weren’t making it any easier for the
clients to control their boats. Once I
felt that the waves were behind me, I paddled hard towards the beach. I hit the shore and jumped out of my
kayak. As I stood up, the wind picked
up my heavy-duty, vinyl spray skirt and blew it straight out in front of
me. I pulled my kayak far enough out of
the water that the waves wouldn’t suck it back out to sea, and immediately
started landing boats. It was not a
textbook landing; I basically just grabbed the nearest bow and pulled it far enough up
the beach that the kayak grounded out, and then went right for the next boat. Jay was doing his best to try and stagger
the clients coming in so that they weren’t all paddling in on top of each
other, but it was still quite a train wreck.
The good thing was that no one had flipped their kayak; I had been fully
expecting that Jay was going to have to pick up a couple of swimmers before
he’d be able to land.
As soon as
everyone was on shore, Jay became my hero and immediately jumped into
client care mode – making sure that everyone had some granola bars or a couple
of fruit strips, passing out my bag of extra gloves and hats to anyone who was
cold. The wind was still howling at this
point, and the wind chill, combined with the fact that the guests were no
longer creating their own heat by paddling, had made the apparent temperature
feel significantly colder than when we were on the water. I got on the radio, passing on the
information about what had happened and where we were, talking at various
points to the Iceberg Lodge, to an area water taxi, and to another Lodge guide
who had run into the same weather event while paddling on the more protected
side of the island.
While I was
managing the logistics of all this, Jay got all the clients huddled in a corner
of the beach that was slightly protected from the wind, and started leading
everyone in a rousing chorus of the Gilligan’s Island theme song – which seemed
appropriate since our three-hour tour had turned into the whole group getting
stranded on an island. He also led a
discussion on what the concept of wilderness meant to the individual guests, lead everyone in
some staying-warm calisthenics, cleaned up some trash off the beach,
and started collecting driftwood to make some wilderness beach art. In other words, he was a rock star, and kept
the clients busy enough that they didn’t have time to get bored, or worried, or
cold.
After about
an hour, we were picked up from the beach by our trusty local water taxi, the
Weather or Knot, and thanked the captain and crew profusely, especially since he’d never
actually landed on that beach before. We loaded
up our kayaks and clients, and then immediately went over to another
beach on the mainland, to pick up the other Lodge guide and his clients. Since this group had been paddling along the
western side of the island, they were much more protected from the swell than
we were, but they were paddling into a headwind so strong that the group was
having difficulty making any forward progress.
We loaded everyone back up in the water taxi, and were dropped off at
the landing beach, somewhat windblown but otherwise in good shape. We thanked the captain again, sent the
clients off to the Lodge to eat and warm up, and started unloading and putting
away our boats.
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| Grey weather in the Gulf of Alaska |
The
retrospective on this one is that, basically, we were very lucky that we were so close to a landing beach – any landing
beach – when the weather turned. We
were also very lucky that the guides who had scouted the beach early in the
morning had seen wind and made the call to change our route. Again, the conditions when we launched were
good, and there was nothing in the weather forecast that would indicate we were
in for rough weather. Had the guides
not noticed the wind – or had Jay and I decided to paddle our original
open-water route when we launched in glassy conditions – the outcome of our
adventure could have been very different.
Had the wind caught us while we were out in the middle of the bay, our
only feasible option would have been to pull all the kayaks together in a big
raft (which is more stable) and hope that the wind blew us good places (like
the landing beach on the north end of the bay, or into the protected side of
the island) and not bad places (straight into an iceberg, or into a sea cliff,
or straight into the face of Aialik Glacier).
We decided on a conservative route, and stuck with that decision even
when it looked like we could have changed it.
This was good.
Another
thing this has confirmed is my tendency to be somewhat of a packrat when it
comes to guiding trips. In this
case, we had food and extra gloves and hats on hand to give to people who were
cold. Had we been on the island for any
significant length of time (if the water taxi hadn’t been able to pick us up,
for example), or if any of the clients had actually capsized, having stuff at
hand would have been even more critical.
(On a typical trip when I am out with clients, I have with me six pairs
of extra hats and gloves, an extra fleece top, an extra pair of socks, two
bivvy sacks, two sets of XL shirts and pants, two emergency blankets, half a
dozen granola bars, extra water and water purification tablets, a client care
kit with sunscreen, bug spray, hand cream, and feminine hygiene essentials, two
first aid kits (my own and my company’s) and my personal survival kit. And this is just for a day trip.) This is why transporting gear on kayaks is
so much nicer than transporting gear by backpack - you can fit a ****ton of gear
into a kayak hatch.
So that was
another good thing. One thing that didn’t
go so well was actually getting the kayaks onto the beach. Once the kayaks made their turn and felt the
waves behind their boats, many of the clients just stopped paddling, counting
on the waves to get the kayak the rest of the way into shore. The clients were right to assume that the
waves would do this; they were wrong to assume that the waves would do this in
a way they’d appreciate.
If you’re
riding a wave but not paddling, you’re basically just letting the water do
whatever it wants with the boat. If the
wave is pushing your boat at a good angle, you get a free ride in
whatever direction the wave is taking you.
If the wave is pushing at a bad angle, it can spin the boat sideways and
cause all sorts of nastiness, from a fairly straightforward drenching to the
sort of landing where you get slammed head-first into the beach with the boat on top of
you. Fortunately, none of our clients
got surfed by the waves, and even our train wreck of a landing was enough to
get everyone on shore in one piece.
However, if even one boat had turned sideways and rolled onto the beach,
it could have gone very differently – for one thing, as closely as everyone was
bunched up trying to land, if one boat had rolled or turned sideways, the other
kayaks might not have been able to stop before running over the boat ahead of
them.
We did a
few things right, we did a few things wrong.
The depressing take-away message is that I can’t really pinpoint a fatal
flaw – some one little thing that we ignored, or didn’t do, that would have
prevented us from getting caught in this weather event entirely. Kind of hard to predict when even the
National Weather Service gets caught off guard. Not only did the NWS not see this coming,
but it also took the local tour boat fleet by surprise as well. On the water, we customarily monitor the
local whale-watching chatter channel on our marine radios, and the entire
morning we were hearing snatches of transmissions from some of the tour boats
further out in the Gulf of Alaska. None
of what I was able to hear sounded good.
In retrospect, that broken radio chatter turned out to be out best
indication that the weather was about to get epic, and is something I will
definitely be paying more attention to in the future.
As it turned
out, most of those boats Jay and I heard ended up going back to the harbor due to the
conditions. Even the lodge’s own boat
was forced to go back to town without dropping off any of their guests. For a while, it was looking like the water
taxi crew who’d rescued us were going to
be stuck in the bay overnight.
Fortunately, the weather settled down late in the day, and the water
taxi was able to get back to town, bringing all of its own day-trip guests, as
well as a few of our guests who were trying to get back to town. During all of the ensuing chaos, several of
the guests from the morning tour made a point of thanking Jay and I for taking such good care of them, and for
being so careful of their safety. (I
think they were mostly impressed that Jay and I got first a landing beach and
then a water taxi to seemingly materialize out of nowhere.) I am not really sure whether the clients
actually realized that we had crossed the line between perceived risk and
actual risk, but we were paddling in conditions on the wrong side of that line
for a lot longer than I would have liked.
Everyone was able to control their boat, no one capsized, and no one
freaked out, but had we continued paddling in those conditions, I think it would only have been a matter of
time before one or more of the above situations became a reality.
Once I got
back to the Lodge and was able to check the marine weather, the forecast up for
the following day was the information we should have gotten for the day we’d
just survived - wind calm becoming south twenty knots, seas building to four
feet. Given that the weather out in the
Gulf had been bad that morning, I think that what we got caught up in wasn’t so
much a change in the wind speed as a change in the wind’s direction. If a strong wind changed direction in such a
way that it was able to suddenly blow unimpeded down the whole twenty-mile
length of Aialik Bay, it could possibly bring about the rapid change of
conditions that Jay and I experienced.
There are some narrow lakes that are famous for this, and these events
are considered very dangerous precisely because there is little to no warning
that the wind is increasing. First, it’s
calm. And then out of nowhere, the wind
goes haywire. I’ve never seen or heard
of this happening in Aialik, but its my best guess for what was going on that
day. Either that, or someone at the
celestial weather control board found the suck knob, and turned it up to
eleven.
