So, I’m coming in there one day running the Tag Angel, a 70′ landing barge.  One cement truck on deck and a forklift.   We’re  building,  a hydro dam for the Malibu Club kids camp up Jervis Inlet  and the current is sweeping really strong into the Klassen.   I’ve made the landing before but this time the current was fierce.  So I step on it, it was too late to abort.   Crap,  I realize that I’m  not going to make it.  So I speed up some more to make the concrete ramp  before I say hello to the crew of the Klassen.

Wham, I hit the ramp and skid half way up and stop  just before I hit the parking lot.   No harm done, the props were up in wells because the hull was built for the navy who liked to hit beaches hard, especially when they were being shot at.  The rudders were also protected.

Anyway I thought all was well until I see the owner of the barge terminal running from his office towards me.  Now I’m going to get it I thought so I started the long climb down from the wheelhouse to the ramp to take my licks.

When I get there Dennis is cheering.      He’s not mad at all.    “That’s the way.  That’s the way ya got to do it.  Just ram the SOB at full power.  Just like that”.    I guess he really liked my style.

Jesus, I thought I’d wrecked the joint.   The Tag was fine.  The marks are still on the ramp.

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For mariners working inshore waters, tides can be either friend or foe. A fair tide can add speed or a falling tide can cripple a grounded vessel. In the estuary of the Snohomish River at Everett Washington, the tides are more than all that, they are essential to the work of moving logs and scows. In Puget Sound 10 to 12-foot tides are routine. For a tug like the 42-food Fidalgo, with her six-foot draft, the tidal rise is essential to working up into the sloughs and mud flats that have formed in the river’s estuary.

Much of the estuary is dry at low water so the crews are on call out according to the time of the tides. On Friday, March 4, 2008 the 11.3-foot high water was at 0424 so Captain Dave Alvord and his deckhand Matt Vranscome were asked to be down at the boat by 0100. While Matt fired up the twin Cat 3406 mains that deliver about 400 hp each to the tug’s open propellers, Dave called the Navy harbor control to let them know what he would be doing. Dunlap Towing’s Everett dock is on Port Gardner Bay just inside the big high-security pier near the outer harbor. The pier provides protection from winds for the short-term barge and log boom storage near the tug dock.

As Dave eased the Fidalgo out to this storage area he pointed out one of Dunlap’s Puget Sound boats, the 71-foot 850 hp Samish, just getting underway with a log tow for further south in the Sound.  The storage area is the meeting point between the river and estuary where coastal tows are dropped for transfer and tows out of the river await pick-up by coastal boats. On this night, the Fidalgo would be taking a boom of bundled logs up to storage in the estuary and then bringing a scow loaded with wood chips down to the harbor to await pick-up by a Canadian tug.

The boom, about 12 sections in size, was contained in three bags formed by corralling boom sticks. Unlike the squared up booms with cross logs making the sections, these loose bags are more difficult to move as they have less defined shape. Dave sent his deckhand Matt out onto the boom to identify the numbered sections that his order sheet said were to be moved and to set the white towing lights. With the correct logs identified and a hook attached to the boom chains, Dave began working the tow. He and Matt have been working together for some years and very few instructions are required, as they know just how each other like things done. “I watch and I learn from him,” Matt, who started on the boats in 1991 and has his master’s license, explained of Dave who has over 30 years of moving logs and barges in Puget Sound on his resume.

Dave moved from one corner of the boom to the other picking his deckhand up and dropping him off at points were he could run across the logs in his caulk boots to let go moorings and set lights. The Fidalgo is highly maneuverable and powerful, “It is a fun boat to run and the Ferrari of the harbor fleet,” enthused deckhand Matt.

With a raised pilot house that looks a bit as though it has been lifted off the upper deck of a ship docking tug, the design has pleased the owners well enough that they have a sister ship on order from Hansen Boat Builders on Steamboat Slough in nearby Marysville.

After towing the boom out around the end of the navy jetty, the Fidalgo moved it up inside a jetty formed from rock and dredge spoils to protect the Everett waterfront where a mix of fishing and pleasure boats fill the extensive marinas. Dave’s hands move back and forth between the Wagner jog stick steering and a conventional wheel. He explained that he prefers open propellers for this work as the boat “slides around in front of a barge pretty well, with out nozzles it might not be so good.”

As they come up to the log storage area in the mouth of the river another reason for open props was pointed out. With a 6.5-foot draft and only eight feet of tide over what is a big mud flat at zero water, the boat has very little between the props and the bottom. Decades of log storage have laced the mud with the cables that bind the log bundles and now lie in wait to tangle a propeller. Once again running around the bag booms like a border collie herding sheep, Dave and the Fidalgo worry the reluctant logs up over the mud flat toward the dolphin piles where they are to be moored. But the tide, that will be full at 0424 is still an hour and a foot of depth short of high water. With one end of the boom safely moored to a dolphin, Dave leaves it to go on up river. He would finish up with the mooring on the way back down river when the tide was at full height.

Moving up into the narrowing mouth of the river Dave said, “It is clear tonight but this can be a very foggy river,”

Less than one tenth the size of the Columbia River that flows all the way from the Rocky Mountains, the Snohomish brings water out of the Snoqualmie Pass of the Cascade Mountains a few miles inland. When this icy water meets the relatively warm tidal waters that push up the river from Puget Sound it can cause particularly dense fog.

Between the Fidalgo and the chip scow is a twinned old highway bridge. The Fidalgo can fit under with out the bridge opening but a railway swing-bridge opens for the Fidalgo. The highway bridge will open for the down bound barge.

A couple of hundred yards inside the bridges there is a sawmill with a pier flat against the bank. At the pier a big high-sided red and white Seaspan chip barge is loaded with about 2500 tons of yellow wood chips for export to Canada. The barge, Seaspan 561 is 208 by 50.5 with a molded depth of 12 feet. With only about two feet of freeboard the barge has a greater draft than the tug. As Dave pushed against the outside of the barge so that Matt can let the shore lines go, the current could be seen boiling up on the upstream side of the boat. The tide was still flooding and about a half-hour short of high water slack. Once the lines are off, Dave moves around and pushes on the upstream side of the barge, which is also the front of the barge. It is a slick and well-practiced move; the current flowing up river tips the stern of the barge out into the river. When it is at right angles to the shore, Dave whips the Fidalgo around and Matt sets the rope towing bridles with a short tight line to the tug’s H-Bitts. The combination of hp and tidal power completes the pivot of the loaded barge in time to line it up for passage through the bridges. The precision of the maneuver was lent emphasis by the narrow 100-foot width of the bridge pass leaving less than twenty-five feet on either side of the barge’s 55-foot beam. The barge slid through the bridge pass dead center with equal clearance on both sides. “Sometimes we get it right,” Dave said modestly, adding that his minimalist philosophy of boat handling is to “Do only what you need to do to make it work. Adjust to the conditions. Do it smooth and easy, there is no need to fly around or fight the current.”

On the way back down river he stopped up the barge in midstream of the nearly slack river and went in to tie up the other end of the boom in the deeper water now available. Then he picked up his tow and took it on back around the navy pier. Working the barge on the towline, he laid it alongside another while Matt put lines up to secure the two barges.  The barges would await pick-up by a big Seaspan tug later in the day by which time Dave and Matt will be at home getting some sleep before the next high water brings enough water for them to go back to work.

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I once met the captain of a small US-registered oil exploration boat in Malaga, Spain. He told of bringing the boat from Texas to the Mediterranean. Crossing the Atlantic on autopilot at ten knots had been such a long and tedious journey that, at some point off the Azores, he had assembled the whole five-man crew in the wheelhouse for the crossing’s single course change. Such tedium is not a problem for vessels travelling the Inside Passage from Seattle through British Columbia to Alaska.

Extending 870 miles from Seattle to Juneau and another 100 miles to Skagway, the passage has served as a marine highway for thousands of years, carrying the commerce and military might of First Nations, English, Russian and Spanish traders and colonizers, Yankee entrepreneurs, missionaries and cultural plunderers, Yukon gold seekers and thousands of fishermen, loggers, tourists and dreamers. Captain Mike Cahill, who I met aboard the tug Gene Dunlap in 1996, had at that time recorded 182 waypoints for course changes between Seattle and Juneau and was planning to link them with a set of electronic charts and GPS.

Along with others he was following in a tradition of Inside Passage guides for mariners. For many years, and to this day on some boats, skippers have used Captain Sofus E. Hansen’s Handbook for Puget Sound and Alaska. First published in 1917, it contains true and magnetic courses for navigating point-to-point along the entire route as well as to a number of more northerly ports. In addition to distances in nautical miles from point to point, distances from point of departure, and distances remaining to destination, the book indicates in what channels or sounds the points are located, and gives sketches of a number of more prominent landmarks as they appear from the water. The handbook has been out of print for many years now. My copy, a much-thumbed 1919 version, was given to me by retiring halibut fisherman Ray Michaelson, who used it throughout a long career.

In 1993, Captain’s Nautical Supplies in Seattle published Leonard E. Shrock and Edward Schott’s Captains’ Handbook: A Complete Guide for Navigating the Inside Passage from Seattle to Ketchikan. This detailed document designed for professional mariners provides waypoints, in addition to information recorded in the above publications.

Capt. Lillie’s Coast Guide, published, with annual updates, by Progress Publishing in Vancouver since 1936, gives similar information, including many courses up the mainland inlets and for the west coast of Vancouver Island. This handy book was standard wheelhouse equipment when I steered pre-radar fishing boats from light to light along the west coast in the 1960s.

In addition to these publications, valuable information on the route is included in the two volumes of the British Columbia Coast Pilot and Volume 8 of the United States Coast Pilot for Pacific Coast Alaska: Dixon Entrance to Cape Spencer. Cape Spencer marks the end of the Inside Passage for vessels travelling out across the Gulf of Alaska to Kodiak, Prince Williams sound, Anchorage, the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Sea ports.

As a child growing up in Campbell River, my little section of the Alaskan route was Discovery Passage, which carried a tantalizing array of freighters, passenger steamers, fish packers and tugs. From my school windows I watched and wondered. On Saturday’s I walked the docks and talked my way aboard the occasional boat that put in for repairs. Like the typical Canadian or American boy whose wanderlust is fed by a train whistle, my own longings were stimulated by the deep throb of an Alaskan-bound steamship’s pistons or the prop wash coming out from under the counter of a fish boat leaving our breakwater.

When I went to work on one of those fish boats, Capt. Lillie’s guide was my salvation. My captain, Herb Assu, like the others on the boat had been travelling these waters since before they could remember, as had their ancestors since the time that the great flood spread canoe loads of their people up and down the coast. I, on the other hand, had grown up in the house of a writer where all answers were to be found in books or through discussion and debate. So when my captain would leave me at the ship’s wheel with a wave of his hand, saying “stay on that side until the point then go around”, I often felt that I was navigating with insufficient documentation. The boat’s few charts were kept under his bunk as he had little need for them. So when we went fishing winter herring in the only slightly less familiar north-coast waters and I was introduced to Capt. Lillie’s Coast Guide, it was my security and my bible.

With just over 100 courses identified along the 476.4 miles from Vancouver to Price Rupert, life on wheel watch even in the dark became bearable. On the seine boat, the eight-man crew stood two-hour wheel watches when travelling. At night we partnered with one of the other crew to make a four-hour watch. As my partner and I peered into the snow-swept darkness in some place like Grenville Channel, Capt. Lillie would tell us that 2.2 miles past Lowe Inlet on a bearing of 289 degrees and 421.6 miles from Vancouver we should hold one tenth of a mile off Mountain Point and steer for the Ormindson Point light, which would be flashing white every ten seconds at a height of 15 feet. The warmth and security of each of those lights came over the years to symbolize the calm and bright points in the life of my family, such as a fine dinner, a beautiful sunset or the meeting of an old friend.

On the bridge of a modern commercial vessel with sophisticated radar-integrated autopilots, electronic charts, global positioning satellites and AIS, manuals like Capt. Lillie’s or Capt. Hansen’s no longer hold a revered position. But eyes still strain into that slightly less dark space that opens between the mountains when a boat is passing down Grenville Channel and many are the stories of boats striking a rock bluff or submerged ledge when an autopilot or other navigational electronics has lulled the people on wheel watch into a false sense of security. One of the most oft repeated cautions that I hear older mariners passing to the younger generation is, “Don’t put too much trust in the electronic monitors. Remember to look out the window.”

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As I climbed up into the wheelhouse that night to introduce myself to Captain Mike Cahill, he turned to me and said, “I have only one question for you: “Why?”

It was a reasonable question. I had just climbed over a frozen barge in the darkness of the Juneau waterfront. The crew was working on the tug’s deck smashing ice that had grown the boat’s railings to the thickness of a man’s leg and the next day would be Christmas Eve.

That December of 1996, Cahill, who alternated on the regularly scheduled freight run with Captain Danny Nystrom, picked up the 285-by-78-foot barge Kenai Trader with the 3400-HP tug Gene Dunlap on the 19th to begin the nine-day round trip. The Gene, built in Houma, Louisiana, at Main Iron Works, is 121.5 feet long with a beam just over 30 feet and a draft of 16.5 feet.

Eighty-four miles up Puget Sound from Seattle, they had crossed the international border into Canadian waters. Two days and nearly 500 miles later they were beating their way across Dixon Entrance north of the Queen Charlotte Islands and south of the Alaskan border. Open to the Pacific and the long southern reach of Hecate Strait, its waters can take a real lashing when winter southeasters blow in from seaward. But on December 22 a very different type of wind had been hitting points along the Inside Passage. A cold arctic front was lying over the Yukon and the interior plateau of British Columbia between the Rocky Mountains to the east and the Coast Mountains on the west. Inland, temperatures plummeted to minus 40 degrees under a massive high-pressure zone. As it built, the cold arctic air began to spill over the mountain passes and run like a roller coaster down to sea level at the head of the many long inlets that cut back into the coast mountains. One of the longest of these, Portland Inlet and Canal, lies just east of Dixon Entrance and Chatham Sound. The B.C. Coast Pilot describes the inlet as extending from the open waters of Chatham Sound “in a northeasterly direction for about 20 miles, with a width of about 3 miles in its entrance between Wales and Somerville Islands, but somewhat reduced farther up. It then divides; the western arm, Portland Canal, continues in a northerly direction for about 60 miles, with a least width of about three-quarters of a mile…

“Both shores are bold and mountainous …In places the mountains rise almost perpendicularly to a height of 6,000 feet, and their summits are always snow-clad.”

On December 22, the gale force winds coming down this 80-mile-long rifle barrel were driving freezing spray off the tops of a heavy sea. These same seas pounded onto the Gene Dunlap’s starboard bow as she fought her way between the relative shelter of Caamaño Passage on the west side of Dundas Island, Canada, and Cape Fox, Alaska. Once in behind Cape Fox the tug and the container barge had traveled the 25 miles up Revillagigedo Channel and into Tongass Narrows, on whose shores sprawls the town of Ketchikan. Much of the boat, especially on the starboard side, was coated in a thick layer of ice. The spaces between the upper deck railings, as well as the railings on the stairs leading down to the foredeck, were completely enclosed with ice. Putting the barge alongside the Northland Freight dock at Ketchikan, Capt.Cahill had the crew attack the ice with stout hickory pick handles. There was no doubt that more ice would build up on the run-up to Juneau, so the crew spent an hour removing most of the eight to ten thousand pounds of accumulated ice.

This is not a unique experience, as a 1943 account of the steamer Princess Norah tells. She was northbound in the same waters in February when temperatures had dropped below zero. By the time she docked, some 500 tons of ice covered her decks and house. The ice totally covered her deck cargo, including a car. Unable to free it from the icy clutches, they carried it back south until it thawed out and they were able to deliver it on the next run north.

Getting underway from Ketchikan at 20:00 on the 22nd, the Gene Dunlap covered the 220 miles to the northern port of Juneau in just over 24 hours, bucking strong headwinds for much of the distance. When I joined her in Juneau that evening, she was covered in ice again. I found her lying alongside her barge while her crewmen, cook-deckhand Jack William, engineer Bob Fellows and deckhand Charlie “Whitey” Wyche, worked with the terminals shore crew and a huge front-end loader to offload the northbound freight containers and a large fiberglass pleasure boat. It was biting cold, with the thermometer mounted on the back of the pilothouse reading 24 degrees Fahrenheit and a wind blowing a steady 25 knots down the mountains behind town, with gusts going much faster.

This is not the land that the summer’s cruise-ship passengers or the salmon fishermen see. At 58 degrees 18 minutes north latitude, Juneau officially enjoys a sunrise at 8:48 and sunset at 15:10, but I noted that the low-lying sun actually broke out from between the mountains of Douglas Island across narrow Gastineau Channel at noon for about 45 minutes. With a population of 30,000 and almost as many motor vehicles sharing 190 miles of road, Juneau, the state capital, is accessible only by air or sea. The freight barges provide such a vital link with the outside world that contracts with shippers guarantee delivery on schedule. The civil servants who drive their cars to work in the government offices expect to find all of the products advertised on television when they go to the supermarket. The McDonalds and the Taco Belle in downtown Juneau offer the same meals as one would find in L.A. or New York, and the makings arrive by barge. If the wind chill is 40 degrees below zero and the decks are covered in ice, the crew still unloads the barge.

Two days after winter solstice, the Juneau tides range twenty feet up and down the pilings along Gastineau Channel. It was a big tide like this and similar weather that brought tragedy to the Princess Sophia in Lynn Canal just a few miles north of Juneau. Southbound from Skagway, in a heavy snowstorm she struck Vanderbilt Reef in the early hours of October 24, 1918. By daylight the tide was falling and the barometer was rising. In hopes that this was a sign of improving weather, it was decided that the 75 crew and 268 passengers would wait aboard. While a number of rescue vessels stood by, the 18-foot tide fell away from the vessel, mortally wounding her. The rising barometer brought even stronger northerly winds down from the interior, making escape by lifeboat extremely dangerous. It was decided to wait some more. As the tide rose and fell through two cycles the northern wind only grew stronger. A radio message from the Sophia’s Capt. Locke on the evening of the 24th said, “Impossible to get passengers off tonight, as sea is running too strong; will probably be able to get them off early morning; strong tide.”

But the 25th brought only more outflow winds. That evening as the tide rose again, the storm drove the ship across the reef, tearing the bottom out of her and sending all aboard to their deaths.

These were the kind of waters that the Gene Dunlap towed the container barge into on the morning of December 24, 1996. Winds in the narrow channel in front of Juneau were down from the previous day when they had been blowing clouds of spray from the surface within a few feet of the lee shore. The same winds had blown in the windows of the judge’s house across the channel on Douglas Island before lifting off part of the roof. As we moved out of the channel and into Stephens Passage, we felt the full force of the somewhat moderated 30-knot Taku wind. Outflow winds are localized and take local names. The Taku is named for the inlet that it comes down from and for the Taku glacier that it crosses at the head of the inlet. As we made our way south down the passage, a bright sun melted ice from the front of the wheelhouse while long green five-foot swells swept up the stern, forming icicles on the towline.

Chief engineer Bob Fellows came into the wheelhouse to report that the fuel filters were picking up some particles as a result of the shaking-up that the tanks had experienced in recent days. Bob was onboard to relieve the regular chief, Darren Cable, so that he could be home with his family at Christmas for the first time in five years. Bob had been out on the Salvage Chief since the end of November, getting a barge and its $6.5 million cargo off the beach at Yakutat when he volunteered to trade places with Darren. Asked why, Bob replied: “Well, we’re not real close or anything but it’s a small industry and some day I might need some time off.”

By 21:30 on December 24, the tug had left the heavy seas of Stephens Passage and was running down Frederick Sound with tiny Sukois Islets to port. In the darkened wheelhouse, Capt. Cahill, enthroned in a massive old barber chair that had been installed there, watched the narrow gut of Wrangell Narrows open just ahead on the starboard side between the Russian-named Kupeanof and Mitkof Islands. Out of the now ice-free windows that curve around the wheelhouse, the full moon reflected from the flat sea surface and lit the snow-covered mountains’ carving shape into a cold purple sky. The throaty hum of the diesels three decks below added warmth to the Louisiana pine paneling the interior of the wheelhouse. It was Christmas Eve and the chief, leaning over the radar set, told stories of other Christmases, other boats, other men and other places. Checking a target that had shown on the radar, Mike shone the spotlight on a small iceberg floating just off the bow and told about the seafood feast that his large extended family would be having in Seattle that night. Earlier, at the change of watch, mate John Weaver had spoken of his wife and four-year-old daughter at home in Colorado. “We just moved back there from Seattle four months ago, so that she can be near her family when I’m at sea,” he had explained of the seeming incongruity of a seaman living across the Rockies.

The passage south through Wrangell Narrows passed without the threatening fog setting in. Wheelhouse comments compared the blinking navigation lights to a Christmas tree. Christmas day was met part way through the Narrows.

At a breakfast of corn bread and bacon, southern-born and -raised cook Jack Williams said, “This will be like going home for Christmas. For lunch we’ll have red beans and rice with andouillette and corn muffins. For dinner we’ll have clover leaf rolls, turkey with sausage dressing, giblet gravy, sweet potato soufflé, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, tossed salad, candied pecans and pecan pie.”

At 08:30 we were abeam Guard Island and shortening the tow to enter Tongass Narrows. In the Narrows we docked at Ketchikan in bright sunshine except for the yard crew, the town was quiet. We picked up some southbound containers that had been brought in from Sitka on the deck of the former oil supply boat Polar Venture. By 12:15 John was back in the wheelhouse, still tied alongside the barge, and using the twin screws to twist the barge off the face of the dock and head out in the channel. At 17:00 on Christmas day we crossed the border into Canadian waters at Lord Rocks and called Prince Rupert radio to check into the Canadian VTS system. This is the first of 14 check-in points for the northern half of the British Columbia coast before transferring over to the Vancouver Traffic control and another 13 check-in points for the southern coast at Cape Caution. It is 26 miles south of Lord Rocks to the next calling point, at Lucy Island lighthouse in Chatham Sound. “Traffic in Alaska is lighter, so we get by without VTS,” Mike explained, “but along the main Inside Passage of B.C. it really helps. Especially in summer with all the fishing boats and cruise ships, at places like Grenville Channel, Boat Bluff, Bella Bella, Blakney Pass and Seymour Narrows, it’s nice to know what’s coming north.”

As we crossed the eastern end of Dixon Entrance and moved south into the top end of Chatham Channel, the outflow winds from Portland Canal that had made ice on the northbound trip now came back on our stern quarter. Again it was cold, with a full moon lighting the frothy white wave crests and casting moon shadows that raced ahead of the swells as they swept past the boat. At 18:00 the weather station reported that Lucy Island had winds at 42 to 51 knots. “A strong ridge of high pressure will persist over the B.C. interior for the next 24 hours. Gale to storm force northeast outflow winds through the mainland inlets will continue. Cold temperatures and high winds will bring moderate to locally heavy freezing spray through the mainland inlets,” reported the weather station. The weather chart for December 25, 1996 shows a high of 1,045 millibars centered over the Yukon, with a low of 991 millibars due south several hundred miles off the Oregon coast.

Crossing the mouth of the inlet, the boat rolled some 25 degrees for a time, but soon the wind was on our stern and the boat and tow swept along towards more sheltered waters – a dramatic change from the pounding that she had taken northbound a few days earlier.

In the galley someone had taped a picture of a palm tree to the wall to serve as both a Christmas tree and reminder of warmer climes. Deckhand “Whitey” Wyche, who grew up in Texas and served in the navy from 1963 to 1981, looked at the clock. It was 20:45. “My wife works Christmas too,” he said. “She will be getting off from the hospital in an hour and a half.”

During the night we passed down the 45 miles of deep narrow and protected waters that are Grenville Channel. Ranging from 1,500 feet to a mile in width with waterfalls and high mountains on either side, this is a spectacularly beautiful stretch of the Inside Passage in daylight. At its southern end, we were hit once again with a strong outflow wind coming down the 45 miles of Kitimat Arm and Douglas Channel, but then we were into sheltered waters again for another 40 miles or so. Daybreak brought us to the Boat Bluff lighthouse and out into Finlayson Channel.

Once a day, tugs that tow container barges must put a man onto the barge to check the engines on the reefer containers. Weather permitting, the easiest way to do this is to find a deep spot in the channel and circle the boat back alongside the barge while the towline sinks out of the way of the props. With a north-south orientation, Finlayson had only moderate outflow winds and depths over 100 fathoms. With just under 800 feet of towline and chain out, Mike’s towline would need less than 400 feet of water to stay clear of the bottom. No problem in the deep gorge of Finlayson. There was a small sea running, but not enough to prevent engineer Bob Fellows from climbing up onto the barge and checking the single reefer there. A tricky task at the best of times, the ice and wind lent a little more excitement this Boxing Day. I was reminded how dramatically different the inside passage can be in these outflow conditions and in the opposite situation, where an offshore high pressure can drive strong southeasters up many of the channels.

In February 1961 I was a teenage deckhand on a herring seiner when 80- mile-per-hour southeast winds lashed the coast and drove up Finlayson Channel from Milbanke Sound, capsizing the 72-foot seiner Northview. We spent the following day searching for bodies of the eight crewmen, none of whom survived. I never pass through these deep waters without a through for those men and the somber voices of the other fishermen as they reported finding pieces of wreckage and a body over the radio phone.

Now, decades later, Cahill used the deep waters to fall back to the barge so that crew could scramble up over the tug’s icy bow to board the barge and check the containers and reefer engines.

In the southeasters, the stretches of water that are exposed to the open Pacific, like Milbank and Queen Charlotte Sounds, can be treacherous. When the high pressure is inland, the outflow winds can make life near the mouths of the mainland inlets miserable, but the sounds remain relatively calm. The next 300 miles down the coast was typical of this type of weather. At Sabine Pass, near the bottom end of Texada Island and some 20 miles north of Vancouver B.C., we met tugs from Boyer Barge Lines and Western Towing headed north with container barges. We also began to encounter the first snow flurries of the trip. The weather report for that day, December 27, said that the moisture-laden low-pressure centre of 993 millibars had come ashore on the Washington-Oregon coast, so that a front lay along the Canada-U.S. border. As we traveled across the Gulf of Georgia and down Puget Sound that night, we encountered freezing rain and blizzard conditions in dramatic contrasts to the cold clear weather we had experienced to the north.

Arriving in Seattle’s Elliot Bay, we got an assist up the Duwamish River from Ric Shrewsbury in Western Towboat’s tractor tug West Point. Ric and his brother Bob own the most up-to-date fleet of tugs on the coast. They have earned a near legendary status on the coast for their delight in getting out to expertly operate their multimillion-dollar boats. The crew secured the barge to the Northland Freight Service dock there. Mike ran the Gene Dunlap the 28 miles back north to the company dock and offices at Everett and she was secured to the dock by 08:00. Snow lay two feet deep on the dock and the cars in the parking lot. The drive back down to Seattle in Mike’s 4-by-4 truck was torturous, with cars spinning out on the frozen wasteland of the freeway. The city, not accustomed to this much snow, had come to a standstill. That cold arctic high pressure had mated with the moist low pressure off the Pacific Ocean to create what has come to be known as the Great Blizzard of ’96. Like thousands of others, I spent the next two days in a Seattle hotel room waiting for transportation home. My car was buried in a snow bank at the Seatac airport and there were no planes, trains or buses operating. The only transportation going anywhere were the Alaska-bound tugboats.

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For most Southeast Alaskan towns the schedule container barge services are the only means other than airfreight, getting goods from the southern forty-eight. On a recent late September run Western Towboat’s Pacific Titan towed a deck barge loaded with 560 TEUs of containers. The trip of about 500 miles up through Canada across the Gulf of Gerogia thru Seymour Narrows and up Johnstone Straits and out into Queen Charlotte Sound had been marked by fair weather. At Cape Caution, half way up the Canadian segment of the voyage, the wind was still holding off and Capt. Doug Myers made the call to “go up the outside. “This saves me 20 miles or two hours and keeps me out of the heavier traffic in the narrow places like Lama Pass by Bella Bella,” he explained as he set a course out past the light house on rocky little Egg Island and beyond to Pearl Rocks.

Keeping the weather shore of a chain of islands well off to starboard Myers maintained the 1800 feet (.3 mile) length of towline that Mate Scott VanDusen had set earlier in the morning to accommodate the six-foot ground swells that he encountered when the tow came out of the lee provided by Vancouver Island. “We have a 100 mile stretch of open water up past McInnes (Island Light), “ Myers said, “It is better to dump wire than to work the throttles on ever swell.”

The single-drum winch on the Pacific Titan carries 2800 feet of 2.25-inch wire. From where they stand at the Z-drive controls the vessel’s operators can see down three decks to the layers of wire on the drum and then back to the hydraulic tow pins and the wire entering the water. Myers watches the wire off the stern to see how hard the tug is pulling and how much the barge is surging on the end of it. Visibility is remarkable on this boat — from the same position he can see the forward deck winch as well.

At 108 by 35-feet with over 19 feet of draft the Pacific Titan is a big heavy boat. With her stern locked down by the towline she rolls in the ground swell like a big and confident woman enjoying a walk down a summery street. After rolling her way up past McInnes Island the boat and tow returned to sheltered waters at Camano Sound and began working her way up Principe Channel to reach the narrow Petrel Strait. Capt. Myers had studied the current tables and decided this route would give the tow more fair tidal current than the Grenville Channel option where tides, flooding and ebbing from both ends, can have a boat bucking tide the whole length. Once inside the sheltered waters the tug slows, allowing the barge to catch up so that the mate and a deckhand can do the daily check of all the refrigerated containers onboard the barge. The reefers are run off electrical power from two diesel-powered generators mounted in containers stowed in with the others.

On the passage up through Canadian waters the three licensed members of the crew rotated watches on a six and four rotation. This gave third mate Jason Miller the 2300 to 0300 watch that saw the tow through most of Petrel Channel. By 0700, when Myers came back on watch, the tow was already in crossing Dixon Entrance and preparing to enter US waters at Lord Rocks. He checked out of the Prince Rupert-based Canadian vessel traffic system and attempted to do his usual report to the US Coast Guard in Juneau. To his surprise he learned that procedures had changed and he would now be required to fax or e-mail complete vessel information including crew list to the new National Vessel Movement Center.

In the grey morning light Dixon Entrance was on good behavior with 15 knots of wind out of the southwest pushing white caps off the top of big lazy ground swells. The wind was holding the barge well over to starboard but not presenting any problem. The tow wire had been shortened up to about 800 feet for the haul through narrow Petrel Pass. Now Myers let out an extra 300 feet of wire. To do this he simply released the winch’s airbrake with a chromed lever on the wheelhouse console and spooled line off the drum with a second lever beside the first one. No one has to put on life jacket or rain gear to go out on deck or spin a heavy brake wheel. In every segment of the workday, the Titan-class of Western Towboats bears testament to owners’ Ric and Bob Shrewsbury’s considerable and ongoing time actually driving tugs. Not a day goes by on the Pacific Titan with out some reference to the brother’s commitment to quality in their 18-boat fleet almost all of which they have built themselves in the parking lot at the Seattle base.

Even the deckhands have their Bob Shrewsbury stories, “Western Towboat’s philosophy is,” said deckhand Andy Beeler, “If you’re using a lot of paint it is probably going to the right place.”

Andy, who learned about paint in an auto body shop, put his considerable skills and pride to work on the Pacific Titan not only with painting but also with polishing. The engine room, where it is not pristine paint tends toward highly polished brass and stainless steel. But he also tells of twice messing up when throwing a heaving line to Bob Shrewsbury at a dock in San Francisco and earning one the owner’s infamous “head nods”.

“After I missed twice, he just looked at me and shook his head,” Andy recalled. But even such a simple gesture from Shrewsbury was enough for Andy to make dam sure he knew how to handle a heaving line the next time.

An hour or so after entering Alaskan waters the tow had moved into the lee of Prince of Wales Island. By 1135 we were off Ketchikan. Myers hauled in the towline until the massive chains of the pigtail, a length of chain connecting the wire to the chain bridles and the barge, was over the stern of the tug, “This saves wear on my towline and the pig tail can rub back and forth across the stern because the cap (on the bulwarks) is all stainless steel there, because that is just the kind of guy Bob is,” explained Myers with another compliment to the owners.

Before entering the confines of Tongas Narrows between the Ketchikan airport and the harbour front Myers puts the boat onto the barge’s forward starboard quarter. A spring and stern line are already made up there and the crew is quick and practiced in making these two fast. A synthetic line attached to a wire is set out from the bow winch and Myers, again from the wheelhouse, cinches it in tight. Finally a second headline is secured to a forward bollard as a safety line.

With the tug made up to the barge, the Titan’s Z-drives earned their keep as Myers turned the whole barge and moved it to position just outside the row of dolphins to which it would be secured so as to line up with a loading ramp midships on the barge. Then, at 1225, Myers went down on the barge to direct by VHF as second mate Jason Miller operates the two Z-drive controls. “In board ahead… Both engines in gear… go to straight ahead… swing until you see the airport… easy on both straight ahead… steady up…” and so the commands go with the captain in a position where he can see the dolphins directing the mate in the wheelhouse. In other landing the roles may be reversed but Myers always does the Ketchikan landing as it involves tucking a 330 by 100-foot barge with containers stacked five high into a slot not much longer than the barge. A small craft marina on one side and a ferry dock on the other side make it a tight fit. With a pair of a big 5000 hp boat and a container laden barge it is easy to do a lot of damage very quickly.

At 1235, the wheelhouse radio continues with Myers’ directions to Miller. “Straight back, A little towards on the back up… a little more backup… straight back… all stop… use a little bit of the current and Mother Nature.”

At 1255 all the lines are in place and the barge is secure. The final command comes over the VHF, “Log it.”

This is the signal for which ever of the two mates are on watch to join the captain and the two deckhands on the barge. The crew gets paid additional hourly wages for all the long shoring work that they do on the barge. This involves a whole set of skills not routinely practiced in most maritime work. The barge carries two big forklifts that can take containers off a five high stack and deliver them to the shore-side ramp where they are picked up by the yard’s loaders and taken to storage. With all the Ketchikan freight off loaded, the crew then loads way-freight that will be dropped off at other northbound ports.

At 1600 all the containers had been exchanged and Myers was back on the tug to peel the barge off the dock using his port side Z-drive to pull the barge sideways. Once clear of Tongas Narrows the tug moved into a towing position and began the next leg north toward Wrangle Narrows.