I had a real eye opening incident about 8 years ago and learned some valuable lessons from it. I have/had run my boat for a lot of offshoring miles and through a lot of weather and there had been instances when I had to slow way down and take precautions when wx conditions developed that were worse then forecast but I had never been in a situation that I would put anywhere close to being survival mode or had the $hit scared out of me.
My friend and I, both very experimented offshore technical divers had just completed a 2+ hour dive on a big submarine (USS BASS) that sits under 158 feet of water about 8 miles South of Block Island (RI). It was a beautiful September Day and the water was warm for New England. We were less then 5 miles from my slip in Mystic CT approaching a narrow gap in a reef on the Eastern end of Fishers Island when I noticed that the sea conditions in that inlet didn’t look right. I’d been through this gap 100s of times without incident on days when the wind was blowing twice as hard as it was this day but the timing today was perfect to develop steep waves with a very strong tide combined with the perfect wind direction to stack up the waves like I had never seen them before. I should have turned East and entered from another gap in the reef but I continued straight ahead thinking it wouldn’t be that bad. Very POOR decision on my part! We immediately entered a patch of water 200-300 yards long that had 6-7s with almost 0 interval. I could not believe it! My buddy and I laughed about it later, here are 2 guys who have just executed a 150 foot + dive 28 miles offshore and I am screaming at him “GET THE LIFE JACKETS” and we are literally less then 50’ from land! My Parker 2520 was absolutely slammed about and I could barely keep it heading into the waves and the engine was cavitating a lot. If I had lost power or steering for just a second in that patch of water, my boat would have been flipped over instantly with me and my buddy having to get our a$$es out of the wheel house. Everything kept running and within a couple of minutes we were in the clear but it was truly an eye opening event. We are still friends today and that event still comes up and we now laugh about it. His memory of it are as vivid as mine and him imitating my command to “GET THE LIFE JACKETS” always leaves us both laughing.
I can’t even imagine what it would be like to find one’s self in conditions like we experienced that day but instead of being a 200-300 yard stretch of water like that, how about 20 miles of it?
Scary to think about but also possible. I have a lot of faith in my Parker 2520 and routinely fish her 50+ miles offshore but I try to never let myself get too over confident because the Ocean is VERY powerful and on any given day VERY capable of letting you know who’s the boss…..
