This year is the 20th anniversary of a horrific storm that clobbered Northern Puget Sound. It did serious damage to the Mukilteo Ivars and sank a 60 foot purse seiner off Foulweather Bluff. The Martle is still at the bottom of Skunk Bay as far as we know.
This storm came up very fast. I was on the Edmonds/Kingston ferry coming
home from work. The wind just exploded
out of the north and gave us all a good ride on our way to Kingston. On my drive home to Hansville, the road was littered
with debris. I had a few “religious”
moments as the trees were dropping all around me.
The power was out when I got home.
I went in the house to check on things and saw two large fishing boats
out front crashing their way through the nasty seas. I noticed one of the boats seemed to be
riding reasonably well and the other was getting slammed. I watched it bow under to the pilot house and
then three quarters of the hull went airborne when it came out of the
trough. I watched it for a minute or two
and then went to the back of the house and got the generator going. By the time I got back inside I checked on
the two vessels. I could only see
one. I grabbed my binoculars and found
the second boat…. It was turtled (capsized
upside down) off Foulweather Bluff. I
called the Coast Guard and was on the phone with them for about 30 minutes giving them updates.
There was no local media news coverage at all about this event. The main coverage was about the damage to Ivars. I was very disappointed that this wasn’t
covered. I finally found this article
that came out 3 years later. The rescue
of the crew of the Martle was a very heroic act of seamanship. They risked their lives to save that crew.
Here is a link to the story from the Seattle Weekly that
gives the details. It’s a very good read….
https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/wreck-of-the-martle/
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