My Scariest Moment at Sea
One of my first jobs was as Third Mate on a coastwise oil tanker. The ship was on a regular run from San Francisco Bay to Portland, Oregon, hauling gasoline, jet, and diesel. The ship was about 25 years old, but was well maintained and relatively modern. It was a good ship, on a good run, with a good Captain.
On this particular voyage we departed the refinery dock around 2100 (9:00 PM). Although the Captain was a licensed pilot for San Francisco Bay, we used a company pilot for the transit from the dock to near the entrance of the bay. We dropped the pilot off near Angel Island, where the Captain assumed the pilotage responsibility for the remainder of the transit out of the bay.
As we neared the Golden Gate we encountered what San Francisco is famous for, fog. Thick, heavy, dense fog. The fog was so thick that we could not see the bow of the ship from the bridge. Thanks to two large radars we could easily see land masses, buoys, and the Golden Gate Bridge. It would also help us see other ships. Ships, but not necessarily boats. An important fact to keep in mind.
We also had the benefit of an ECDIS, an electronic charting system. This was in 1996, it was a relatively new technology and not many ships at the time had the system. It is very useful for a quick reference of the ships position. But the old mariners adage, "the prudent mariner never relies on a single navigation method," applied and I diligently plotted our ships position on a paper chart every six minutes.
Shortly after passing under the Golden Gate bridge the Captain informed me that he was going down to his stateroom for a few minutes to fill out a company departure report. No big deal, I thought, as the Captains cabin was directly behind the bridge and half a deck down. We were in the main ship channel, which is straight as an arrow and has buoys on either side, buoys which were perfectly represented by green dots on both the radars. The heading marker on the radar, which indicated which direction the ship was pointing, lined up perfectly between the buoys on either side. In retrospect, maybe the Captain leaving the bridge wasn't such a good idea since technically we were still in pilotage waters and he was the pilot. But everything was running smooth, and he seemed to have enough confidence in me to keep the ship between the buoys. Or, at least, he had enough faith in the autopilot to keep us between the buoys.
Shortly after he left it was time to plot the ship's position again. I used the radar to pick off three prominent landmarks and recorded the bearing and distance to each. I also checked for other ship traffic, but there was nothing of concern. I then walked to the chart table to plot them.
A moment later the ship's bosun, who was on watch as the lookout, said, "uhh, you might want to look at this." Still plotting the position I said, "just a second." Then he said, "you might want to look now!" I looked up from the chart to see two bright lights, from a wooden hull fishing boat, heading straight towards us. He couldn't have been more than two hundred feet away from us. It was dark out, the fog was thick, and we had a black hull. There is no way he was going to see us before it was too late.
Being a full loaded tanker we could not maneuver quickly, so I did the first thing that came to mind. I ran to the ships whistle and sounded the danger signal, five short blasts. Then I watched. Nothing. The guys on the fishing boat must have heard our whistle, they were so close it probably blasted through their entire boat. I could imagine the moment of panic on the boat as they heard the whistle so close but not be able to see us in the fog. I sounded the danger signal again.
This time they saw us. The boat heeled over sharply as they turned to avoid us. About this time the Captain walks up to the bridge and nonchalantly asks, "what's up?" My heart is racing so fast I can't even talk. I just point to the starboard bridge wing.
I followed the Captain out and looked over the side. The fishing boat was safely passing about ten feet off our side. It quickly vanished again in the fog. The time between first seeing the lights and it vanishing again into the fog was less than ninety seconds. Ninety terror filled seconds.
The Captain said, "she's close." Then he went back to his stateroom to finish the paperwork.
