I’ve been reading the book Aleutian Freighter by James Mackovjak. I may have mentioned once or twice that I used to work in that trade.
In the “Operational Hazards” section of the book, the grounding of the Mokuhana on Whidbey Island is mentioned.
I also remember seeing it in the paper at the time:
GREENBANK, Wash. – A 155-foot freighter narrowly missed a collision with a tugboat and then ran aground on the west shore of Whidbey Island on Friday after the captain apparently fell asleep, Coast Guard officials said.
No one was injured when the coastal freighter Mokuhana slid onto the beach 30 miles north of Seattle at a speed of 9 knots.
That grounding happened in 1989. I made one trip with that captain in 1987.
It was his first trip as captain. We left the Ballard locks late at night, and right away, he started steering toward the middle of Shilshole Bay. I told him we were leaving the buoyed channel, but to no avail. A few seconds later, we ran aground. Then, as we backed off, I thought we came far too close to taking out a few boats at the marina there.
The rest of the trip, to Dutch Harbor and back, didn’t go smoothly, to say the least.
When we got back to Seattle from Alaska, I took a trip off. When I returned to Seattle, I got the news that I no longer had a job. On the trip I missed, that same captain had run aground again—this time in the Bering Sea, on the north side of the Alaska Peninsula somewhere.
He’d backed into a shoal area while going astern, ripped off the rudder, which went through the props and then punched a hole in the bottom.
Reading Aleutian Freighter reminds me of Paul Harvey’s catchphrase: “And now you know the rest of the story.”