For my last posting of 2011, I'll be posting some photos from my time when I was stationed at US Coast Guard Station Grays Harbor. This station is located in Westport, Washington, on the open Pacific Coast, near the mouth of Grays Harbor. All of the photos in this posting are from my personal service photos.
While I was stationed there, we had two 44 foot motor lifeboats, one 52 foot motorlifeboat, one 41 foot utility boat, and one 30 foot surf rescue boat. Since then, the 44 foot lifeboats have been decommissioned and replaced, the 30 foot surf boats as well. The 52 footer still remains. I arrived in 1984 as a Seaman Apprentice, E-2, and left in 1986 as a Seaman, E-3. I stood radio watches, served as a lifeboat crewman and rescue swimmer, and did the usual boat maintenance duties. I was assigned as the boat keeper to the 30 foot SRB, 30617. I was in charge of keeping the boat ready for duty at any moment and making sure that the engine was run daily and that the equipment was in top shape and stowed correctly.
Here are couple of shots that were taken on board one of the 44 footers while out on a training cruise in the harbor, just prior to when I left in 1986. I am in the first picture. The rest of the crew is in the second.
Station Grays Harbor has some of the most challenging and roughest surf in the United States. It is because of this that they still have one of only four 52 foot lifeboats, the MLB Invincible. All of the 52 footers are located at lifeboat station on the Oregon and Washington coasts. I have been out in enormous surf, in the 30 foot range on these lifeboats, even rolling one 44 footer several times in the surf off the North Jetty! These boats were tough!
NOTE: For those of you who may doubt the size of the surf on the Grays Harbor Bar, check out this story from the The Daily World, the local news paper, dated January 19, 2018. Grays Harbor can get HUGE ground swell and even bigger breaking waves when the big storms hit! Here is a quick quote from the article and a link:
"The Grays Harbor bar was closed to all recreational marine traffic with reports of 26-28-foot swells and winds of up to 30 knots. “Please be careful and stay away from the coast and the shorelines,” the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest detachment warned on its Facebook page."
http://www.thedailyworld.com/news/high-seas-cause-flooding-in-westport-on-thursday/
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| 44 MLB in surf. |
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| 52 MLB Invincible in surf near jetty. |
Here are some various shots of some of the boats at the station:
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| MLB 44372 |
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| SRB 30617 |
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| SRB 30617 in hoist. |
One of the routine training missions that we did each week, was "Helo Ops". We would go out on the harbor and practice hoisting with the Sikorsky H3 helicopters from USCG Air Station Astoria...... sometimes at night, and sometimes during the day. These following photos are of a couple of those "Helo Ops" training days. These first shots are of the 52 foot MLB Invincible and the 30 foot SRB 30617 and one of the H3 helicopters.
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| 52 MLB Invincible with SRB 30617. |
These next shots are of some "Helo Ops" with the station's 41 foot Utility Boat. The 41 footer was only in the water during the summer months when the water was calmer.
Here are a few shots of me next to the 52 foot MLB Invincible while it was in the boat shed for maintenance.
An for the last shots, here are a few taken from one of the life boats looking back at the station and at the Westport Marina.
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| Looking at the station and docks from inside the marina. |
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| Looking at the station covered moorage. |
13 comments:
I was stationed at Grays Harbor from 1981 to 1984. Once then Chief Ringenberg came down from La Push we were never in the surf/ hard breaking waves unless he was at the helm. I find it incredulous and in fact unbelievable that you were ever in anything close to 30 ft. waves.
Before joining the Guard I lived in Hawaii as a surfer so I know what a 30 ft. Wave looks like. Fisherman are rarely caught out in large surf which occurs in the winter. Sports fisherman are not out EVER in winter. I remember many rough days when Senior Chief Ringenberg cancelled getting under way. I would say the biggest waves I went out in was around 18ft faces. Whoever rolled a boat off Ocean Shores are wherever you claim has to be held accountable for being in idiot and showing no discipline by putting crew members at risk. I not aiming to put you personally in a bad light, it's just that when I arrived in 1981 things were much more lax and each year got much stricter. Such as when I first arrived we never boarded a vessel with weapons and were well liked. When I left we always left the station with weapons aboard.
Hello Vic. Good to hear from another GH life boat vet. I am so sorry that you are so judgmental in light of the fact that you were no longer in Grays Harbor at the time this happened! YES there are big waves in Grays Harbor. When I was at Grays Harbor, Senior Chief Ringenberg was stationed there. Apparently he moved up after you were there......... The incident that you are having trouble believing occurred during "surf ops" training. The 52 footer was out on the middle grounds and we were on one of the 44's in very close to the North Jetty. The coxswain was a brand new one, just back from the school at Cape Disappointment, and gung-ho to play in "real surf". We were in close to the jetty in some pretty big surf, bigger than we normally were in, while the 52 footer was out in the middle grounds on safety stand-by. We watched the first rollers of a very big storm set coming in and were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and VERY close to the rocks. The swell jacked up with a very "vertical" face as it hit the shallow area next to the rocks. That would be the place we were. So yes, the waves were that large as they broke! And YES, the boat did go over. I was on it, and heard the rocks moving on the jetty that were just under us (while we were upside down). Real story. Sorry you never got a chance to go out on the boats to play in the surf. As a surfer you probably know quite well how waves will jack up much higher than the swell when they suddenly hit shallow depths, especially the first big storm swells. There are a lot of "surfers" in Hawaii,of various levels of experience. I'm not sure where you fit in with that. I do know that the Hawaiian way of measuring a wave is from the back side, not the face. The general rule is that an 18 foot Hawaiian wave would be a 36 foot face here on the West Coast.......... just sayin'. Oh yes, we were armed only on law enforcement missions, NOT on all missions. No weapons carried on SAR calls. It seems odd that you were armed on Search and Rescue missions....... and we were well like by the town, the fisherman, and basically everyone in the area. So sorry you had another experience, under a previous command, in previous years.
Hello again..... For any of you doubters, reference 30 foot and larger waves on the Grays Harbor bar, here is a recent story from the local Grays Harbor Newspaper, dated January 19th, 2018. They report 26 to 28 foot swells, with 30 knot winds, on the Grays Harbor Bar. When ground swell of this size breaks in shallow water, the wave face FAR EXCEEDS the swell size! When the storms hit, Grays harbor has some of the roughest conditions around! Here is a quick quote from the story:
"The Grays Harbor bar was closed to all recreational marine traffic with reports of 26-28-foot swells and winds of up to 30 knots. Please be careful and stay away from the coast and the shorelines,” the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Northwest detachment warned on its Facebook page."
Here's the link to the story: http://www.thedailyworld.com/news/high-seas-cause-flooding-in-westport-on-thursday/
I was at tokeland prior to Westport back in the late 70s.
Westport was booming. Samon capital of the world. Very busy. We had widow makers and BMFs .
I sure miss those daysi now live across the bay. Love the huge waves that come through every winter.
Howdy, Reed mccanse here ... was stationed at from 85 until 87. Was a BM 3 and spent plenty of time out in the surf. I do recognize if you guys from the group photo on the 44. I think I see Dan Hayes as the cox'n and possibly big Jim Elrod as a crewman and maybe the guy on the far right could be last name of Prentice... loved my time there and got to have a bunch of fun on the thirty footer, getting beat to death and also the first r h i b s the guard was testing there Westport
Hello Reed!
You got the crewmen correct in the photo,mostly. The crewman on the far right side of the group 44 photos, is MK3 Mark Seacord. The woman (SA E2)in the photo was new at the station, just before the photo was taken, and I don't recall her name. BM3 Dan Hayes was the coxswain, MK Elrod is on the far left-back, I was the crewman, and the woman was in training.
Good times! :-)
Reed, I forgot to add this to my last comment: Jim Prentice was a BM and Coxswain,at the station while I was there (He and BM1 Tom Doucet were best friends). Prentice is not in this particular photo, but I went out with him on more than a few calls.
Ohh and lastly to the guy from Hawaii, I’m from CA so all my references in height are face size references, and yes there is an insane difference between a 20 foot and a 30 foot wave .
I never experienced being out and doing surf ops or having to go out for SAR when the bar was closed for 30 footers there, 20 yes not 30, but I definitely agree with Sharky that those size waves definitely do occur there and some unlucky bastards have had do deal with and go out in those days, but never for fun or surf ops , but for exegencies only or long tows where it got that big and we were outside for sometime days waiting for it to die down enough especially if we had someone in tow.
Swill, I went ahead and deleted your "comments" on my story that occurred in the 1980's, and since you realized that your criticisms and critique (and crew participants) were all from the 1990's, and entirely incorrect. It sounds like YOUR story is an interesting one to tell, but, no comparison to my experience when the 44 footer went over years before................I don't mind feedback or opinions, but not a running narrative that is entirely negative and unrelated.
Here is Swill's previous account-comment on some much later lifeboat "rolls" that occurred. Good information for anyone interested (1990's incidents, not 1980's incidents) :
Ohh and snarky , apologies, I think I miss read your story .
Looks like ur referring to a separate incident that occurred before I got there that involved rolling one of the 44’s in the 80’s , not the Invincible.
So long ago , I don’t remember hearing about that one, then again maybe it does ring a bell .
The Pitch Pole at Yaquina or Depot Bay and Sea King tragedy at cape D were the big stories in the early 90’s before we managed to roll the Invincible off Ocean Shores in only 12 foot conditions in 93 .
Definitely something about Ocean Shores .
normally we did surf ops off of Westhaven cause it was bigger usually and apparently way safer .
It’s not always the bigger waves that are the most dangerous.
It’s those hallow jacking, throwing fast waves that will get u .
I totally understand and have the utmost respect for you guys that were there before us paving the way. I know ur story is legit , and I was actually going in just now to delete my 1st comment but u beat me to it , as I said I completely misread it and thought you were referring to the 52 rollover in 93 and then re read it and felt like a total idiot .
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