Ok it's story time ..........

[Pilar]

I posted this bit on the 'other' board about two weeks ago. It only got a few responses ......... I know there's a few crazies on this board.

How about it??

This ain't no *****
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I guess every one has gone too far pursuing thier quarry. So I'll tell this story ( it really happened ) and maybe some of you will tell yours.
Once I wandered far to sea in my small boat (the 'frog', it was 30 years old and 14 ft long). I had a jug of water, a sandwich, 12 gallons of gas and some fishing tackle. West and further west, looking for the diving birds and salmon. I didn't know much about the Ocean then. Too stupid to be scared and to full of myself to give up. With only a compass, a VHF radio and a sense of immortality I searched for silver salmon. About 11 miles from shore I found them and quickly caught my limit. As I said, too stupid to be scared. While I was heading out, the fog covered the mountains, the coastline and all of my landmarks. At sea level you can see the horizon at seven miles.

Still feeling immortal I turned around until the compass read 90 degrees and ran to the east. As I approached the coast I realized my folly. It was Depoe Bay I searched for. The landmarks I needed were buried in a blanket of white. The things I did not know conspired against me. The summertime 3 knot Davidson current was one of these. A steady river of ocean from the north, it had pushed me some 18 miles south of Depoe Bay during my transit. The magnetic offset on the compass was another, I was really going East South East at about 100 degrees not 90. I got close to the beach and heard surf on sand, I could only see 100 ft. When the sonar said 18 ft I spotted breakers curling into the sand. I had just enough time to hit reverse and back the boat off the next breaker.

Now I started to know my situation. There are no sand beaches near Depoe Bay north or south of it for many miles. I was well and truly lost. I ran west until I cleared the fog bank. Although the sun was comforting and the day calm, I was not. Thinking about survival I picked up the gas can, it was light, only a gallon or two left. Shutting the boat down and drifting further south I picked up the radio mike and called out on channel 16, 'Coast Guard, Coast Guard, fishing vessel 'frog' requesting assistance, declaring an emergency'. They responded immediately and wanted to know where I was. Well, this was the whole crux of the matter, I didn't know where I was and explained this to my would be rescuers. They agreed to search and find me and told me to stay put. Yaquina bay was 3 miles to the South East and I had no clue about this fact.

I could hear the helicopter to the East and called again, explaining what I had discovered. As this happened the fog built further offshore and visibility went away. They told me they were from Newport and I realized what had happened. Although I could not believe it I had drifted while trolling all the way from Depoe Bay to Newport in the space of a few hours. The beach I almost ended on was 'Moolach Beach'. Knowing this I ran toward the helicopter, stopping often to get a fix on the sound. They hovered over the end of the jetty to guide me in. After 20 minutes I spotted the jetties and ran into Newport Bay. The boat ran out of gas 100 ft from the boat ramp. I paddled the last few feet and kissed the dock when I got there. It took the rest of the day to get to Depoe and shuttle the trailer, recover the boat and get home. It took several days to lose the shakes.

I learned an important lesson that day. Never give up, never lose the ability to reason to abject fear, never be afraid to ask for help. As far as I'm concerned the Coast Guard are heroes, every one of them.

That was the day I lost my sense of immortality and fell in love with the Ocean.

How far would you go??

[img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]
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[ 04-17-2001: Message edited by: Pilar ]

[Kenia]

Pilar

You must have an angel watching over You!

[Pete]

Pilar,
I've got a 20 foot boat, holds 40 gallons, uses about 8 / hour ... lets go find some tuna! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Pilar]

Kenia, there are several angels and they take turns. I must say that I had this adventure when I was young, new to boating in the Ocean and full of it. I'm not young anymore ..........

Hey Pete, follow 'Puffin' and 'Pilar' to tuna town in August and September. There is bound to be a few glass days in those 2 months! You'll need a bit more fuel. I burned 5 gals an hour and used 38 on my last trip. I have a 42 G tank. I took (3) 6 gal flat cans as a reserve.

Two years ago I saw the Coast Guard helping a guy off Tillamook in a 19' Pacific City dory. They were helping him lighten his boat. Seems he had a few too many Tuna on board. As I went by it looked like he only had 6" to 8" of free board left. He pitched fish over until he had a foot of free board. It was pretty funny. The boat was clear full of albacore, the guy could barely walk around in it.

What was he thinking?? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

[Bait O' Eggs]

John you told me your story of being lost, so I will tell you one of being lost.

My wife and I hadnt been married long and I bought a spring turkey tag. We went up the weekend before season and did some scouting around. We found an area with some turkey sign and planned to return the following weekend to hunt. We had no experience in chasing turkeys and we even attended a little seminar which one of the sporting goods put on which taught the basics of calling and male turkey identification. She is not much of a hunter and if I got lucky (turkey lucky [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] ) I knew there would be tears for poor Tom. I got her dressed in fashionable camo and we took off early. The advise we got was to get set up about an hour before light and wait for it to get light then start to call. We returned the following weekend a couple hours before light and started the about 1/2 mile walk to our set up area. Things seemed a little different right off. There was kind of an old cat road we walked out the weekend before. We couldnt seem to find the road in the dark. It was open oak trees with a few pines and firs mixed in. We walked for about 30 minutes by flashlight and I couldnt seem to find the clump of trees I wanted to set up by. I kept veering to the right thinking in is just over there a little. We spent a little over an hour in total trying to find our predetermined location to set up. Finally it looked like it was about to get light and we still hadnt found it. I guessed we had to be at least 2 miles at this point from where we wanted to be. We had walked a long ways with flashlights. I didnt want to spook any awaking turkeys so we decided to set up by a big pine and wait for light to start calling. We were sitting there for about 20 minutes before it got light enough to see very well. I make a couple light calls anxiously awaiting for the gobble I had seen in the videos. We were holding real still and making as little noise as we could. I look out thru the trees straight ahead of us and I see something that looks like a vehicle. We had kind of worked up a sweat on our walk and sitting still was making us cold now. I couldnt imagine what was there since the map showed no roads in the area we headed into. I keep looking at this vehicle thinking we might have stumbled onto someones place and we were trespassing. Then I start to think it might belong to some people who have moved into the woods to not be found. Maybe killers, or violent criminals not wanting to be found. The mind does all kind of things to reasonable thinking when you are not sure where you are. It keeps getting lighter and the vehicle is hard to make out but something is definately in the trees about 40 yards ahead of us. Finally I get up and make my way over to find MY pickup which I had parked a couple hours earlier. We had walked a perfect circle and ended up right back at where we started. It is the only time I ever got turned around in the woods. It was kind of embarrassing walking back to the wife to see if she wanted to go sit in the pickup and warm up. When you are lost on land or sea the best thing you can do is keep you head and not let it run wild. I felt like an idiot and of course the wife went and told the whole story to my family, I still havent lived it down.

[Grits]

Fishing with my Grandfather has given me plenty of what the heck are we doing out here stories but two stick out in my mind the most.

The morning started out like any other. We put the boat in a Depot Bay to go chase some salmon but it didn't take long for me a seven year old kid to realize something was wrong. In the middle of a great salmon run there was not another boat at the dock. Well we loaded up the gear and started out and about that time a coastie on the end of the dock came on with a bull horn warning us of the treacherous conditions. To this day I don't know if my Grandpa didn't hear him or if he just plain ignored him but we just kept chugging along. Getting out was was an expierence I won't forget and to this day I still get chills when someone mentions putting in at Depoe Bay. Once we hit open water it just got worse, waves were breaking over the boat and you would go from staring at the sky to staring at the depths of the ocean in just a few short seconds. On the upside the fishing was great and we boated 4 fish in a few hours. This was done by my Grandpa driving the boat with one hand and holding me in with the other while I reeled and the netting work was near acrobatic. Well after boating the last fish we started the ride back. Once we got in view of that ever so narrow area you have to go through to get back to the docks we noticed a lot of commotion. It seems the coastie had alerted fellow coast guard crews that some idiots had gone out that day. They had several boats and crews standing by to pick the wreckage off the rocks and maybe recover our bodies as we tried to come back in. Well luckily for us the sea gods must have been smiling because somehow we made it through. The coasties gave us a stern talking to but again I don't know if my Grandpa didn't hear him or if he just ignored him because we still always ran on days when nobody else would.


The other story is much shorter.

We were out in the Columbia chasing salmon when the motor died over by the spit. Well luckily we had a radio and the coast guard came before we ended up in the spit. At that point we only had 7 fish and needed one more for the limit so when the coast guard boat hooked its tow line to us my Grandpa asked him if he could keep it at a trolling speed on the way in. Needless to say that didn't happen and my Grandpa cursed them the whole way in for not allowing us a chance to limit out.

[Osprey]

[img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] Bait-O-Compass [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ..........Os

[FishinMission]

Man......and I thought I was a diehard!!!

[Pilar]

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[BlueWater]

One NOVEMBER evening when I showed up for work (I work 12 hr night shifts) a friend of mine called me. He needed an extra hand with something on his 22 ft inboard sled and he said if I helped he would take me for a ride up the Clack. So I meet him the next morning after just working 12 hrs and I helped him fix his problem and off we went. This is were the fun started.
We put in at staff jennings for some reason and headed up the river in the cool early morning November air. Things were going well and I was excited to be on my first real river jet boat ride. We made it up under the RR tracks and headded up river at a hot rod pace. I was fun! We had ventured about 10 or 15 miles up river and were zigg zagging through a ripple at plane when suddenly the pump locked in a full right turn at full throttle! We had nicked the nozzle on the pump some how and it locked up the stearing. In a matter of seconds we had about 19 feet of his 22 feet of boat on dry land. The windshield is the only thing that stoped us from going farther on dry land than the boat did. My head still hurts thinking about it.
Needless to say 4 or 5 grulling hrs latter we still did not have all the boat in the water. Thinking about why the boat was so heavy we decided to pull up one of the floor boards and check the builge. wouldn't you know it it was full of water! A quick rewire of the h20 pump from the back of the boat to the front that had all the water we were floating again.
By reafing the wheel back and forth we got a half way right turn again and headed back for staff jennings. But the problems were one, the are a lot of hard right turns to make going down the clack. And Two the water was still comming in the boat even with two h2o pumps going all the time.
This is getting kinda long so I'll cut it short but none the less we made it back to staff jennings got the boat on the trailer and it had a 4" by 1/2" gash down the center of the bottom. It is amazzing how mutch water can come in a hole in a boat.
After that I learned how not to run a sled and never went river running with my friend again.
BlueWater. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Vinny]

Pilar ,

A couple of great ocean stories (Grits' also). Not to put you on the spot, John, but you didn't mention at what point in your adventure you put on your life vest.

A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest of Pete. As I had expected, before we left the dock to head for the ocean, we put on our life vests.

When you need it, it's often too late to reach for it (life vests, parachutes, that sort of thing).

[Pilar]

Vinny, I'd BS and tell you I had it on the whole time but .....

Senator, I have no recollection of those events .......