Canada
Cutting up the North
Dalton's Gold Rush Trail
I saw a couple of boats go down past us and they came back up. We were fishing with someone, and he went down but he never came back up. Jason said, "Dad, they must have got out." I said, "They must have gone through Canoe Pass." That's an area where you can get through, sneak by all these big waves in behind these rocks.
So I went out, my motor in reverse, and I was pointing downstream, looking at these waves. That was the biggest mistake I made, right there. I should have had my boat turned the other way, pointing upstream so I could go forward.
I happened to just glance to my left - and we were only ten feet away from the shoreline, but it's sheer rock cliff down both sides - and I said, "Holy mackerel, we're moving." And we were doing 10 or 15 knots. I looked up again, and by the time I looked up we were within fifty or seventy-five feet of these waves. There's no grey area in there, they call it the point of no return, and I was in that. And I knew it. And I was in trouble.
I didn't panic. I said, "Geez, we're in trouble." I put the boat in full reverse, but the water came right over the back of the boat, and I was afraid of flooding the motor out. I knew I couldn't go forward and turn around. If I'd turned sideways the current would have just caught me and pushed me into it broadside.
I sat there and sat there. I knew I'd gone too far. I said, "I'll wait for one of these big rollers to lay down in front of me and I'll sneak over the top of it. That's how the guys get out: they time the waves. But I wasn't used to those big waves and I blew it. I went into the first wave not realizing that when they crash down they created such a pile of foam and bubbles - there was so much air in the water - that there was no thrust in my prop. When I gave it full guns to go, the boat just sat there. We're doing 4,000 RPMs, and we're sitting still, the boat's just slowly moving forward. So I'm sinking quickly into these bubbles. All of a sudden it grabs the solid water and it starts to climb this wave. By this time my timing's way out. I'm underneath the crest by this time. The crest is over top of me.
The wave came up and it took the cabin right off the boat. I remember my boy yelling, "We're dead." I just saw a huge blue wall of water in front of me, bluey-green. I looked up but I couldn't even see the top of the wave, it was so high. That's the last thing I remember. It took the cabin right off, took the windshield, took us with it and threw us out of the boat. There was a pile of boats behind us and they said they never saw anything like it in their lives. The boat was right upside down, and the wave threw it through the air about fifty or sixty feet. The wave came down on top of it and just blew it to pieces - nothing left of it.
