| Event Description | We beached the boat 3-4 miles out in Valdez bay. We had never beached here before, but I had done it several other places in PWS. We three took turns using the woods and staying with the boat. It was just nosed into the gravel beach enough to hold it straight, but we did have a bow line out. We relaxed and ate our sandwiches on a log and enjoyed the calm day. Suddenly a huge wave appeared (long after a ferry had gone by far out in the bay, and was out of sight). We hadn’t been watching the ocean, just the boat. After about 3 waves it turned my boat sideways before we could run and push the stern back out. The huge waves essentially rocked it sideways and pushed it up so one whole side of the boat was up on the beach., stuck. As we tried to push the stern out another ferry wave pushed more sand up against the outside of the boat, thus damming it in. We went into all out work frenzy of one of us pushing with a paddle from inside the boat , one of us digging sand out with out hands and one of us digging with a clam claw…we made small headway and then decided we were going to get wet…made a verbal plan to all push and paddle then get the stern turned out and I would quickly lower the motor and back out fast…the last person would have to jump up out of hip deep water and hang on to the side, and climb in (and not fall) so we could back out fast. The next huge wave broke over the transom of the boat as we backed out with my best friend hanging half off the bow…I hit it pretty hard and the other two of us grabbed her and the bow line and we were free. Wet and free. It was dangerous, scary and stupid but we made it. Worse case scenario we would have had to wait out the tide to get off the beach, and it was nice enough day and we had snacks and fishing poles and a radio so we would have been fine. As we back away, we looked down the beach to the far other end, and saw another boat totally up on the beach, sideways. We felt really lucky that we weren’t going to be sitting there for 6 hours. Lesson: An 18′ outboard is not a kayak, you can’t just park on any old beach. |
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