A Life Wasted

Prince William Sound

Outside was a dangerous place with the boat wallowing in heavy seas.  Having no other choice I went out into the storm.  Waves were breaking over both sides of the boat so I was immediately soaked.  This is a factor because the water was extremely cold, which drained my strength in minutes.  Holding tight to a safety line I carefully made my way to the stern.  Without a thought of pulling in my sea anchor I cut the line.  Almost instantly the boat was in worse shape with the sea anchor cut free.  The sea anchor had prevented me from proper steerage, but it did help hold the boat reasonably stable.  With it gone the North Wind rolled hard in the sea and was in serious danger of rolling.

The boat would be in better shape once I applied throttle and pointed the bow into the waves, but to do so I had to make it to the pilot house.  With waves completely covering me as I worked my way carefully forward.  A particular large roll and wave swept my feet off the deck.  The only reason I wasn't swept overboard was the death grip I had on the safety line.  With the boat rolled to my side, my legs went high over the side of the outboard rail.  When the wave passed and the boat rolled in the opposite direction my entire body dropped with my right knee slamming hard against the port side gunwale. 

The pain was sharp and intense.  I nearly blacked out.  Had I lost my grip I'd have been swept over the side and lost at sea.  My survival instinct kicked in.  I held on and pulled my body back into the boat.  My knee hurt so bad that I was sure I'd shattered it.  Using the fish hatch as a crutch, I worked my way back into the pilot house.  Thankfully I had an elevated captain's chair, so I crawled into it and fastened my seat belt.  I was in so much pain that it took another minute to gather myself and push my throttle forward.

I needed to go further north and east to enter the passage for Prince William Sound, but I was in too much pain to keep going, so I turned north and east towards the nearest point of land.  There I found protection from the seas behind a barrier island.  I didn't know it at the time, but I had actually entered Prince William Sound through Cape Puget, a closer route through the barrier islands than the one I had been headed towards.  I quickly located a protected cove, dropped anchor and slept for twenty hours.

Whittier is not an easy place to reach.  By sea you have to thread through all the barrier islands that protect Prince William Sound just to work your way to the northern spot where you can finally turn west towards it.  As the route passes near a massive glacier.  These weren't the first icebergs I'd seen since I had served on a Coast Guard icebreaker in the north Atlantic, but they were the first icebergs I'd seen from a small wood boat.  Prince William Sound was flat calm so the icebergs were easy to spot and just as easy to avoid, yet I was still cautious of them at first.

I'd never been to Prince William Sound, though I'd heard plenty about the place.  It was late summer of 1990.  A year earlier the super tanker Exxon Valdez had run aground at the end of Valdez Narrows and spilled thousand of gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound.  Every American knew this.  Every Alaskan knew this more because the constant clean up effort was always in the news.  Coverage of the Alaska oil spill was much like coverage of the Viet Nam war.  Every night the news was sensational.  Pictures of dead birds and seals covered in crude oil.

Because of this I was apprehensive about the destruction I would see to the once pristine Prince William Sound.  But I didn't see any destruction.  I entered Prince William Sound on the western edge and traveled north to Whittier.  My route was on the west side of Prince William Sound.  Valdez, where the oil spill had occurred was more than 100 miles east, yet I fully expected to see a thick film of oil on the water and teams of volunteers on the beach using gallons of dish soap to clean crude oil off the wings of the poor seals and ducks.  I expected to see this because this is what you saw on the news.  Yet all the way to Whittier I saw none of this.

I saw humpback whales for the first time in my life.  I saw killer whales.  I saw sea otters and sea lions.  If you spend any time in Alaska you stop seeing bald eagles because they are everywhere, but here I took notice and saw bald eagles in abundance.  I took note of this because bald eagles will not range in an area that is polluted.  There was no sign of pollution on the west side of Prince William Sound.  The waters I traveled were the most beautiful aquatic spot on earth.

Whittier was an interesting place.  I noticed the differences between it and other Alaskan sea ports as I drew near.  For starters the harbor had pleasure boats moored.  The idea of boating for pleasure in Alaska seemed rather perverse to me.  Yet in the brief time I had spent in Prince William Sound I could understand it.  The waters were so calm and the area so beautiful, it did indeed seem like a great place to go boating for fun.  The other thing out of place were the twin high-rise buildings.

You can drive to Whittier, but no road goes there.  A puzzle, but true.  Whittier is less than fifty air miles from Anchorage but a pair of high mountains separate the village and the city.  During World War Two the United States Navy needed a safe harbor for it's war ships, a place were the water didn't freeze and a place safe from the threat of submarines.  Whittier was just the place.  The water of Prince William Sound never froze and there was no way a submarine could make it to Whittier without being detected.

To make Whittier accessible by land the Army Corp of Engineers cut a narrow tunnel through each of the two mountains then laid a train track to connect Whittier to the road leading to Anchorage.  The tunnels were just wide enough for a single train to pass through.  It was so narrow a person in one of the tunnels when a train passed would be crushed.  They also built a large fuel tank farm and refueling facilities.  The land around the village is narrow and sparse.  Like most of the area in Prince William Sound, the transition from deep water to high mountain is quick.  Whittier's land was wider than normal for the area, but not enough to house all the support personal the military needed.  For this reason they built a matching pair of high-rise buildings.  Those buildings would look odd anywhere in Alaska, but on this tiny stretch of remote land they were completely alien.

One of the buildings had been empty since the military left after the war.  With a handful of exceptions, everyone who lived in Whittier lived in the other building.  That building also housed all shops, stores, bars and restaurants, with the exception of a restaurant on the water that catered to tourist.  Those tourist either came in either by train or cruise ship.  Either way they only stayed for the day because there were no motel rooms.  Whittier is a different kind of place.

From town I called Mary and asked her to pick me up.  I didn't think my knee we shattered, but I couldn't fish until I recovered.