Northwest Sea Disasters: Beyond Acceptable Risk Review

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(More customer reviews)I was given my copy of Northwest Sea Disasters: Beyond Acceptable risk by my good friend Ian Keiter, son of John Keiter. I have to say that it was valuable way beyond the $17 cover price. Not in that it was a personal gift, but rather becuase it taught me many important lessons about safety on the water that could otherwise only be learned through personal experience. And I hope that I never have to go through the experiences that the subjects of this book did.
On the whole, the book is a tad long winded. The book is divided into two sections. So far as I can tell, Leif Terdal wrote the first half, and John Keiter wrote the second half. The first half definitely drags, spending too much time recounting, word for word, the testimony of mulitiple different witnesses and survivors. One particular disaster, with many survivors (and sadly, many victims as well) seems to take up a full 25% of the book. The second half moves much more quickly and really gets to the meat of the story. It took me two months to get through the first half, and only one night to read the second.
Despite that, the entire book is packed with useful lessons. I think that it should be required reading for anyone who takes their boat offshore anywhere along the west coast, or anywhere else for that matter. Leif and John have taken the lessons that these people learned the hard way, and shared them with the public in a way that has never really been done before.

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Northwest waters off Oregon and Washington, pose unique dangers to boaters. All of the navigable bars that a boater must cross to reach the ocean, such as the Tillamook Bay bar, the Columbia River and Depoe Bay are hazardous. When a boat is in danger or actually sinks, the Coast Guard comes to the rescue. Search and rescue itself poses hazards, often times compounded by delayed or inaccurate distress calls from the captain. In addition the captain may fail to provide timely communication and leadership to crew and passengers during the crises. This book reviews the sinking of five charter boats. Four of them, the Pearl-C, Cougar, Gambler, and the Taki-Tooo accounted for the greatest loss of life in the charter boat industry in Oregon and Washington. Survivors of these charter boats provide vivid and dramatic accounts of the sinkings and search and rescue. We also review the sinking with the loss of life of the Aleutian Enterprise in the Bering Sea, crab boats off the Oregon and Washington coast, as well as the loss of the Sea King during a storm as it was being towed across the Columbia River bar. We focus on the human element in decision making during emergencies at sea, and provide guidelines for boaters to consider their own experiences at sea with respect to safety. An understanding of the hazards on our Northwest waters are important to recreational boaters who go on their private boats to fish off shore.

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