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Clearing the reefs off Cape Flannery, we headed offshore. The wind was in excess of 30 knots driving 20-foot waves with foaming at the tips. As the boat turned south the wind went behind us and Private Dancer began surfing at up to 14 knots. Sleeping was difficult in the large swells since the boat rolled with the large waves behind us and the motor throttled back.
 The Wet West Coast with all its rain this time of the year meant living in your foulies the whole passage. | |
The West Coast this time of year is very rainy and we were wet as we gathered in the cockpit to enjoy steering from outside for a change and to soak up some sun. The day slipped by into evening and so did the miles. We had traveled more than 200 miles from Victoria by 20:00 hours of our second day at sea past Washington State with Oregon on our port side. Fuel calculations indicated we still had around 400 gallons.
Coos Bay at the bottom of Oregon, about 100 miles farther on, was our intended stop to suss out the electrical problems and rest. The weather had begun to improve. The wind dropped to around 20 knots and the seas to 13 feet. A new watch came on at 20:00 hours and for the first hour everything went smoothly and we began to enjoy the night as the temperature rose slightly.
The engineer and the navigator chatted until the smell of smoke became evident. Then the lights dimmed and the helmsman barked, “The navigation lights have gone out.”
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| "When the hatch was pulled opened the crew were engulfed in thick, acrid, toxic smoke and fled to the open cockpit. " |
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The navigator took the outside helm while the helmsman prepared the dinghy and the flares. The engineer and captain tried to douse the fire with fire extinguishers. The navigator hailed Mayday at 21:10 with one of the two handheld VHFs.
All the electricity was lost, including the main station VHF, GPS, Mapplotter, etc. We chose not to deploy the halon system since the skipper felt we could get the fire under control and get to shore.
To our relief, the US Coast Guard responded quickly. When they asked us for our position, we could only give our last known plot because there was no way to go below and retrieve the chart with our position marked. At 20:00 hours we had been off of Tillamook Head. The helmsman prepared the flares and launched one to immediately mark our position.
 By air or by sea, the Coast Guard is a welcomed sight to any sailor in trouble. | |
The Coast Guard at Tillamook Bay launched one of their lifeboats and was heading north to Tillamook Head when the helicopter crew saw us and updated our position for them. They turned onto the new bearing, which indicated we were about 10 miles due south of where we thought we were. The boat had continued to travel at about five knots after the throttle and gears were burned into place and all sails were stowed.
At 22:00 the lifeboat arrived and the helicopter, which had been hovering and illuminating Private Dancer with its spotlights, flew back to Astoria transferring responsibility for us to the marine unit. It was comforting to know that if anything more drastic happened, the chopper’s crew was prepared to lift us off the burning boat.
The Coast Guard tried to toss us two fire extinguishers, but the waves and wind made them fall short of their target. They tied a rope to one and repeatedly tossed and retrieved until we could secure it. his method of transfer worked for two more fire extinguishers. We then felt we had the fire under control and, after talking to the Coast Guard, decided to proceed under motor to Newport, OR, about 30 miles to the south. Slack Tide was not for five more hours and the Coast Guard felt it was too dangerous to try and cross the Tullamook River Bar with the tide ebbing against the northwesterly winds 10 miles to the north.
The idea of stopping the engine and sailing the boat was dismissed by the skipper when one of our crew suggested the fire was being fed by the current that would normally charge the batteries.
The throttle controls were forced back to just above idle so we could only make about five knots, but with the help of the following seas got six from time to time. Steering was very difficult because the way was not great enough for a boat this size to be steered manually with no hydraulic assist. We took turns at the wheel and the rest of the crew rested in the cockpit.
The interior of the boat was still filled with smoke since the fire still smoldered. In an attempt to clear the boat of smoke we opened the main hatch from above but this later proved to be a mistake and fanned the flames even more.
 A fire on board is even more frightening when you're out at sea, as was the author's case. | |
The dinghy was being prepared for launch when the Coast Guard suddenly came on the loud hailer and barked, “Get off that boat now.” The flames had begun to burn out of the starboard aft cabin and were clearly visible through the hatch.
Launching the dinghy in 10-foot swells, wind at 15 to 20 knots with the boat going forward at five knots, was going to be a challenge. Getting the dinghy over the lifelines on a large vessel as the wind caught the inflatable was becoming a Herculean effort. Our efforts to get into the dinghy were awkward at best and wouldn’t have gotten high scores for form or technique.
It was a sight that won’t soon be forgotten: Private Dancer being motored away lit up by the Coast Guard’s spotlight as we floated in the dinghy. The water was 42 F and the air 44 F but no one noticed as the adrenaline pumped.
The Coast Guard had to make several attempts to come alongside without crashing into the dinghy, and finally succeeded in tying the dinghy up alongside the lifeboat. The crew of the Private Dancer piled their bodies unceremoniously onto the heaving deck of the lifeboat and tried to catch their breath. Sleep came quickly for some, yet one crew member strapped himself to the fly bridge and remained outside with the life boat crew for the ride against the wind to the Coast Guard station 30 miles north at Tillamook Bay.
Everyone was quiet and there was little talk of the loss.
Less than 30 minutes later, the Coast Guard looked on the radar and did a complete track line search with negative results. They listened into the next day, but no sightings were reported and it appears that the boat sunk quickly after we got off. They had planned on posting a warning to other vessels in the area but it appears that the fire was more extensive than we first thought. Much of it was invisible—contained within the wiring of the hull, with the main fire in the starboard aft cabin and the bulkhead, separating it from the engine room. The valuables that we had managed to retrieve from the cabin were left in the cockpit as we abandoned ship with the fire licking our heels.
 Even though Private Dancer had the standard fire equipment, including extinguishers, it just wasn’t enough to save the boat. | |
The lifeboat proceeded to Tillamook Bay at a modest speed as the bar was still sporting 16 feet of surf against the Northwest winds. The Coast Guard strapped us into comfortable seats in watertight compartments while we awaited slack tide and waited for the coxswain to navigate the treacherous river entrance.
The rescue didn't end there. The Commanding Officer of the US Coast Guard station met us, gave us each warm beds along with a one-piece jump suit to change into. They washed our clothes and after hot showers gave us something to eat. Around 11:00 a.m. we awoke and were allowed use of the phones to call our loved ones and try to organize some money and identification, given tha we had neither. Later in the afternoon, we were driven from the Coast Guard station in a government van to Portland, OR, some two hours away, where we finally got some money, a hotel for the night, and dinner. We wanted to buy dinner for the Coast Guard crew, but when the restaurant heard the story, they bought the crew dinner themselves. The next morning we caught a train to Seattle and the connecting bus to Vancouver, B.C.
At Customs we showed the Coast Guard report that had become our new identification to gain entry back into Canada.
My offshore delivery adventure taught me many lessons about boat preparation and gut feelings. I believe we left on a well found boat. It had just been surveyed and we were an experienced crew, yet still it developed problems that required outside assistance. The fire burned everything instantly and we had no navigation, communication, or engine control of the boat on a very dark night and unfriendly shore. We were 25 miles offshore and were just a hand-held VHF away from help. The hand-held radio and GPS were brought as an afterthought, yet maybe we could have been more prepared.
Certainly you just can’t be too prepared. Although I wouldn’t seek out this experience on purpose, I learned from it. Like many, I believed it would never happen to me.
Fire on Board: Lessons Learned 1. You must back up your backups and be ready for what the sea can throw your way. Redundancy should be the norm; our spare GPS and hand-held radios were a blessing. 2. Subsequently we discovered that the owner of the boat was not responsible for our losses and that the skipper had no liability insurance. The diesel mechanic on board lost all his tools, among the rest of his belongings, and in total the three crew lost in excess of $30,000, including the spare GPS and hand-held radios that were left in the cockpit—the very things that alerted the Coast Guard in the first place. 3. Learn about boats and practice safety procedures over and over again. This trip could have had a far more serious outcome. Even though we had the standard fire equipment, it just wasn’t enough to keep us from losing the boat.
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