SAN NICHOLAS ISLAND
A first-person narrative by George Conrad
I once thought that, if you had to confront death, your own, more than a few times, that you’d become somewhat inured to it….. somehow be a little less halting in your stepping forward to meet it. This has not proven true of my own experience. I’ve been right up against it…. more than just a few times, and through those experiences have found an extremely keen appreciation of living; of wanting to live. As a result, I am extremely reluctant to share in, or appreciate, fashionable, sporting flirtations with elective, near-death experiences. I suspect that the fashion dissipates immediately upon the consummate experience by sporting individuals.
Every other week , over a period of nearly seven years, I made a four-day sea voyage to San Nicholas Island. During those voyages, more times than I can recount, I felt myself passing beyond a point of normal consciousness and into a state of mind which, marked in fractions of seconds of seemingly endless length, there no longer existed a future time. Simultaneously, I felt myself detach from my existence, almost in submission to an apparently inevitable end, and, at the same time, felt the acute intensity of focus necessary for my immediate survival .
San Nicholas Island is the South Western-most of an archipelago known as the Santa Barbara Channel Islands. San Nick , as it is more often called, is about 100 miles offshore, no longer really considered within coastal Pacific waters. It is a forward, strategic airbase for the U.S. Navy. One of a number of arteries of supply to the island is a tugboat and towed deck barge. I made over 150 trips to San Nick with that tug and barge, as its Chief Engineer.
Our cargoes varied from gratifyingly important strategic military equipment to hopelessly mundane barge loads of trash dumpsters loaded with ecologically unfriendly junk. Making the perilous crossing became an undertaking of seemingly appropriate risk when the cargo was of ostensible strategic importance, and of an importance demeaning and heartbreakingly disproportionate to the risk when the cargo was detritus deemed hazardous to indigenous wildlife.
Tugs towing barges make notoriously slow passages. Our normal itinerary was a 10 hour “leg” from Long Beach, California up the coast to Port Hueneme Naval Base. With weather out of the North, West, or Northwest, this leg has , at times, taken up to 20 hours….a very hard, pounding 20 hours. That leg is nearly always made at night, beginning shortly after midnight, Long Beach time. During the day of arrival at Port Hueneme, the Navy loads the barge with the cargo for the island. Around midnight the tug and barge depart on the second leg of the voyage, the more dangerous and wildly more miserable, pitching, rolling and slamming 10 to 15 hour open-ocean crossing , “in the trough,” with the weather abeam, to San Nick.
Sometime during the morning of arrival at the south side of the island, the tug “makes up” to the barge, an arrangement of three tightly snugged lines joining the two vessels “at the hip." Then, depending upon tide and surf conditions, the tug proceeds to drive the barge unto the beach, a ramp is dropped from the barge, and the cargo is “off-loaded.” Into the afternoon, “empty” return cargo is loaded unto the barge, and the tug repeats the crossing of the previous night, returning to Port Hueneme in the early hours of morning. After the “empties” are discharged, usually by evening or the next morning, the tug and barge return to Long Beach .
The landing of the barge upon the beach is an actual “amphibious” landing very like those attempted during World War II which were characterized by much tragic loss of lives and equipment. In such a landing one is performing an action which is categorically and entirely in opposition to all basic natural and evolved safe marine navigational practice. One is never advised to deliberately approach any exposed shore with his vessel, particularly into a surf line, and most particularly when it is not one’s intention to ground, roll over, sink, swamp, or otherwise wreck his vessel. We did this so routinely that we made it look easy. Others tried it and many suffered disastrous consequences.
The Santa Barbara Channel is infamous for having unpredictable and fierce local weather which is determinedly independent of the weather elsewhere along the coast. Mariners who work the Channel share a very wary respect for those waters. Even among seasoned and careful professionals there are regular injuries, drownings, and loss of life. Every evening, strong winds known as “Sundowners” roar offshore from the north and east out of coastal canyons, intersecting prevailing westerlies and creating a confused vortex which whips the ocean surface into a wild and ruthless chop. This chop is, most often, at cross purposes with large, prevailing westerly or southerly swells. The effects are all additive, and are consistently devastating to small vessels.
The company was paid by the Navy for a “trip” if we, as a minimum, showed up at the island. Weather might foreclose a landing, but the company never let any kind of weather prevent our “showing up.” So we always went , even after gale warnings were formally issued. All mariners know that when the sea birds huddle in the rearmost sheltered coves of a harbor that there is some very heavy weather outside the breakwater. So many times I had the sinking , forlorn feeling of resignation as we sailed out past all the birds, my jacket collar already jammed up under my chin against the howler, that we were probably the dumbest animals on the water, and we were going to get our asses kicked for it.
This, then, is the theater in which my shipmates and I all broadened our acquaintance with our fragile mortalities.
BIRDSALL
Bob Birdsall is a very nice guy….off the boat! On the boat he becomes a dangerous zombie. Bob has captained vessels of all description on many of the oceans of the world. One would think a man of this wealth of experience would make an ideal captain. Not so! Bob is an insomniac who spends his off-watch hours, when he should be replenishing himself, cleaning the boat. He is utterly neurotic about cleanliness. Without sleep, Bob soon becomes manifestly judgement-impaired, leading to a long history of near-fatal mishaps. Only the uninitiated will any longer sail with Bob. What follows was my initiation to Bob.
We were scheduled to depart Long Beach at midnight. Our tug , “Diane Foss:” 80 feet long, steel hulled, powered by twin 389 Caterpillar diesels. All non-propulsive power, for winches, fire and bilge pumps, lights is provided by one of two auxiliary diesel generator sets. Everything on the boat was old and very prone to breakdown , particularly these two generator sets which had seen very hard service. On the preceding trip, I’d “lost” one of the generators, and had put in a repair request. Here we are , almost two weeks later, ready to depart, and the electricians are down in the engine room working feverishly, and unsuccessfully, to get the ailing generator working.
I immediately informed the Captain, Bob Birdsall, that the vessel was not ready for sea…. that there was no way we were going to undertake this trip without the essential redundancy of the second generator. Bob was under a lot of pressure from company management to “go.” He was desperately afraid to go against their wishes, but recognized his, and my right and duty not to put to sea in an un-seaworthy vessel. Assuming we survived a mishap, the Coast Guard would fry us…..cancel our licenses and subject us to prosecution. Time wore on. The electricians and I had no success with the generator repair. 1 AM… 2AM… 3AM… Every half hour Bob would call the Port Captain, whose response was to rage at Bob and finally, around 4 AM, to tell him to put me off the boat, get a replacement for me and go!!
My crew mates looked so “stricken” that I might abandon them, that I stayed aboard and, under my protest, we departed with only one functioning power supply, no redundancy. If we lost the other generator we were dead!
The weather was awful, 35 mph winds, steady, in our face, with gusts which were much stronger. Large, close-coupled swells and a nasty wind chop. We beat into that for 12 hours, slamming and pitching. Everybody was sick. In that kind of weather it is worth your life to go up on deck. No doors or portholes can be open. There is no such thing as fresh air. The little atmosphere is laden with diesel and exhaust fumes. The first time somebody pukes, the smell travels instantly through the boat, and moments later, everybody is puking. The only relief is 12 hours away. The old sailing ship rule: “One hand for the ship…. one hand for yourself” is gospel. Moving around in the engine room was ridiculous. I would swing like a monkey from one handhold to the next, making my rounds and praying I wouldn’t have to attempt any underway repairs. The noise inside the boat: it’s like being inside a drum with the sea beating a furious and deafening cadence on the thin steel skin separating you from oblivion. Always, in the background, the reassuringly steady roar of the laboring engines.
When we finally made it into Port Hueneme, we were all sick and exhausted. I was unable to contract with any electricians to come down to the boat and work some more on the generator. The storm was actually worsening. Now, there were small craft and gale warnings issued. Nobody was moving……except us. We were going out at midnight. Birdsall was not going to have an “abort” logged against him. He has the right, and duty, as Captain “on site,” to delay departure for weather or mechanical reasons. He refused, despite my pleas, to consider such a delay. Even though I also had that power, I deferred foolishly to Bob’s judgment, not yet having convinced myself that he was “judgment impaired.” Off we went at midnight. The weather was so bad that the Marine Traffic Dispatcher repeated the storm warnings twice, probably thinking we hadn’t heard the first one. “Thank you. Diane Foss underway. Out”.
Now we were “in the trough,” crossing perpendicular to the winds and seas. This added furious rolling to the pitching and slamming. Fifteen hours of the slimy sweats you get when you’re scared and sick. Sleep is out of the question. Likewise eating. Forget reading! So you sit and stare at the bulkheads, make your rounds, try to exchange a cheering sentence or two with your watch mates, and watch the second hand of the clock creep inexorably towards the time when the motion and noise will stop.
We hove to in the San Nick anchorage at 0530, false dawn. The wind and surf conditions were abominable. The sky was low and black; the sea was roiling furiously, the gray-green color of slate. The wind was howling out of the southwest, exactly right to throw us up unto the beach, and the surf looked to be consistently over 5 feet. Three feet is the absolute, maximum abort height. Birdsall dithered while I waited out on the foredeck beneath his wheelhouse window.
“What do you think ?” he shouted to me over the wind noise.
“It’s fucked, Bob. Too much wind. Too much surf .”
He wanted to watch the conditions for awhile. I knew he was dreading having to go home and report an abort. I was sympathetic but steadfast. No way we were going up in this shit! After about ten more minutes of dithering, Birdsall yelled out to me that we were going to make up to the barge. Not good! He was going to go for it.
“Bob,” I practically spit the words at him. “I’ve been over here a million times. This is piss poor. We cannot make it in these conditions.”
“Stand by to make up.” The captain traditionally has the last word. It was as if Bob was in a trance. His movements were wooden. He was scared too. That made me feel even more isolated.
“Get the mate and the deckhand ready to board the barge.” On a four man crew, those two men manned the barge, performing the actual mooring of the barge to the beach and the ramp-dropping operations. That left me to cover the bow and stern winches, and the mid-ship barge line called a Spring. I got the other two guys and they scrambled aboard the barge as we pitched and bumped our bow against it. I passed the headline and spring to the men aboard the barge, fighting the pitching and rolling deck the whole time. Salt spume was flying into my eyes and making it very painful to see. I leaped up the two ladders to the flying bridge to stand by Bob and be prepared to do whatever needed doing. The boat advanced slowly towards the beach, now only about 75 yards distant. Bob was frozen to the controls, not able apparently to devote any attention to communicating. A set of three huge waves crashed unto the beach at our landing site.
“Diane Foss. SNI beach. Abort! Abort! Those last waves were over six feet. ” That was the voice of the Navy Beach master on the radio. He was saying that, even though the Navy was now going to have to pay for our trip, since we’d shown up, they were aborting the landing because the conditions were so unsafe. I saw Lou, a fine deckhand and shipmate, crawling precariously towards us along the deck edge of the barge. He too had heard the abort order, and was dutifully coming back to throw off the barge lines so we could get back into towing position and get the hell out of there. Lou was on all fours. That’s how badly the 300 foot long barge was bucking in the seas. Lou, prepared to cut polypropylene lines twelve inches in circumference if he had to, had his little four-inch knife clasped between his teeth.
Out of the right corner of my vision I saw Birdsall’s hands push the throttles forward to their stops.
Incredulous, I shouted at him . “The fuckeryadoin Bob? We just got aborted by the beach!”
“I’m gonna go for it.”, he muttered with a dazed, almost drugged look on his face.
“Fuck! I’m going down on deck to take in the lines.” I leaped down the ladders unto the main deck. At that moment I saw a set of, maybe three, maybe more, huge waves approaching us from behind. It looked like the Banzai Pipeline. The first wave hit us and swept our deck, waist-deep water knocking me against the deck house. With a sudden lurch and a rending groan, I felt the bow line let go. I thought the strain of the wave impact had probably parted the 12 inch line. As a second wave gathered to break onto the deck, I felt , then saw, the boat hang precariously from the middle ( spring ) line. We were trapped; pinned to the barge in such a way that it was impossible for the boat to maneuver to escape or tow the barge off the beach. The spring line had to be released immediately or we were going to be swamped and sunk. The wave hit with full force. I was half flung, half staggered down the starboard main deck to where I knew the aft fire axe was hanging on the deck house. The only way to save the vessel and ourselves was to chop the spring line free. I had visions of the large line exploding in my face as they were known to do when chopped under great strain. Grabbing the axe, I moved up the wildly tilted and pitching deck, intending to go through the deck house to reach the spring line. I saw my unflappable shipmate Lou reaching for his knife. He was going to try to saw the line with that tiny blade. He would be killed. Incredibly, there was a sudden explosion . “Boom!” Then a cloud of white polypropylene particles obscured my objective. The brand new 12 inch spring line had parted explosively under the strain. We were free. Lou was OK. Blinking white rope bits out of his eyes and looking like he’d seen twenty ghosts, but OK. I ran aft and threw off the air brake on the stern wire, and as the air ram released with a loud clank and hiss, I felt the boat come to full power and make a hard right turn out of there. Taking strain on the stern wire, the boat pulled the barge away from the beach into the relatively safer deep water. The sickening, random motion subsided. I leaned against the deck house and listened to my heart beating faster than I believed possible. I felt dizzy, sick. As my adrenelin levels slowly returned to normal, we hove up to the barge and recovered the other half of our crew. They were pretty badly shaken. There had been serious structural damage done to the barge. In a matter of minutes we had passed within seconds of sinking, swimming, probable injuries and possible death, in trouble, as usual, through stupidity. Out of trouble, as usual, through dumb, blind luck. The company got their money. We got to make the fifteen hour trip home through the storm.
Everyone was very pissed off. I stomped into the wheelhouse to rip into Birdsall. Before I could even open my mouth, Lou , who has many more years at sea than any of us, and rarely says more than three words at one utterance, launched into a virtuoso rant about what a stupid, and lucky, sonovabitch Birdsall was. The speech seemed to last several minutes and used some cuss words I think were new to me at the time. Lou said all that needed saying. That happened sixteen years ago. Almost one year to the day later, Birdsall repeated, almost exactly, the whole disasterous script, incredibly. Since then, very few of us are willing to step off the dock with Bob.
He’s still a helluva nice guy ashore.
(Edited by Patrick Mullen)
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"There are idiots in every occupation but some occupations are more dangerous than others." -
Harold E. Detwiler
