Dead in the Water in Rough Seas

Today we had quite a misadventure. To begin with though, there’s nothing I love more in life than sinking my teeth into some challenging new technical skill. Right now it’s boating and fishing. I’m finding that it is indeed difficult. Sure, I can catch easy stuff like crabs and sand dabs, but until I learn how to catch lingcod and salmon I will still be a “wanna be”, a fisherman but not a catcherman.

In light of that, for the third Saturday in a row I planned a trip to Possession Point to try to catch my first lingcod. There’s only two weeks left in the season. Last week the friend I brought along had caught a huge one in just five minutes using my boat, my gear, and following my instructions while I caught nothing all day but anemones attached to rocks. Tidal conditions were excellent today, with a six-hour period in the morning when the tide would not vary more than one foot. I recruited my old friend Dave to accompany me. Dave is an experienced freshwater fisherman who fishes from a kayak, but is new to saltwater fishing. We met up at 5:00 a.m. and pushed away from the dock before 6:00. Before leaving I reviewed all available weather data, including the NOAA marine forecast and my Windy mobile app. The forecast was for moderate winds and calm seas. When we left the boat launch there were thin layers of clouds lit by the sunrise, and the seas were predictably smooth. Expecting the seas to be calm in the morning and rough in the afternoon, I invited Dave to drive on the way out. Once we got past the Mukilteo Lighthouse, however, the weather changed abruptly. The seas became rough in a way that’s rare for such an early hour of the morning, and the cloud layer became gloomier. We suddenly found ourselves slamming into incoming waves up to two feet high, but it was manageable so we chose to press on.

One thing I’m learning with experience is to plan where to catch the bait fish before proceeding on to the lingcod grounds, since they live in different habitats. Sand dabs prefer, well, sandy bottoms, and lingcod prefer rocky bottoms and structure. I had planned to catch them in deep water just south of the Possession Point buoy. When we finally arrived though, I questioned whether it was even possible to successfully fish in such seas. Dave wanted to try anyway. I quickly realized that whatever we did, driving was going to be a full-time job today. I would have to keep the engine running slowly so that I could keep the bow pointed into the waves at all times. Unfortunately, this small amount of movement would interfere with our need to keep our fishing lines vertical while fishing for lingcod.

I talked him through how to rig the tackle for the bait fish, but I couldn’t really take my hands off the wheel long enough to actually do much else. Dave quickly found that his line was more horizontal than vertical, making it impossible to find the bottom where the fish are. I struggled to use power to keep the boat pointed into the waves while keeping his line vertical, but before long we gave up on the bait fish and decided to just use the artificial lures I had brought instead.

We drove west to Scatchet Head, a well known lingcod spot, where there were a dozen or so other boats also braving the rough seas. It became a team exercise. I drove while Dave fished. We eventually noticed that some other boats were anchored. I had never actually anchored before, but it’s been on my list to try it so we decided that now was a good opportunity. We found a spot that was shallow enough to anchor in. Dave slowly let the anchor down, and when the line was out all the way I put the throttle in reverse to dig the anchor in. It held nicely in the heavy seas, and for the first time that day I was able to shut down the engine and fish. While anchored, our lines were near vertical as you might expect with the tidal conditions.

After 20 minutes of not catching anything though, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were just too shallow. I had 100 feet of anchor line (called “rode” in nautical terms) and 15 feet of chain. Given that relatively short length, we were pushing our luck to anchor in 30 feet. If we went deeper, it’s doubtful that the anchor would have held. So, we went back to our previous method of Dave fishing and me driving, this time with a rod in one hand. During one of my awkward turns, Dave’s line got wrapped around my slowly-moving propeller. I quickly shut down the engine and raised it out of the water. Dave did a fine job of getting his line untangled from the prop, and when he was all done I lowered it again. When I went to start it, however, it gave just one pitiful crank and refused to start. This had never happened before.

I tried a variety of things. I made sure the throttle was in neutral and the kill switch was on, to no avail. I suspected that I had run down my house battery, which is the spare I had installed to run on while the engine was off. So, I switched to the other battery, but the engine still would only give one pathetic turn. I also noticed that my navigation system and VHF radio had just randomly rebooted themselves. There was something flaky going on with the electrical system. We looked around to assess our situation. Although the tidal currents were weak, the waves were strong and they were moving us straight towards Whidbey Island. Within a half hour we would likely find ourselves in the same situation as that guy I rescued on Lake Stevens last year about this time, who had gotten blown against the shore while adrift. Normally, I have my auxiliary “kicker” motor on the boat, but it happened to be in the shop right now. I decided to call for a tow. I have insurance for this through BoatUS, kind of like AAA for boats.

BoatUS recommends using their app to call for a tow. I tried that, but the app said it needed an update before I could use it. I installed the update, and then the app crashed and wouldn’t run anymore. I decided to reboot my phone, which took forever because it decided it was time to optimize my apps. Finally it came back up, but the BoatUS app still wouldn’t run. I pulled my BoatUS card out of my wallet. It said I could hail them on the VHF radio, but I deemed it too unreliable to use because of the electrical problem. So, I resorted to an old-fashioned phone call. I called their number but I was put on hold while they “served other valued customers”. Meanwhile, Whidbey Island was looming larger in our view. Finally, a real person came on, and he nonchalantly walked me through a long questionnaire about my situation. I complained about their app crashing and he just said, “Oh yeah, it does that sometimes when you update” as if people weren’t relying on it in a crisis. Finally, he said that a local tow operator would contact me soon and hung up. About five minutes later, a guy from SeaTow said he was on his way, but that he was coming from Eagle Harbor (which is on Bainbridge Island!) and that it would take him 90 minutes to get to me. We didn’t have that much time.

After I hung up, Dave and I took stock of our situation again. We realized that we could probably use our anchor when the water got shallow enough, although we weren’t sure how well we could dig it in without power. Meanwhile, we started troubleshooting. We got out my Fluke clamp meter that I keep on board and checked the battery voltage. 11.8 Volts on the house battery, 12.0 Volts on the main. I thought that meant they were both good, but later I learned that I was wrong. On a lark I decided to give the ignition one more try, and it started right up as if nothing ever happened! I called the SeaTow guy back and canceled. He must have been annoyed, but he was very polite. No doubt he had just dropped what he was doing and jumped in his boat to come rescue me, and was well on his way.

We gave up on fishing and decided to just go home. We had been out nearly five hours by then anyway. The seas were choppy but not as bad as on the way in. We kept getting repeated battery voltage alarms, which we knew to be false, and several times we watched the navigation system and VHF radio reboot until I turned them both off. I decided not to stop for fuel, since I wasn’t at all sure I could start the engine again. Sometime after we left, a giant Hong Kong-based container ship had anchored right in front of the entrance to the channel, by the Navy base. I thought it was a weird place for such a large ship to anchor. We docked without incident, but when I went to raise the engine after shutting it down, it moved extremely slowly like it had almost no battery left. I had to raise it though, to avoid repeating last week’s mistake of dragging the skeg on the ramp as I drove away. I was glad it gave me its last bit of juice.

We came home without a single fish, not even a sand dab, and I’ll likely be off the water for a couple of weeks with yet another warranty repair. I suspect that the beating we took on the way out to Possession Point had jostled something loose in the electrical system. Today’s incident highlights the importance of being prepared for an emergency. That guy I rescued on Lake Stevens last year wound up there partly because he was unprepared. I carry tow insurance, but two of the methods of reaching them failed. Fortunately I had a third. I had an anchor aboard. I had tools, including a multimeter. Still, there’s things I could improve. I’ve decided to start carrying 200 feet of anchor rode instead of 100, so that I can anchor in deeper water. I need to start carrying a handheld VHF radio in case the main one fails. Even though I’ve learned to hate my kicker motor, I can now see the value of having one beyond trolling for fish. Although it was a lousy day of fishing, it proved to be a valuable experience.

[Prologue January 2025] After a month of troubleshooting, I finally figured out that I had blown a fuse the previous fall when I accidentally hooked the batteries up backwards. This prevented the batteries from charging when the engine was running. I had actually gone several complete trips without even noticing, because I had so much battery capacity that it took them that long to run down. Unfortunately the fuse wasn’t mentioned in the owners manual, but it was in the service manual I bought later. I also learned that fully-charged 12V batteries should actually run about 13V, not 12, and 14V while charging. Now I keep my batteries on a battery maintainer whenever they’re not in use, and I check that the charging voltage is sufficient right after starting the engine.