Bar Crossing - Rescue

I guess better safe than sorry. A couple on a 44’ vessel airlifted to safety due to bar conditions. https://komonews.com/news/local/video-coast-guard-rescues-2-people-dog-off-oregon-coast

Not much to go on there. For example, why it was unsafe to wait for better conditions? I'm not second-guessing. I'd just like to hear the whole story.

If there was no medical emergency, maybe it was a mechanical problem?

It begs the question why they didn't stay with the vessel. Now when it washes ashore somewhere, who's problem is it going to be?


Are you dying or sinking? If not, stay with the vessel.

One plausible scenario...they were adrift and heading into where waves were breaking over the bar.

I agree. No mention was made of mechanical or health issues. It sounds like they were waiting for better bar conditions and gave up. Could it be as simple as one or both were really seasick?

Many people ask for help that are just plain scared or worn out.....willing to lose boats worth big bucks and just dont care any more.

Rough Columbia River Bar crossing, so abandon ship? 12 foot seas. Not the complete story, but did this cap't check the weather before going into 12 foot waves?

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/202...-dog-from-stranded-boat-off-oregon-coast.html

Have had people asking to leave their boats in even less....when seasick for days, people will ask for a gun to shoot themselves.

Scared people often make no sense.

Looked like a nice boat from the air

Another writeup. better details:

https://www.chinookobserver.com/new...cle_2f6d0406-5b44-11ea-83b0-8be93d48d919.html

Not sure there are really any more or better details to really know what was going on.

Stories like this bring about a 5 second story board through my head as I have lived through enough of them.

It usually takes several pages of detailed writing before I even remotely begin to believe what might be the actual true, full story.

Even now people pump me for my beliefs on the Kobe Bryant helo crash. I tell them pretty much whatever they hear is garbage. I won't discuss my real feelings till I personally read a NTSB report of at least a couple hundred pages worth of professional investigation.

psneeld said:

Many people ask for help that are just plain scared or worn out.....willing to lose boats worth big bucks and just dont care any more.

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That's my guess as well, just didn't want to say it. It's hard to imagine that level of fear unless you've been there.

I was a two day hike (no trails) into the mountains near here and had an experience which opened a window of understanding into what fear can do.

My friends left our high alpine camp to bag the peak and I chose to downclimb alone into a small cirque feeding another watershed that was ringed in waterfalls. The waterfalls were making so much noise I didn't hear much on the way down, but once there the sound of a Grizzly roaring it's head off could clearly be heard. I didn't know if it was screaming at me or something else because of the echoing rock walls and noise from the waterfalls.

There were several times, as I made my way out of the cirque and climbed back up to our camp, that I had to hunker down in a hollow, calm down, and get my head straight. I can see now why people who are lost or stressed make such unfathomable choices. I heard the sound again decades later in a CBC radio story...it was two fairly big Grizzly cubs fighting over a kill.

The boaters might have just given up.

psneeld said:

Many people ask for help that are just plain scared or worn out.....willing to lose boats worth big bucks and just dont care any more.

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I think that's it. But annoying for it to then become "our" problem and risk to rescue them, and likely "our" problem when the boat washes ashore and is no longer insured. Makes me wonder how an insurance company would feel about paying for a boat where the owner elected to abandon it like that. And even if you abandoned the boat knowing you wouldn't get any insurance money for it, you would then cancel your policy, right? So now when it washes up a month later, it's uninsured and now a public burden.


Hopefully there were greater mitigating circumstances in this case. I just hate it when people don't take responsibility and ownership of their own decisions, and all the ensuing consequences.

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

Rough Columbia River Bar crossing, so abandon ship? 12 foot seas. Not the complete story, but did this cap't check the weather before going into 12 foot waves?...]

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I agree. Also, boating on the Oregon Coast in the winter? Why?

With the last known position of the boat given, someone will go salvage the boat.

This'll give you an inkling as to why I was so concerned...the cirque was so small and the lake took up most of it, so they were only a couple hundred feet away:

We don't know. If we knew more we might both criticize their lack of preparedness and applaud their decision to get help when it was needed. I always try to have a Plan A and a Plan B and even a Plan C. I don't know if they did or how good they were. However, at some point you switch to Plan Help, whatever letter you assign. Too many try to save face and wait too long.

Fear eliminates most of the rational decision making suggestions some are making here.

psneeld said:

Fear eliminates most of the rational decision making suggestions some are making here.

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Wifey B: Or leads to an extremely rational decision.

BandB said:

Wifey B: Or leads to an extremely rational decision.

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Guess you have never seen real fear.....to me if you are still thinking rationally...you are only "scared".

Fear can go to shock and be hardly detectable.

psneeld said:

Guess you have never seen real fear.....

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Wifey B: You mean like real fear of life from someone who has had at least 15 people murdered previously?

Fear as you gather what you can and flee in your car before a murderer they might come after you?

Fear as you enter the FBI office to report a criminal who will seek retaliation?
Or you mean like fear that your father and all his friends are going to have a party with you as centerpiece for your 16th birthday?

Maybe you shouldn't be so quick to speak with your condescension that you're the only one ever to have seen fear.

Now, I was referring to this thread and the rescued boaters. Fear may have led them to calling for help and may have saved their lives. So, yes, may have led them to a smart decision regardless of whether it qualifies as fear by your definition. See, fear is in the eye of the beholder. I don't know. When I faced the worst fear I feel like I made wise decisions.

I know fear can go to shock but it doesn't always.

psneeld said:

Guess you have never seen real fear.....

Fear can go to shock and be hardly detectable.

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I'll try to express what she was saying a little calmer although seething inside. No one here has any idea what anyone else here has been through or experienced and should not make assumptions in that regard.

psneeld said:

Fear eliminates most of the rational decision making suggestions some are making here.

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Not necessarily. Reactions can be unpredictable for sure. Fear may cause complete shutdown, or tunnel vision, or very focused clarity. Spiraling anxiety is difficult to control, especially the first time. I've seen it all. Vertigo at 500' AGL right after takeoff. Crawling through tunnels in RVN to plant demo charges, looking straight down into the trough between 10 footers. I'm still here.

A 54' boat should be able to handle 12' waves. People, not so much. I'm sure they were violently thrown around. Might have been seasick. Clearly they had the sense to call the CG. They attempted to wait it out. At some point the Captain pulled the plug. If my wife was getting battered to hell, I'd make the same decision.

Life isn't a macho contest of triumphing over "real fear." It's just a boat. It's probably insured. I'm not going to wait until my wife is concussed. If I get us in over our heads, we're bailing out.

I know its semantics...and no I am not trying to make it a macho thing...I never inferred they made the wrong decision...just maybe why they did.

Just my experiences with boaters and why they call for help when "rational" suggestions and most boating experiences would direct you to other rational directions.

I have been in situations where people have frozen from "paralyzing fear"..... they were incoherent and almost unable to move. Whatever situation they wind up in is wholly dependent on others or a lucid moment here or there.

I guess too late afterwards I went back and added this to my previous post which helps with the semantics of my definition of fear.... ."to me if you are still thinking rationally...you are only "scared"."....fear hasn't really set in.

I wonder if you let out all your anchor line before you abandoned ship, would the boat "self-anchor" when it got to shallower water ?? If you left a cell phone plugged in on board, you could then track the vessel and return to it when conditions improved.

The discussion of towing the boat suggests a problem with propulsion.

In that case, in a rolling, unpowered boat in 12' seas, even a boat that size, it's very possible to get so sick that rescue is your only option.

On the other hand, a sea anchor might solve the problem. Or Benthic2's suggestion to deploy the main anchor, which could also act as a sea anchor. I've never tried that though. I'm not sure I'd want to put that much downward force on the bow. Maybe a lunch hook with a nylon rode.

Speculating what might have happened is human nature. But I'd still like to hear more. Until then, I'll give the skipper the benefit of the doubt, and assume there was a good reason.

SoWhat said:

It's just a boat. It's probably insured.

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what does someone with better understanding of how insurance company's would view this think?


clearly they were over their heads, no mechanical issue mentioned.


that sucks


I read somewhere that there are different percentages of reaction to danger by people, highest % run away, a small % freeze and do nothing, and a small % run to help.. guess which % offolks are first responders ?


I'm sure in their state of mind getting off was there only choice, others would not until the boat hit the beach.
HOLLYWOOD

Fear may cause complete shutdown, or tunnel vision, or very focused clarity.

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Very true. And unpredictable. I've seen it. Some people have a "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to survive" mindset...and some people roll into the fetal position, start balling and accept it without a fight. Some people are meat eaters. Some people are prey.

I read somewhere that there are different percentages of reaction to danger by people, highest % run away, a small % freeze and do nothing, and a small % run to help.. guess which % of folks are first responders?

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I am a first responder. 25 yrs. Mostly patrol, but U.C. & detective, too. Now a patrol supervisor. People that don't have the required mind-set wash out...or become commanders.

Before we crossed the Pacific, we spent a year plus in Mexico and met a lot of people. One couple who we became friends with were living their dream. When we got to the Marquesses, she was a basket case. I made the comment the trip wasn’t dangerous just tedious, she was in my face, “maybe for you, but....”. She tore me a new one like there was no tomorrow and flew back to the states from there. I don’t know if it was the being out of sight of land, thunderstorms on the itcz or the 20 plus days at sea? I felt bad for her partner and my hat went to him for making the journey and not duct taping her to the mast in the salon.

It’s hard to figure out what people’s triggers are regarding fear. This rescued couple here had an out and took it.

I've had my share of incidents involving genuine fear, and had to deal with others present that were starting to "lose their ****". You know that scene from the movies where they slap a hysterical person in the face to get them to stop panicking? Been there. I've had to resist the urge to bark STFU, to friends and family alike, more than once.

It's hard to know how folks are going to handle things until they're tested. Some come up startlingly short. Me, I take the approach that if I'm not dead already, well, let's do whatever it takes to make sure that isn't on the 'about to happen next' list. I can panic afterward. Granted, it's best to make plans that don't wander down that path in the first place!

But hearing a grizzly in close proximity... yeesh, that'd really raise the adrenaline levels. Glad you lived to tell the tale!