SandSåk Anchor/Drybag

This cool product from Såk Gear is really a two-in-one drybag/sand anchor. When you’re out for a paddle, stow your phone, money clip, beeper, or any other valuables inside the bright-yellow 20-liter bag, and cinch the top for protection from splashing or accidental capsize. The bag itself is made from strong, 500D PVC with welded seams for increased strength and features UTX clips, D rings, and a bottom strap to hold onto it while you tip it upside-down. The bag can be filled, hence the name, with up to 50-pounds of sand and deployed as an anchor for the toys you don’t want to beach. Remember to remove valuables before filling with sand. Comes with 12 feet of braided floating line, two 316 stainless clips, and a bright green and yellow float for maximum visibility. —JC

- www.sakgear.com

that we have never previously traveled by water to the West Coast, or at least to the Columbia River basin.

Looking at both harbor charts, they seem pretty similar; rivers converging into an urban harbor just inland of the ocean, lots of silting and shoaling dredged regularly to provide a navigable channel, plenty of natural and artificial aids to navigation, and jetties at the harbor entrance to minimize the effects of cross-currents. Pretty routine.

Next we look at the tidal current calculations. In reality we would be looking ahead to our estimated arrival time, but for this exercise we’ll simply compare both harbors on the same day of this year, September 19. We’ll compare two current substations, both of which are well inside the entrance jetties in the main shipping channels.

At Charleston we are looking at the currents at Fort Sumter Range Buoy #20. Typical of any low-lying estuary, the maximum flood currents are about 1.3 knots and the maximum ebb currents are about 1.5 knots. From this data we can infer that 1.4 knots of both currents is actually tidal, and the combined riverine currents of the Cooper, Ashley, and Wando confluence are rather minimal at this station. Which makes sense; the Charleston area is called “the Low Country” for a reason. The terrain is low and flat, and the nearest hill reaching 1,000-feet is over 200 miles away. Running water will not typically run very fast here.

Now let’s look at Astoria on the same day. The currents here are stronger but otherwise not fundamentally dissimilar. Our maximum flood currents on this day are around 4 knots, our maximum ebb currents are almost 6 knots, but none of this is surprising. The tidal currents are expected to be larger than Charleston’s, as the Pacific Ocean is a much larger body of water than the Atlantic, and Astoria is considerably farther from the equator. The river currents are also considerably

seas of 15 to 18 feet, but most of that will be a pretty manageable, gentle roll. It’s September, the Pacific is a huge ocean, the entire West Coast north of San Diego is a lee shore to prevailing southwesterlies—all makes pretty good sense, and all seems reasonable thus far.

Let’s take a quick look at the weather inside the jetties. First, Astoria: Weak low pressure, small-craft advisory, no problem. Wind speed is...uh, no wind speed is given for a small-craft advisory? Breakers of 13 to 14 feet inside the harbor? A gentle 14-foot swell offshore is fine; the same size breaking surf is going to be awful, and potentially the last day of your seafaring career.

Three opposing forces are converging at this spot. The westerly swell, aided and abetted by the local westerlies, is smacking head-on into six knots of opposing current from the mighty Columbia. Worse, it is doing so at exactly the point that the river has dumped all of its silt and mud from upstream. Energy is neither created nor destroyed, and at the Columbia river bar on an ebb current, all of that energy has no place to go but up.

Now we know why no wind speed or direction was given in the NOAA weather report; the winds happen to (barely) qualify as a small-craft advisory, but are mostly irrelevant to the actual sea conditions in the channel. What are given instead are the times of the maximum ebb currents. For the Columbia River bar, on this day, these are no-go zones.

We next go to U.S. Coast Pilot 7 for a better and more general overview of what we should expect here (lower-left graphic).

This all agrees well with tomorrow’s weather report from NOAA. The Coast Pilot next details further issues of spring freshets, and then goes on to discuss pilotage issues for large commercial and military vessels, including an entire page detailing protocols for helicopter transfers for the bar pilots. Yes, helicopter. Because the very robust pilot boats used there often cannot cross the bar to get to and from the ships. Sometimes, ships can’t get across the Columbia River bar either, it turns out.

As we plan our voyages, it pays mightily to research the likely conditions at each of the ports we anticipate calling on, and also the ports of refuge along the way or nearby. Every harbor presents its own unique challenges and idiosyncrasies. From this example, one might imagine that Charleston Harbor is a walk in the park. It isn’t. Anyone who has navigated the Cooper River will probably agree that it can be one of the most challenging harbors in the world. Even without those hurricanes. Good watch!

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