Charter sinkings among deadliest tragedies on coast.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Commercial fishing has always been a high-risk job, but charter boat passengers might not realize that they are buying into that risk when they head out to sea on a trip.

Charter fishing vessels represented three of the top five deadliest accidents on the Oregon Coast over the past 30 years. And when the Taki-Tooo rolled last week, killing 11 of the 19 people on board, commercial fishermen weren't that surprised.

The reality of erratic seas, rough bar crossings and four or five fatal accidents in the Oregon Coast commercial fishing fleet each year constantly teach the hard lessons of the men and women who work there.

Passengers signing up for charter expeditions don't fully appreciate that they share the dangers of the commercial fishery, said Jim Gibbs, author of "Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast" and the foremost expert on Oregon shipping.

"It's a little more risky (even) in a charter boat because they're smaller as a whole and they have these large, open afterdecks," Gibbs said.

Most charter boat passengers aren't equipped to decide whether they need a lifejacket, yet Coast Guard regulations leave it up to them, Gibbs said. "That's plain foolishness."

If the sea seems safer now, that's partly because the modern era brought alternate means of travel. Fewer travelers mean fewer marine deaths.

Sea transport was the major means of travel from the 1880s until 1920s, Gibbs said, when accidents would kill 20 to 40 people at a time.

Also, new technologies have improved safety. Skippers now rely on radar, sonar, depth finders, global positioning systems and satellite telephone.

Still, fishermen are vulnerable to tides, currents, winds, waves and shifting sandbars. Plus, ocean water that averages 50 degrees can kill a person within three hours.

Gibbs, who lives in a lighthouse he built on the north side of Cape Perpetua, said people who live and work on the ocean learn to keep one eye on themselves and one eye on the sea.

He learned the lesson as a young man in the Coast Guard. Gibbs put in for duty at the Scotch Cap lighthouse on the Bering Sea but was assigned to one on the Oregon Coast. Within a year, a tsunami struck the Alaska lighthouse, crushing its four-foot walls like an eggshell. All five attendants drowned.

Another time, Gibbs was walking along the base of Cape Perpetua with his chocolate Lab, Anchor, when he saw a sneaker wave headed his way. He clawed up the hillside; Anchor was dashed against the rocks and swept away. An oil portrait of the dog with a yellow tennis ball in its mouth hangs on the wall of his home - as well as a photograph of a 160-foot wave crashing over the lighthouse where he had served.

Fishermen don't forget the dangers, he said.

"They accept their role just like driving a racing car. Some of them are going to be killed every year," he said. "I don't think there will ever be a time when there won't be any accidents."

The one improvement that would reduce fatalities when the inevitable accidents happen would be mandatory use of life jackets, Gibbs said.

After every charter boat accident the National Transportation Safety Board performs a detailed investigation, and then comes out with its recommendations. Independent investigators almost always called for the presence, passenger training and use of lifejackets.

In 1986, investigators flat out said that the U.S. Coast Guard should require: "That life preservers be worn by passengers of small ocean and coastwise passenger vessels up to 65 feet in length, while on open decks during the time that these vessels are leaving or entering ports which are susceptible to breaking waves."

In Oregon's deadly charter accidents, occurring about once each decade, passengers seldom donned lifejackets.

The 41-foot charter boat Pearl C lost power in the ocean outside the Columbia River bar with 10 people aboard in September 1976. A Coast Guard ship was towing the Pearl C across the bar when the boat turned on its port side, flooded and sank. Eight passengers drowned. None wore lifejackets.

Ten men from the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Training Center in Eugene - plus two more passengers and three crew - were thrown into the sea in 1993 when the 50-foot Rain Song capsized while crossing the bar at Yaquina Bay.

A wave "25 foot or better" flipped the charter fishing boat, said passenger Irwin Ames, who was then a 63-year-old Boise Cascade millwright. "There's nothing more powerful than a wave of water. That's the truth," he recalled.

Three of the four men who died were young men assigned to the Eugene training center.

The Taki-Tooo accident came a decade after the Rain Song wreck. Minutes before a 12- to 15-foot wave rolled the boat, deckhand Tamara Buell offered the passengers lifejackets. They all reportedly declined, but some found the preservers and put them on while standing in the capsized hull.

Ames said he couldn't believe that a decade after the Rain Song accident, charter boat passengers weren't automatically wearing lifejackets.

Deadliest boat wrecks

Over the past 30 years, 54 commercial and charter fishing boats have wrecked off Oregon, according to records supplied by author Jim Gibbs. Here are the seven deadliest:

Christa, 1972: Brookings, 50-foot fishing boat, 13 dead

Taki-Tooo, 2003: Tillamook bar, 32-foot charter fishing boat, 11 dead

Pearl C, 1976: Columbia River bar, 41-foot charter fishing boat, 8 dead

Midnight Express, 1981: Columbia River entrance, dragger, 4 dead

Cougar, 1998: Depoe Bay, 46-foot charter fishing boat, 4 dead

Amber Dawn II, 1994: Yaquina Bay, 43-foot crab boat, 4 dead

Nesika, 2001: Newport, 36-foot crab boat, 4 dead

Another 14 boat wrecks claimed three lives each.