Archive for 'Adversity'
Things they never told you (winter edition)
Every boater knows that there is a list, a long list, of things they never told you before you bought your boat. It’s like a secret handshake in the nautical world, the unrevealed mysteries of holding tank plumbing, the 0300 anchor checks, the bumps in the night when someone else fails to make their 0300 [...]
Full StoryTsunami Dreaming
As winter advances, and other folks dream of sugar-plum fairies and Yuletide cheer, my thoughts once again turn to earthquakes and tsunamis. I’m not quite superstitious enough to subscribe to the “disasters come in threes” rule, but I am sailor enough to feel a little uncomfortable that each March for the past two years has [...]
Full StoryA boat is no place to be sick
I don’t mean seasick, although boats are obviously popular sites for that malady as well. No, I just mean plain-old, stuffed-up, head-achey, nose-drippy sick. Which I have been, for the past week. When we were in high school, some friends of mine dubbed this sort of illness “The Mongolian Death Flu.” It’s the one where [...]
Full StoryThe Second Wave
If last month’s tsunami wave was less than threatening to boaters in our particular corner of the Pacific Northwest, don’t get too complacent just yet: a subtler, more ominous wave is still approaching. The enduring image of the disaster in Japan is of a massive wall of water churning implacably inland, sweeping everything loose and [...]
Full StoryAnother year, another tsunami
As I woke up yesterday, blurry eyed, to the chiming of the tsunami advisory coming in on my phone, it struck me that it is just past a year since the last time we got such a message, in the aftermath of the 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile. Perhaps tsunamis have always occurred this frequently [...]
Full StoryRough day for a soft grounding
I had imagined that most of the boats left out in the Port Hadlock anchorage by this stage of the winter had had their anchoring systems pretty well tested by the harshest northerly winds and waves that La Nina could throw at them. After the great culling of the Thanksgiving storm, in which at least [...]
Full StoryAftermath
It’s often the case with boats that the worst is not immediately apparent, and this has proven true with the November 22/23 snow and wind storm that pounded the North Sound. The day after was grim enough, with boats missing from the mooring field off Port Hadlock, and others smashed up against their neighbors or [...]
Full StoryBoats Dying By Moonlight
It’s an eery thing to watch a boat die by moonlight. Any time, if you are not accustomed to such things, it is jarring to see any vessel in extremis… the carefully designed lines canted at odd angles, water invading places where no water should be. But by the light of a full moon, further [...]
Full StoryOrdinary Catastrophes
So the other night, we left a few candles burning as we went to bed to help ward off chill and condensation overnight. Around midnight, while both of us slept, one of them burnt its wick overlong and started smoking excessively. Our superbly over-sensitive smoke alarm duly began to screech, shocking us both awake. I [...]
Full StoryEvery man for himself
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – popularly attributed to Edmund Burke Obion County, Tennessee, is a long way from the water, but very near to the vision that some folks have for the future of our Coast Guard and other maritime rescue agencies. Obion County [...]
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Marty McOmber
Scott Wilson