Watertight Integrity

One day as I prepared to take passengers out on a whale watching excursion in Sitka Sound in Alaska, I opened the bow void hatch as part of a routine checklist and was surprised to see that the void was filled with 50 or 60 gallons of sea water. After pumping the seawater out of the void I was happy to see that the vessel handled much better. Water had been leaking in from the rain because of a worn out seal. Undetected sea water in a void is a very serious thing and can lead to disaster. I checked my voids more often after that incident.

Several years ago I was checking the Coast Guard safety alerts and I found the following.

Right click on the article for easier reading.

Several years ago on a christian radio station I heard a Pastor talk about Watertight Integrity and personal integrity and it really impressed me. The following poem was born from that radio program but quite a few years later.

May we keep our bilges dry is my prayer . . . . .

Harbor of Refuge

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Recently, I was remembering an incident that happened to me during a typhoon on Guam. I made a drawing of the experience from my minds eye. Although it is not the most artistic drawing, it will serve as a representation of the geographic set-up of the incident.

The center structure in the drawing is a rock wall jetty that went along the channel out to the harbor. The foliage along the right edge of the drawing were mangrove swamps that went all the way to the Cabras highway out to the Glass Breakwater. It was probably a couple of hundred feet wide. Up in the left corner was jungle growth that paralleled the jetty. The lagoon between the jetty and the jungle was probably the width of a football field and very shallow.

As a typhoon neared landfall, close to dusk I got a phone call from one of the owners of the company that I worked for. He asked me to go down to the harbor where the companies two dive boats were and put more bumpers between the concrete dock and the boat as the storm was going to be stronger than we had originally thought. He lived a lot further away from the harbor than I did and the full force of the typhoon was just hours away. The bigger of the two boats was tied up securely at the harbor of refuge. It took me about 5 minutes to drive down to Cabras Lagoon where the smaller of the two dive boats was tied up. The wind was howling and the boat was already bouncing around against the concrete sea wall. At that point I realized that the extra bumpers were on the big boat that was out at the harbor of refuge so I jumped into the companies skiff and saw that the fuel tank was close to empty. It was stormy, wet, and uncomfortable and I should have fueled but I wanted to get back to the safety of our apartment with the rest of the family and took off full speed for the refuge. Palm trees were already swaying wildly in the wind. At the mouth of the harbor of refuge the wind was really strong because it was more exposed to the open. I quickly grabbed the extra bumpers and threw them into the skiff. I looked around to make sure all lines were tight and then untied the skiff and headed back towards the dock. To get back to the dock where my vehicle was I had to exit the large harbor of refuge where a hundred or so boats of all types were tied to the bottom to huge concrete blocks that were in rows. There were rows and rows of boats and it looked like a big car lot with sailboats and powerboats instead of cars.

This is a photo of me in the actual skiff that this incident occurred in.

As I left the refuge and headed into the screaming wind of the main channel the outboard sputtered and my heart skipped a beat. For a split second I thought maybe I would get back to the dock on fumes but then.....the engine killed. A few quick pulls on the starter cord and I realized that it was useless. A jolt of panic hit my heart as I could see that the wind was blowing off shore and would blow me right down the channel and out into the harbor if I didn't think fast. I grabbed for the oars and was shocked when there was only one. As I coasted to a stop the wind overpowered my momentum and down the channel I went. I knew that I would need to use the oar like a paddle but the length made it really awkward. I quickly went up and sat down with my legs hanging out over the bow and started paddling with the oar, first on one side of the boat and then the other. I was paddling like crazy

and was just barely able to overpower the wind. The problem was my stamina. How long could I keep this up? I only had about 60 feet until I was in the wind shadow of tall jungle growth at the mouth of the refuge. As my muscle started to tire, I slowed my paddling and realized that immediately I started losing ground. At that point a prayer entered my heart. Father in Heaven, please help me! Over the next three minutes, I lost consciousness of my surroundings. I just paddled like a wild man. When the wind would start to overpower me, a shot of panic and adrenaline would course through me. Quick glimpses of me blowing down the channel and then jumping out of the boat with the painter in my hand and holding on to the mangroves in mud up to my waist went through my mind. My mind refused to even ponder on the scenario of blowing out into the harbor with the mouth opening up to the open ocean.

Suddenly I popped back into awareness. I am close. Am I going to make it? Just a little further. Push yourself, push yourself. Burning muscles. Father in Heaven, just a little further.

Finally, with one big burst of paddling, I made it into the refuge. As I paddled up to our double-decker catamaran dive boat, sweat was dripping off of my chin and into my eyes. As I tied the skiff up to the catamaran, I realized that I had no way back to my vehicle. I sat down on the boat and caught my breath. I chuckled as I wondered if anyone saw me in my crisis. And then in my heart, "Father in Heaven, Thank you!" After a moment my strength returned and I directed my thoughts at fulfilling my task.

As the typhoon hadn't reached land yet, there were still people tying up there boats. Maybe one could give me a ride to the dock? I looked around but couldn't see anyone close by. I realized that I would have to swim back to the dock but could stay out of the major wind by swimming down through all of the boats in the refuge. I put on a life jacket for safety, grabbed the lines attached to the bumpers, jumped in the water and started towing the bumpers behind me as I made my way down through all of the sail and powerboats. By now it was dark. I didn't have a light with me so I stayed out of the channels to avoid getting hit by boats. It is a good thing that tropical water is warm. Even so, after the sun goes down it can get a little chilly. I slowly made my way down through the vessels, ducking under and around mooring lines and dock lines. At one point I was spotted by some boaters that lived on their sailboat and were making last minute adjustments on their mooring lines. I'm sure they were thinking, "what is that crazy fool doing?" By and by I made it through all of the vessels and then climbed out onto the dock at a submarine tour's facility. As I walked back to my vehicle my shoes were squirting water and making a squeaking sound. When I got to the smaller vessel I tied the extra bumpers between the boat and the concrete sea wall and then headed home. Denalee laughed as I told her the story, standing there in my soaked clothes.

The very worst case scenario could have been pretty bad but I don't thing it would have gotten that far. But I do think that if I wouldn't have been able to paddle my way back to the catamaran in the refuge that the whole episode would have turned out to take several hours more and would have been very traumatic as I would have had to tie the skiff off in the mangroves and sloshed through thick mangrove swamps to a highway and then would have had an hour walk back to my vehicle carrying the bulky and heavy bumpers in the midst of a typhoon.

Prayer and scripture knowledge is an interesting thing. Prayers don't mean much without experiences to go with them and back them up. I believe in the power of prayer and the value of scripture knowledge. Scripture had shown me that prayers can be answered. The following is a poem that I wrote after delivering one of the 150 passenger catamarans that Allen Marine built for New York Waterway back in 2003. I got caught in heavy fog in Millbank Sound which is about half way from Sitka to Vancouver, BC. The fog was so thick that I had to navigate using only radar. One of my crewman came up to the bridge and asked, "can you see where you're going?'

That sentence was the spark for the following poem. All I could see on the radar was a blip on the screen where the channel buoys were. My eyes where riveted to the screen to also watch for other vessels that might have been in the sound hidden in the fog like us. Of course I was going very slow in order to have reaction time in case something popped up in front of me that I didn't detect on the radar. It was intense. Prayers and faith that I would be guided were in my heart.

Right click on the poem for easier reading.

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much . . . . .

James 5:16

Cloth-of-Gold Cone Shell

This is another one of my favorite seashells. It is called the Cloth-of-Gold Cone or a Textile Cone shell. I had been looking for one of these shells the whole time we lived in Guam and then one day . . . . . there it was!

There is nothing like tropical shell collecting. While living on Guam our family spent hours and hours looking for shells. Then in Sitka, where the shells are harder to find because the water is so cold, we changed our focus from shells to sea glass.

I guess it would also be exciting to find a gold nugget, but swimming up on a beautiful shell under the sea where there are brightly colored fish and coral is a fabulous thing.

This next photo is of Denalee on one of our shell finding dives out at Coral Gardens.

Denalee is in the same skiff talked about in the HARBOR OF REFUGE blog.

Here is a glass bowl of all of our sea glass gathered around Sitka. Sea Glass are chunks of glass from bottles that have been broken on the beach and then get worn down because of the wave action. Nowadays, not too many glass bottles anymore.

Bryan and I searching for sea glass at Halibut Point in Sitka, Alaska.

Below is a photo of Sierra doing the same.

The Wonder of the Submarine

In another life, I think I was a WW II submarine commander. Everything about submarines interest me. The photo above was a sub that I coordinated scuba courses for when I worked for MDA on Guam. We had an orientation meeting in the mess hall and we had 80 men in an area where no more than 20 could sit down and eat at a time. It was tight and I began to

think about a fast escape in an emergency. The U.S.S. Chicago is a Los Angeles class fast-attack sub. I had a chance to tour the bridge of the Chicago. All of the gauges and controls were covered and they told us not to take any photos. It was so cool to see the periscope. They explained that one guy sat at the dive depth controls and another guy sat at the direction controls and they were both directed by a control officer that took orders from the commander.

One day on the way to the sub on the base someone stopped me and asked me if I was special forces because I was dressed in khaki and had a beard. I told him I was a civilian dive instructor but I don't think he believed me. To get on the sub we had to first board a ship called a sub-tender. It was specifically set up to take care of subs if they needed resupply or repairs. Before we went aboard there was a guard with a shotgun, and all the sailors would salute to the flag on the way on and ask for permission to come aboard.

This next quote came from President Hinckley's book, STAND FOR SOMETHING.

One day while skippering a dive boat out to the dive site on Guam, I passed a Los Angeles class sub coming into Apra Harbor as I was leaving. The sub had slowed down and didn't leave much of a wake, so it seemed. Boy, was I mistaken. If you look at the photo above, you can see what size of a wake a sub is capable of producing. As we crossed the wake, we dropped down into a deep trough and as we came up out, we scooped a mass of sea water that soaked the people standing at the front rail up to the waist. I really bruised the ego of a Japanese guy who was well known in Japan as a diving guru on Guam. Being such an experienced diver, he should have known better, but there he stood, soaked up to the waist. The wall of water ran down the deck to the stern where it dropped back into the sea. People in the rest of the boat just got water up around their ankles. When it was over we all had a good laugh. All but the Japanese guy.

When we lived on Guam, I took a sailing course at the naval base. It was a blast. At the end of the course you could solo with one of their small sail boats out on Apra Harbor. One day I took Trevor with me. We had a great time sailing around the harbor. At one point we capsized the sail boat and then righted it. That is a very important skill to know as it is easy to capsize a small sailboat in the wind. Trevor must have been 9 or 10 and even though he had a life vest on it was a bit traumatic for him. We were sailing along having a blast without a care in the world when all of the sudden I heard a loud voice in a blow horn telling us to stay out of the shipping lanes. It was a huge submarine. As we steered out of the shipping lane we laughed like mischievous boys , which we were.

When I was delivering a vessel to a place called Cowichan Bay near Victoria, BC, I had the opportunity to tour a Russian Submarine. The sub had been built in 1971. We were acting silly and saluted for the photo.

I was in New York City a year or so later and toured the USS Submarine Growler that had been built in 1958. It was one of our first subs that fired nuclear warheads.. The older US sub was built better and was still in excellent shape. The Russian sub didn't even come close to the US sub. It was so evident that our technology was much more superior than theirs.

The submarine USS Growler is the only intact strategic diesel-powered submarine that fired nuclear missiles open to the public anywhere in the world.

USS Growler

Black-footed Albatross

Back in August of 2007, two co-workers and I at Allen Marine in Sitka delivered a 65' bow-loading vessel from Sitka to King Salmon. The trip took us up the coast to Yakatat, across the gulf to Kodiak, up the Aleutian chain to False Pass, and then up the Bering Sea to Naknik . Out in the middle of the gulf we frequently came upon Black-footed Albatross. They live their life out in the middle of the sea, only coming to shore to nest. They have a 7 foot wingspan and fly so majestically only a couple of feet above the waves.

The following video is footage that I took of the Albatross out in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska.

I am amazed that the Black-footed Albatross, living in such a gray world, so solitary in the wide expanse of the ocean, can fly so gracefully with the air of loving life. He is a wise bird, loving that existence that he has been bequeathed.

Photo from Wikipedia.

The Mariner's Question

This is a poem that I wrote on May 3rd, 2000. I wrote it after reading an article in the magazine PROFESSIONAL MARINER. The article was called "THE BILGE PUMP : A LIFESAVER".

The similarity between a bilge pump and the Savior came to me in the words of this poem.

(Click on the poem to enlarge it for reading.)

This is the picture that accompanied the article.

I believe that the Savior gave His life for each one of us.

I believe that if we follow His precepts, we can live with Him again.

To my wonderful and handsome Grandsons:

Jace and Gage

May they love the sea like their

Grandfather and Great Grandfather.

Wondrous Mantas of the Deep!

This is a photo of a Manta that I took at Gun Beach on the West Coast of Guam. I was teaching Scuba Diving to a large group of Japanese students when all of the sudden two Manta Rays started circling our group. They seemed to appeared out of nowhere! I had the divers kneeling in a circle on the bottom at about 30 feet.

I had never seen Mantas in the wild before and I was completely captivated. I had a small underwater camera that my parents-in-law had given me for my birthday and set off to get a photo. I made sure that the other dive instructors had control of the students and off I went. The mantas just kept circling the group.

I started swimming along with the circling mantas, snapping photos when I got a good shot. All of the sudden the Manta that I was the closest to, slowed down as if inviting my approach. My forward momentum took me closer than I cared to be. Especially because the Manta turned and flashed its belly at me. A shot of fear shot through me as I remembered that Sting Rays had a barb that could be deadly. Remember that I was new enough to the marine world that I didn't know that Mantas were docile and harmless. I immediately started to back-peddle so-to-speak, pushing water toward the Manta with my hands and fins to escape from the white belly and tail that had been flared in my face. I'm sure that it was quite humorous to watch my antics. The Manta took off on his circling path around the group of dive students and then as fast as they appeared, they disappeared off into the blue sea. When my heart beat slowed, I returned to the amazed students who still were kneeling on the bottom with eyes as big as saucers. What a cool experience! But I was a little embarrassed when I inquired and found out that Mantas are absolutely harmless.

There are a lot of Mantas south of Guam in the Yap Islands. I had dove in Ulithi Atoll but did not see any Mantas during my dives. Dive masters in Yap have a unique way of feeding the Mantas in Yap for the dive tourists. They spray Cheese Whiz in their hair and the Manta flies over the top of them and sucks the cheese out of their hair with their huge mouths. I bet that is a weird sensation, having a huge Manta sucking in on the top of your head.

On dive tours in Guam, we used to feed the Moray Eels at Hap's Reef. We fed them hot dog wieners. Franks wear probably not the healthiest thing to feed marine life but that was the practice at the time. The problem with feeding the Morays hot dogs was that hot dogs look like fingers and the Morays didn't differentiate. I would cut off a piece of wiener and stick it on the end of my knife and hold it out for the Moray. Sometimes you had to kind off coax the Moray out of its hole by waving the wiener close to the mouth of its hole. I would put my other hand flat on my chest rather than let it hang down somewhere where another Moray in another hole would come out and take a bite thinking that my finger was a wiener. I never got bit, but a friend of mine, Jeff Earl got bit from time to time. He would sometimes forget about his other hand.

When I could coax a Moray out of his hole, he would cautiously move out toward the wiener on the end of my knife. Then I could take my other hand and stroke the slimy body of the Moray.

Gun Beach is names after the anti-aircraft military gun found at the North end of Tumon Bay in Guam. You can see a photo of that gun above. I got the photo from the Guamportal website.