The roar of the boat engines and the sound of the surf nearly obscure Kevin Clark’s voice as he shouts the orders.
“Run with it! Run with it!” Clark says as student Kris Knott pushes the twin throttles of the 31-year-old boat to the maximum.
Motor Life Boat 44300 moves quickly between two huge ocean swells at the mouth of the Columbia River.
“It’s beginning to break,” Clark says. Off to the right, a whitecap appears at the top of a monster wave. It grows quickly on the deep blue wall of water.
“You can’t outrun it . . . turn into it, into it,” Clark shouts. Knott spins the wheel to the right to face the approaching wave. It stands several feet higher than the bow of his boat. The roar increases as it nears. “Now back! Back! Back!” Clark orders.
Knott slams the 44-foot boat into reverse, gunning its twin engines as it backs away from the wave, which now towers over the craft.
Suddenly the wave breaks and a wall of white foam curls above the boat. “Now forward!” Clark orders as Knott powers through the frothy wave. For a moment, 44300 moves into an eerie calm.
“Get ready now, here comes another one,” Clark says.
Class is rarely dull at the U.S. Coast Guard Motor Life Boat School, where the men and women of America’s tidewater navy learn the job they are called upon to do somewhere every day: take a boat into the most harrowing of conditions to save lives.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Knott, 28, a seven-year Coast Guard veteran, is coxswain, or helmsman, of a motor lifeboat at Monterey, Calif. It is his fifth day of a two-week, heavy-weather class. Petty Officer 1st Class Clark, 32, also a seven-year veteran, is one of nine instructors at the school.
“When we run laterally across the surf zone, the point is wave avoidance, to avoid being hit broadside, or taking significant water on the bow. All that it does is buys a little time to set up the bow into the next breaker,” Clark says.
Sea is best classroom
“We have a classroom where we discuss case studies and evolutions of rescues, but the real classroom is on the water,” says Master Chief Petty Officer George La Forge. “We need heavy weather. We need big surf and sea-swell height, and the Columbia River Bar is the most consistent place in North America for being nasty.”
The bar-a long, low hill of sand beneath the water-is formed where the slowing river meets the ocean and dumps ton upon ton of its suspended silt.
“You have a 10-to-14-knot current on the ebb tide running out (of the river) and meeting waves coming in from the ocean,” La Forge said. Those waves have run unchecked for thousands of miles, and when the big waves hit the bar, tumultuous surf results.
“We have swift current and big seas, the perfect situation for havoc on the water,” La Forge said. “When you are talking self-righting motor lifeboats, this is the place. This is Lifeboat Town, USA.”
The school holds 14 to 19 classes each year. There is a basic course for the freshly qualified coxswains, a heavy-weather course for those who have been qualified coxswains a year or more, and a supervisor’s course.
Attendance at the school isn’t mandatory.
“They come here because they desire to,” La Forge said. “If you are an up-and-coming coxswain and you wanted to polish your skills, you would come here. This is like finishing school.”
Bar stopped explorer
The school has operated at Cape Disappointment on Washington’s southern coast since 1968. It began as a training ground for the 13th Coast Guard District, which encompasses the Pacific Northwest, and in 1980 became a national training center.
The cape, a huge rock point, is topped by a lighthouse. The protected harbor away from the ocean is home to the school and to Station Cape Disappointment, a large Coast Guard lifeboat station that patrols 50 miles of the Washington and Oregon coastline as well as the Columbia River. The area is known as “the graveyard of the Pacific,” where more than 2,000 small boats and ships have been lost since the Coast Guard began counting in 1877.
The cape was named by explorer George Vancouver, who in the late 1700s tried unsuccessfully to cross its bar. He finally marked his charts “Cape Disappointment.”
The standard motor lifeboat that the Coast Guard uses was first manufactured in 1963. The 44-foot, self-righting craft with a 3/16th-inch steel hull has nine watertight compartments, including two to carry survivors from boat accidents. Its two Detroit diesel engines can propel it to 14 knots on flat water, and it can travel 215 miles without refueling. “The first one of these boats built is 44300; the last 44 was built in 1972,” La Forge said.
The boats are strong; they have to be.
“In a 10-foot wave you are talking about 10,000 pounds of force per square foot,” La Forge said. “If you are moving toward it the pressure goes up.”
Many search-and-rescue stations, including most on the Great Lakes, have only a single 44 assigned to them. This adds to the challenge of heavy-weather training in the boat.
“To go into the surf with only one lifeboat is foolish,” La Forge said. “You come here and get two weeks of intensive training. That does a hell of a lot to refine skills. With just three students per boat, they get a serious amount of wheel time. On the Great Lakes, for example, storms come up fast then blow themselves out. Your opportunity to train would be in the blink of an eye.
“This is a better training environment. There are no concerns here about mission readiness, law enforcement, or anything but that great big wave that is about to take a piece of you apart.”
If the worst occurs . . .
The school day begins at 7:45 a.m., when students arrive at the small brick building, finished just last year. After a classroom briefing, each student suits up in survival gear: a fleecy union suit, an anti-exposure coverall for additional warmth and to keep the wearer afloat, heavy socks and rubber boots, and a vest containing a knife, flare, whistle, strobe light and signal mirror.
The boat crews then head for the dock, a briefing about what to do if the worst should occur, and a morning on the water.
“If we should roll, what is the first thing that we do after righting?” Clark asks.
“Make sure everyone is onboard,” the students respond in unison.
“Right, and start to check your equipment,” Clark says.
(Four days later, one of the 39,500-pound boats, hit broadside in the surf, rolled in the water. “The windshield was blown out, the forward bulkhead on the aft compartment buckled, and the mast was bent,” Clark said. “No injuries.”)
When practicing in a surf area, students must also wear a lightweight helmet and a heavy-duty belt that fastens them to the boat.
Inside the safety tower perched next to the Cape Disappointmnet lighthouse, Seaman John Monteleone, 24, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Tim Gaiski, 22, stand watch. In the small building, which looks like an aircraft control tower, Monteleone squints through a giant set of binoculars called “Big Eyes.” The 3-foot-long glasses are so heavy they are mounted on a stand attached to the floor.
“They are putting on their surf belts,” Monteleone says. The crew members, a mile away, are clearly visible through the “Big Eyes.” Gaiski scans the area with smaller binoculars, keeping track of other ships. Should a crew member be washed overboard the tower could spot it and help direct a recovery. Everyone is in radio contact.
Training usually ends about 5 p.m., but several nights are used to practice approaching other boats and towing them in the darkness, La Forge said.
New boats take form
Although the motor lifeboats are decades old, they are still in excellent condition.
“By their nature, motor lifeboats never wear out, they are babied by their crews. You would be a damn fool not to take good care of it, so you do,” La Forge said. “They are built very stout; they can be re-engined and refitted.”
The next generation of lifeboat is taking form at Cape Disappointment. The prototype of a 47-foot boat, which began on the drawing boards of naval architects in 1986, is being tested in the surf of the Columbia River Bar.
The new boat has twin 900-horsepower engines, four times the power of the 44s. Other changes are more subtle, such as a platform close to the water to help pull survivors to safety and dual operating controls. But the biggest advantage is its speed. It can travel at 28 knots (32 m.p.h.), twice that of the 44.
“Before the 44, it was a double-ended, wooden-hulled, motorized surfboat,” La Forge said. The final 36-foot “woody” was taken out of service in 1987 but the last one was built in about 1956 from a design originated in 1907.
“They just did not wear out,” La Forge said.
For decades “woodies” were stationed on Lake Michigan at Wilmette and Jackson Park. When the Jackson Park station closed it was replaced with one at the mouth of the Calumet River. That station and Wilmette are now equipped with 41-foot utility boats, a fast-moving craft but one that lacks the heavy-weather performance ability of the 44. Coast Guard stations on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan starting at Michigan City have 44s.
Practicing for rescues
Although Coast Guard boats occasionally pull people from the water, most often they help tow a disabled craft to a safe harbor or provide emergency pumps to a leaking craft. A water tow isn’t easy, and in rough weather it requires expertise.
In the middle of the navigational channel at the mouth of the Columbia River, the sea swell is about 8 feet, causing the boats to rise and drop at regular intervals. Knott nears another lifeboat bobbing dead in the water.
“I’ve got a shot,” yells Petty Officer 2nd Class Pat Foley.
“Take it,” Knott says.
Foley, 23, from Station Barnegat Light, N.J., throws a hard round ball made of line toward the other boat.
“Line going over,” Foley shouts.
A crew member on the bow of the “disabled” vessel grabs it and pulls the lightweight heaving line on board. It leads to a heavy tow rope that is secured to the bow.
“It is made,” Foley reports.
Foley, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jim Hines, 22, of Station Scituate, Mass., pay out the line carefully, coordinating with Knott at the helm to be sure there is no excess slack in the tow rope that could foul the propeller and leave the rescuers themselves in need of rescue.
“Fifty at the bitt,” Hines says as the 50-foot mark passes the towing bitt on his boat.
“Watch the line, watch the line-we are going to go to 200,” instructor Clark cautions.
“One-fifty at the bitt,” Hines says.
“OK,” Knott says.
“Ahead real slow, take it up, get some slack in the line,” Clark says.
Once 200 feet of tow rope has been unwound from the huge spool on the boat, several figure 8s will be placed around a heavy cleat on the lifeboat. It must be done carefully, as a hand or arm can be severed if it gets tangled in the rope.
“Figure 8s on the bitt,” Clark says.
Foley announces as each figure 8 is placed on the cleat: “One on. Two on. Three on. Four on.”
Knott then tows the second boat for about a mile.
“When you see the swell coming in, let up,” Clark says, cautioning Knott to avoid a shockload on the line that could snap it. The line is retrieved, and Knott cuts the engine. It is now their turn to be dead in the water. The drills continue for hours.
Rescue stories
Returning to the harbor for lunch, Foley, who attended the basic school in 1993, recalls how he put his skills to use to rescue five fishermen.
“There was a fishing boat on the rocks; I had to back into it in the breaking surf, put a line over, and finally pulled them off,” Foley says.
“When I hear one of our former students talk about a case like that, I’m really proud,” Clark says. “But I’m sure that the people he rescued had no idea that what was done to save them was learned here at the Motor Life Boat School.”
