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Storm Coast

Winter storms have killed hundreds of mariners on Canada’s Pacific Coast. They also attract weather junkies from around the world.

From Canadian Geographic, November, 2002. Winner of the 2003 American Society of Travel Writers Silver Award for Best U.S./Canada Magazine Travel Story.

EXCERPT:

The Kella-Lee took its first hit around midnight.

A wave to starboard heaved the trawler on its port side, tossing crewman Beachum Englemark right out of his bunk. It was the 27-year-old’s first time on a halibut boat, and this one was lurching 20 kilometres off the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Englemark’s crewmates had seen this kind of weather before. It was no big deal, one mumbled from his bunk. Just try to sleep.

Then a wave knocked the boat even more violently to port. Englemark scrambled up to the galley to find water gushing in from around a hatchway–and skipper George Newson hollering "mayday" into his radio. Englemark pulled on a waterproof emergency suit and tried to untangle the Kella-Lee’s life raft.

Within an hour Englemark and Newson were treading water in the swell. The Kella-Lee had disappeared into the waves. Her life raft was gone and so, apparently, were two of her crew. There was nothing left but heaving ocean and darkness punctuated by the phosphorescent flashes of collapsing whitecaps.

"The wind was so strong," remembers Englemark, "It was like a knife spreading the whitecaps out across the water like butter on bread. All I could see was white foam. Then bigger waves would roar up through the sea behind us, catch us, tumble us under water for 15 or 20 seconds, then spit us out their backs. It was like falling off a surfboard, over and over again."

In his desperate attempt to radio for help, Newson hadn’t managed to find his emergency suit. Even as search planes began to drone in the darkness overhead, the pair knew he would not survive in the frigid water. He stopped breathing within two hours.

"It was like he was falling asleep on his bed," says Englemark. "Then his body just quit. I held onto him for half an hour, but I got so weak that I had to just let him float away. And then I was really alone."

What Englemark remembers most vividly about the night of October 25, 2001, isn’t the darkness or the cold, or the dread that crept over him. It is the strange, almost comforting beauty of the storm.

"I was scared. But when the wind was screaming and those waves were lifting me 50 feet in the air, when they were crushing and carrying me, surging around me–it’s hard to describe, but I just felt so small and so in awe. I hate to say it, but I felt a kind of peace. I remember thinking how awesome, how absolutely beautiful it all was."

Such is the conflicted relationship between humans and the storms that slam into British Columbia’s coast every year from October to April. Hundreds of mariners have met their death along these shores in the last two centuries. To dull the sting in the weather’s tail, Canada has developed a complex weather forecasting and search and rescue network. Yet there is something captivating about the destructive fury of wind and waves. Enticing, even. For while Englemark drifted alone in the darkness, as radios crackled with the chatter of his rescuers, hundreds of tourists were snuggled in hotel beds on the outer fringe of Vancouver Island, waiting to confront the tempest at daybreak.

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All stories and pictures © Charles Montgomery 2002 except where noted.