Great Escapes
There is nothing placid about San Francisco Bay. Its waters have hosted brutal storms, horrendous accidents, and countless hours of drama. Captain Paul Lobo knows that better than most. As a licensed sea and harbor pilot in those treacherous waters, he piloted nearly 6,500 vessels in a 31-year career. His harrowing experiences—and lessons—are excerpted from his memoir Crossing the Bar.
Most pilots don’t like discussing their errors or miraculous recoveries, but I will because if something can go wrong in piloting, it probably will. This isn’t always caused by pilot error; rather, there are so many things entirely out of the pilot’s control, such as equipment failure; misinterpretation of a pilot’s orders; putting the rudder the wrong way; weather incidents such as unexpected wind shear, heavy rain, or fog; published data being wrong; events happening out of the pilot’s sight, e.g., the crew letting the anchors go at the wrong time, not at all, or putting out the wrong amount; or actions of other pilots, as when saying they will remain at the dock, then running you out of the channel. I had my fair share of close calls, and thank goodness I got out of almost all of them.
Yes, I did have a few incidents such as going aground three times and twice touching docks hard enough to do some damage. This makes my accident rate about .0006 percent based on how many ships I moved, so in general I had a normal career. However, when you move massive ships, sometimes things get broken. I liked when other pilots discussed jams they got themselves out of.
I knew I could always learn something from their experiences, and if nothing else, they made good sea stories. When someone goofed up and went before the Commission, you read about it in their monthly minutes; otherwise, the pilot might never mention the incident.
This section is about incidents that happened to me that didn’t involve the UP Bridge, where I had three near-misses. After reading this, you might think I had a lot of interesting experiences, and I did, but I’m not so sure I was the exception. Either I had crazier things happen to me, or I was very good at extricating myself out of trouble, which Al Clarke counseled me to do when I was only 26.
In front of Antioch’s Riverview Lodge, between Kimball Island and Antioch Point, is the only place wide enough to turn around a ship after passing New York Point three miles downstream. From here the San Joaquin River turns east toward Stockton another thirty miles upriver. Riverview is also a good place to dine unless you’re eating when a ship crashes into the restaurant, which happened once. Too much speed will do that every time.
One of my more bizarre “near misses” happened on my way up to Domtar on Goldbond Trailblazer loaded with Gypsum rock. These particular ships had cargo doors on the port side near the stern, so they had to be docked port side-to. We had to turn them around at Riverview, then backed them up more than a mile to the pier.
That day, it was clear with flood current. I wasn’t concerned about the job because daylight always made jobs easier, especially upriver ones, and flood was ideal to go backwards because the ship would be facing into it. I actually liked backing ships into berths because their pivot point moves aft as the ship gains sternway, so you can control the bow more easily. Trailblazer had a small bow thruster, which is a propeller in a tunnel perpendicular to the hull near the bow that pushes the bow left and right. Thrusters have less power than tugs, but when going astern they are effective if the ship is moving slowly. American Navigation Company’s tugs, Bobby Jo and Marauder, assisted me.
Bobby Jo was a small single screw tug, but she was handy, meaning she could move around quickly. She put up two lines through chocks on both sides of the stem so she could work both bows. Acting like a “rudder” in front of the ship, her bow to mine, she could push the bow either way as the ship moved up the slough backwards. Marauder was tied up on the port quarter laying alongside until I needed her. Using the ship’s engine and the current, I slowly moved the ship from Riverview up the last stretch of slough.
I thought it was slick that AmNav owned another tug named Lobo and was thoughtful enough to give me the tug’s name board when I retired. I have it proudly displayed at our Cape Cod home. As ships traverse this little waterway, the river bends in a slight arch on the portside. When I was about two shiplengths away from the berth, the bow started sagging slowly toward the portside river bank. I wanted the current dead ahead, not only on one side, which could affect the ship. I had to react quickly.
I assumed the current was a little stronger on the starboard side and I could control the swing using only the thruster. The bow was only moving slightly, so I put the bow thruster lever all the way over to starboard. When that didn’t do anything, I radioed Bobby Jo to push full into the port bow. Even at 90 degrees and Full Speed, she didn’t budge the bow in the slightest. When the swing increased more, it really got my attention. Something was terribly amiss. I let out all the stops, ordering Marauder to come up to Full Speed into the quarter, hoping to swing the stern back toward the dock.
I was certain Marauder’s two several-thousand-horsepower diesels would do the trick. They didn’t. The bow kept accelerating toward shore and I wasn’t the least bit comfortable, hollering into the wheelhouse, “Half Ahead” as I raced out to the port wing. I had to stop the ship from going backwards and stabilize the situation. Even Half Ahead didn’t slow the ship or slow the turn that had started involuntarily. I didn’t have much left up my sleeve, so I ordered “Hard right!” trying to help Marauder push the stern in and stop the ever-increasing rotation.
I’m sure I was praying, anything to help, but nothing had any effect. I was edgy, and the last thing a pilot can be is nervous. I had piloted thousands of ships, but I was in uncharted waters. Not only was it bizarre that the ship had a mind of her own, but I felt helpless. I only had one bell left, which I was reluctant to order because I didn’t want to drive the ship into the bank or, worse, the fast approaching dock. I was running out of options; I yelled, “Full Ahead,” into the wheelhouse.
It didn’t matter, the bow swung faster and faster toward the end of the pier. Water pushing on the side of a ship has a tremendous effect, especially if a ship is deep in the water like she was. I never had a ship this much out of my control, nor had one even come close to making a 180-degree turn I didn’t initiate!
I waited for the swing to stop as she made a big turn with the bow doing most of the swinging. As the legendary Captain Don Hughes often opined, “She’s in the hands of God now,” and he was so right.
My last option was to drop an anchor, but I feared the ship’s crew might drop the wrong one and flatten Bobby Jo. This happened once when a pilot panicked, forgetting his tug was under the hawespipe and the anchor almost hit the tug’s wheelhouse! Full Speed wasn’t only not stopping the swing, but soon, if she didn’t hit the pier, she would be perpendicular to it. If the ship had too much headway on, I might very well wind up ramming the pier I was praying to miss. I also had no idea how much water was outside the channel. As far as I knew, no one had ever turned a fully loaded ship off Domtar.
I was rapidly getting myself into “irons.” Either I was going to run the “expensive” end of the ship (the propeller) into the mud or the bow would flatten not only into the pier, but also the expensive un-loader sitting on it. No matter what I did I was screwed, and I didn’t want to join the “Million Dollar Club” just yet.
I had nothing to lose. I was so certain the pier was a goner, I stopped both the ship’s and the tugs’ engines, thinking, Well, it’s probably better to run the ship aground than to hit the pier. I was sure it would explode into a million splinters at any second. The lesser of the two evils would be the aground, but the ship continued spinning like a whirling dervish, and it still looked like we were going to knock down the bloody dock.
As I gazed at the unloader, like a deer in headlights, the bow went flying by without making a sound. It was the sweetest silence I can remember. Momentarily the ship was perpendicular to the dock, something I was certain I shouldn’t have been able to do. I assumed that the ship was longer than the river was wide off the berth. The ship wasn’t aground; instead, it was facing upriver just as if I were going to dock the ship starboard-side-to. Thinking back, it was good she spun around or we might have drifted upriver sideways until I ran out of the wet part of the river. The stunned captain hadn’t said a word the whole time. Guiltily, I asked him, “Captain, are you sure you don’t want to go starboard-side-to?” He looked at me with this solemn expression. “No, Pilot, we must dock portside-to,” which I already knew!
Just because the ship was facing upriver didn’t mean the current took a break; it was still shoving us toward Gaylord’s pier. I had to back all the way back to Riverview against the current, which wasted more than an hour. How embarrassing this was I cannot tell you, but I was glad the old man took it in stride.
At Riverview, I turned the ship around (again) and dragged it back up the river, repeating what I had just done without all the extra turning. The entire time I was nervous I might replicate the harebrained stunt that had almost been a disaster. It never crossed my mind to turn the ship off the dock, but I had been too lucky already. The ship acted like a real lady the second time, adding to my confusion.
I’m not even certain how I screwed up in my approach or if I learned anything, but no ship ever got out of my control again. The only damage, other than to my ego, was all the standby time my car service charged me.
Early one evening on November 22, 1977, I boarded the American tanker, SS Santa Clara, as a weak sun slowly sank astern of the ship. After arriving on the darkened bridge, I got my bearings, then took the conn from Captain Church, swinging the ship southeast toward the Main Ship Channel.
The wind wasn’t particularly strong, but the seas were fairly large, the aftermath of an early winter storm. The Santa Clara was drawing 33 feet, so I anticipated a cushion of about 22 feet under the keel, more than sufficient water to enter port even with the tall swells running. I still wanted to be in the deepest part of the Bar Channel, which is maintained to 55 feet.
Despite the failing light, I could see waves building up on the north side of the channel near Buoy #1, where, if the bar broke, it would there first. Two miles farther east the bar could also break near Buoy #7, so I didn’t want to be anywhere near either of those buoys. As the ship slowly picked up speed, her bow wake started flowing smoothly down the black and rust-colored hull as I looked down from the bridge as the ship slowly rolled from side to side.
There wasn’t a thing to worry about, it was going to be a routine transit. There I went not worrying again! While shooting the breeze with Captain Church, I heard an eerie sound I never heard before, or for that matter since. A sustained rumbling noise reverberated through the portside door, faint at first, then increasingly louder. I’d never heard of a wave building and making noise, but the commotion was undeniable, sounding like a freight train getting closer.
Confused, I nonchalantly strolled over to the open door as if nothing were wrong and glanced aft for myself. That’s when I saw it! A great wave with spume on top building up and overtaking the ship. I can only assume a rogue wave was following us and rising higher because the water gets much shallower near the Bar Channel! I spun around, certain the immense wave was going to swamp the ship. “Do you have a lookout forward, Cap?” “Half Ahead,” I ordered as he faced me with this quizzical look.
“Half Ahead,” The mate answered, moving the lever up to Half.
“Sure Mr. Pilot, the AB’s on the bow, what’s wrong?”
I said, “Crap, you’d better get him off there, we’re about to get pooped!”
He grabbed his radio and yelled, “Tony, get your ass off the fo’c’sle, right now!”
We watched with growing apprehension as the lookout slid down the forecastle’s hand rails like a fireman down a pole landing on the main deck near a bunch of valves and pipes. I prayed the deck equipment might somehow block the brunt of the wave that was outracing the ship. As I gazed at the boiling water overtaking us, SMASH!
Up and over the middle of the port side of the hull rose a huge wall of green and white water rising straight up into the air, as if it had punched the side of the ship. The next second the wave fell en masse onto the foredeck with a loud whoosh as if a giant had emptied an enormous bucket of soapy water onto the foredeck. The water rushed across, sweeping from port to starboard at a thirty-degree angle to the keel and completely submerging the forward part of the ship.
As the water raced, we could still see a single white light coming from the AB’s flashlight going up and down with his swaying arm. He knew what was about to happen and was hightailing it for all he was worth up the starboard side, trying to get into the lee of the main house before the deluge. It was too late. The foredeck became totally overwhelmed with frothing water as if the ship were a submarine.
When the white light disappeared, I thought, Man, what if that poor bastard goes over the side? Would he survive in the freezing Pacific and would they blame me? With that, the ship heeled sharply over to starboard, causing most of the green water to cascade over the bulwarks and through freeing ports— holes in the bulwarks—which allow water to escape over ships’ sides. Ships’ decks are also built with a slight arch in them, called camber, which allows water to flow to the ships’ sides, relieving the deck of its weight. Just when I was thinking the AB was a goner, a lonely flashlight reignited, except now the motion was more like a police car’s twirling lights as the AB ran like mad. Happily, the next wave just rolled harmlessly by and no more green water came over the bulwarks. The old man radioed, asking how the AB was. He replied that he had grabbed onto a stanchion and held on for mercy, getting soaked, but was okay. I brought in some deep ships with some terrible seas, but I was only pooped once.
People have asked me how modern radar could have failed when Captain Cota hit the Bay Bridge. I just tell them shit happens. As I’ve written, I’ve had engine and rudder casualties and far too many helmsmen who couldn’t steer worth a damn. When equipment fails, you pray it comes back on line quickly before you have an accident, or you go to Plan “B.”
At the beginning of my career I didn’t have a Plan “B,” and on the horrifying day I am writing about, it almost sank it. After 1990, we were required to take Bridge Resource Management classes, where we learned a series of events usually leads to an accident. In my case, this turned out to be true. However, BRM didn’t even exist when this near miss occurred. Also, I didn’t attend manned model training until 1991, when I became a big endorser of it.
I was a relatively new pilot when I piloted the fully loaded American tanker SS Exxon San Francisco with 41 feet of draft. Her keel was more than four stories below sea level. Back then, 41 feet was very deep for most ships. Years later, we piloted 50-footers regularly, but we could only do that at high water to safely pass over a shoal northeast of Alcatraz. Coming in from the sea I had clear visibility, so I wasn’t thinking I needed radar to navigate and wrongly assumed the Exxon officers had properly tuned them for entering port. Plus, it wasn’t my job to tune ships’ radars.
These assumptions were the first two links in the chain. If I had just looked at the radars, I might not be writing this hair-raising story. As the years sailed by, the less I took anything for granted. In my business, being too relaxed is a terrible idea. Even being a little on edge never hurt, and I wish I had been more so on that day. Years later when I was a senior training pilot, I advised my apprentices, Never take anything for granted. Always double-check everything!
This story is also about a lookout who failed to see a big sea-type buoy directly in front of the ship as he stood guard on the bow. He was the third link. These mistakes almost led to an ecological disaster with a capital “E.” The entire trip in from sea, we had a low ceiling of gray clouds, or what I call high fog, but it wasn’t foggy. San Francisco’s famous fog often drifts into The Bay through the Golden Gate toward Alcatraz, where it usually dissipates. When it clears, it does so first north of Alcatraz Island, where I was heading after passing under the Golden Gate. I was relaxed as I could be, considering I was on a ship weighing 32,450 tons fully loaded with toxic Alaska crude. I was so relaxed, I was quietly talking to the helmsman, who happened to be a pilot’s daughter. Normally, I didn’t talk to helmsmen. I wasn’t inattentive, as far as the navigation was concerned, but I should have looked at the damn radars. After this event, I never made that mistake again. After the Valdez disaster, many pilots, including me, hated going on Exxon ships because of all the piloting regulations they implemented about speeds and times they wanted ships to be at certain points.
This nitpicking was strange because if they had hired a pilot at Valdez, that accident would never have happened! In any case, we were stuck with Exxon’s idea of how to pilot ships, which to my way of thinking wasn’t correct, nor was it safer than how we handled other tankers. When this near miss happened, Exxon’s officers weren’t so uptight because the Valdez tragedy was 10 years in the future.
They were so laid back, in fact, that some Exxon ships replaced their engine-order-telegraph handles with beer keg handles. It was a joke because American crews are forbidden to drink. I bet Exxon’s First Engineers replaced those beer handles five minutes after oil started gushing out of the Valdez after she ran over Bligh Reef!
Once the ship neared the Golden Gate, she was still going along about twelve knots, so my plan was to slow her down as we entered the bay. Then, as the bow passed under the bridge, I ordered a new course of 075 pointing at Angel Island about three miles away, which I could still plainly see. The very next instant, what had been high clouds suddenly dropped down, enveloping the ship in zero visibility. I had never seen this happen before, and it really threw me off guard. I thought we were past having fog.
Up ahead on the starboard bow was Harding Rock Buoy (HR). Buoy #1 on the opposite side from HR marks the entrance to Richardson Bay. Together they mark the sides of the deep water channel. HR guards a very pointy granite rock only 34 feet below the sea surface, which was 7 feet less than the draft of San Francisco. HR must be kept to starboard to stay in the channel north of Alcatraz Island. Before ships reach HR, they must start turning east or they will run into Angel Island only a mile beyond the buoy.
When large ships are turned, they don’t turn like a car; instead, they slide, sometimes as much as a half mile forward (called transfer) even when the ship is at full speed. I always anticipated large turns well in advance because the ship could drift over buoys, or worse. As soon as the fog dropped, I asked for Slow Ahead to get more of the way off the ship as I nonchalantly walked over to a radar to get ready to pilot without being able to see, something I did all the time. To my horror, the screen was all orange. I thought maybe that radar was tuned for sea, so I stepped over to the other one. Again I was speechless.
I couldn’t distinguish anything on that one, either. Radars manufactured by Raytheon in the ’70s had black screens. Any targets, or land, showed up as orange blips. Instead, both were a big blur of orange. I couldn’t differentiate a thing on them, not even Angel Island, which has a small mountain on it! It was like watching TV when a station goes off the air. Instead of white noise, I was getting orange fuzz.
To adjust radars, you use the gain dial, which is like a radio’s volume control. At sea, ships turn up the gain to see objects farther away. In piloting grounds, you want more clarity for small close-in contacts like boats, so you use less gain. As the ship started losing some of her way, I vainly tried tuning the radars. I also asked the dumbstruck captain to have someone else tune his faulty radars immediately because I could have made them worse by meddling, as all radars are different.
If there is a major problem, the go-to guy is the radio operator, so they rang the radio shack to have him come up. I was blind without the radars, and moving loaded tankers in fog with three granite rocks and two islands nearby is a lame idea. In only about one mile, I needed to make a 35-degree course change or we would crash into Angel Island. At twelve knots, it takes six minutes to go 1.2 miles, so I should have waited five minutes to start my turn. Instead, I miscalculated and started turning too early, which was one of the biggest errors of my career. (The fourth link in the chain.)
Because loaded tankers take so long to turn, I assumed I needed to start my turn. I was more concerned about Angel Island ahead than Harding Rock, and I shouldn’t have been. Being in fog can be disorientating, but with a good radar it’s usually a routine operation. Without it made me feel as helpless as I’ve ever felt on a ship.
Because the radars were useless, binoculars were glued to my eyes, which were straining to find HR in the mist. When I finally eyed a buoy, I couldn’t see what color it was, so I frantically asked the captain to radio the bow to find out what color it was. The lookout hadn’t bothered reporting the buoy. What he thought his job was I don’t know, but he certainly didn’t do it.
I was 650 feet (more than two football fields) farther away from the buoy than he was, so he should have seen it long before I did. In any case, it was too late. When I heard the lookout’s voice, a chill went through my entire body like I never felt before. Momentarily, it paralyzed me. I’ll never forget that sick feeling to my dying day, and thinking of it still brings back that same terror I experienced then. The lookout, who obviously wasn’t very fluent in English, never said the color. Instead, he said, “Si, dere iz a buoy.”
Just then, I saw HR’s quick-flashing red signal warning me to keep it to starboard. Then I knew the ship and my career were doomed because HR should have been on the starboard side; instead, it was fine on the port bow, meaning I was heading for one of the sharpest, hardest rocks in the bay. I was hoping it was Buoy #1 across the channel from HR, where there was deep water, but my eyes confirmed what my mind didn’t want to believe. This lookout screw-up was ironic because prior to the Valdez hitting Bligh Reef, the Valdez’s lookout kept telling the Third Mate that Bligh Reef Buoy was on the wrong side of their bow.
In my case, the bow lookout didn’t see or report it to the bridge. I think my heart stopped as I hopelessly asked for Full Astern, thinking we were about to run over a solid granite rock pointy like a pyramid. I knew Full Astern wouldn’t stop the ship, but I had to do something, so like a condemned man, I lit another cigarette. I wasn’t too sure I could extricate myself from this jam, as I had from a few others I had gotten myself into. Not only was the buoy on the wrong side, but we were swinging toward two other granite rocks. Luckily, it takes a long time for a steam plant to reverse the propeller shaft, so nothing happened for a few minutes. At the speed we were traveling, reversing the propeller wouldn’t have had any effect. It would have just spun helplessly in the water, called cavitation.
Desperate to act, I asked the captain to let go both his anchors. I hadn’t attended Port Revel Shiphandling School yet, so I didn’t know that dropping an anchor going more than five knots was useless. With all the ship’s momentum and the anchor’s weight, no anchors, no matter how big, would ever stop a ship, especially a loaded one. They would just go over the side and be lost. To my utter consternation, he calmly told me no one was on the bow. We weren’t going to anchor, we were already two miles inside the Gate in fog, and no one was manning the anchors except for the useless lookout!
Then I noticed several men frantically racing 600 feet up towards the bow. Seeing them hopelessly sprinting didn’t help my stomach, which was already in a knot. If I hadn’t been so occupied, I might very well have vomited because I was literally afraid for the ship and my career. I didn’t think so at the time, but I was actually blessed that the anchors weren’t ready because in all likelihood they would have been lost over the side for no reason and we would have plowed over Harding Rock anyway. It was just dumb-ass luck they weren’t manned and that the engines never went astern. I lost another of my pilot lives right then. When I realized that slowing the ship wasn’t working and the anchors weren’t ready, I went to Plan “B,” deciding to pass as close to Harding Rock Buoy as I could. I knew I didn’t have enough sea room to get it on my starboard side or make a U-turn in front of it, but I wanted to get as close to it as possible, so I ordered hard left rudder.
Then I asked for Full Ahead to get maximum rudder effect. The captain, who was as confused as I was, ordered Full Ahead, then stared at me without getting out of his chair. I’m not sure if I showed it, but my hands were shaking as I tried to maintain my composure. Losing my cool wasn’t going to help anything, but I’m sure I had at least three cigarettes going by then.
I raced out to the end of the port wing by myself. As I looked down, the big buoy passed down the black hull, almost chipping the paint off. I’d have gladly settled for snagging HR’s anchor chain. That would have been bad, but not as horrible as running over Harding Rock, which would have split the ship open like a ripe watermelon. In all likelihood, oil would have filled The Bay up to about one foot with smelly Alaskan crude oil.
This is what San Francisco had on board. Not only that, but The Bay Area was years away from having oil recovery equipment on standby. I turned toward the doorway and hollered as loud as I could into the fog-shrouded wheelhouse, “Hard Right, Hard Right!” Now that I was almost clear of the buoy, I was afraid the ship might keep swinging in the current toward Angel Island less than seven shiplengths to the north. It seemed to take an eternity to start swinging back around as I waited alone on the wing for a shudder from the impact, but to my everlasting relief nothing happened.
Looking aft again, I watched Harding Rock Buoy slowly recede into the fog, just as it had appeared what seemed like ages ago. The captain never came out on the wing, he just sat inside the wheelhouse. Maybe he didn’t want to see the end of his career out there with me. NOAA’s chart of the central Bay indicates Harding Rock is directly adjacent to the buoy. I thanked the Lord, it was farther away for some reason! I’m not sure what I would have done if the ship had been holed.
Years later, my wife and I joked if I made a special call that she was to meet me where we got married in Mexico with all our money. I never made that call. When I knew we were finally clear and safe, I shouted into the bridge for Slow Ahead, calmly walked back inside, and steadied the ship on 090. I knew I had some time before we would hit anything on that course, so I tried to get my heart to stop racing. I also needed to extinguish some of those damn cigarettes I managed to light. Today some ships forbid smoking, which just makes smoking pilots edgier.
Once everything calmed down, the ship exited the fog bank and I could see the entire Bay to the east. Just as she had entered it, the ship left the fog bank, quickly and silently. The ship hadn’t traveled very far, but those were the most petrifying, longest five miles of my career.
Later on, the old man, who was probably twenty years older than I, made some snide remark about how I should have known better and not gotten his ship into such a predicament, which I agreed. In my defense, I reminded him that his lookout didn’t speak English, and wasn’t a lookout to begin with. I also told him he didn’t have an officer on the bow, which in pilot waters is a must, especially when you already know you are going to use the anchors.
Many times I re-ran what happened in my head, and because God had spared my career, I developed better ways to pilot, even if a ship had poorly performing radars. That dreadful day gave me nightmares for quite some time. It still makes me anxious writing about it, but, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.” I was stronger after that and I never put a tanker in danger ever again, which was a good result.
