Do you take your Rangers offshore?

[Camasonian]

We are currently boat shopping and we are rather taken by the R31 as a boat to keep in Portland and occasionally transport up to Puget Sound for occasional trips to the San Juans and points further north.

But I know that keeping a boat in Portland I’d be tempted to want to take it out the Columbia and either point north along the WA coast up to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, or else south along the OR coast down to the Newport area. Either way is more than 100 miles of open Pacific Ocean coastline. I don’t know if that’s something I’d ever do. But would like to know how reasonable it is.

I know this isn’t really the intended purpose of the Rangers with their relatively narrow beam. But I’m just wondering how many of you guys actually ever take your boats offshore and how they actually perform in less than ideal offshore conditions. The Trawler Forum guys will probably say you have a death wish to do it in anything less than a Nordhavn. On the other hand, fishermen go out in all sorts of junkers. I’m curious about any actual experiences with these boats in the open ocean.

 

[scross]

The Columbia River bar is considered quite formidable.
http://oceanscape.aquarium.org/explore/ ... -river-bar
So getting out to open water from Portland can be a real challenge.
And the winds offshore between Vancouver Island and San Francisco can be very strong - whipping up big waves even close to shore. There are several stretches along that length of the coast that have no harbors to hide in if the weather turns sour.
All these factors make longer trips up and down this section of the coast a risky proposition for new or low time boaters IMHO.

 

[Camasonian]

The Columbia River bar is considered quite formidable.
http://oceanscape.aquarium.org/explore/ ... -river-bar
So getting out to open water from Portland can be a real challenge.
And the winds offshore between Vancouver Island and San Francisco can be very strong - whipping up big waves even close to shore. There are several stretches along that length of the coast that have no harbors to hide in if the weather turns sour.
All these factors make longer trips up and down this section of the coast a risky proposition for new or low time boaters IMHO.

This would be my 4th boat not my 1st boat. I’m familiar with the conditions on the bar and outer coast. I spent a decade working year-round on the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska on various size fishing boats and research boats. And ran a SeaSport out of Juneau to the outer coat of SE Alaska on occasion when we lived up there. I’m more asking opinions and real-life experiences of people who have taken the larger Rangers offshore.

 

[Annie Time]

We primarily fish out of Half Moon Bay in California. We pick and choose our days but have been out in some 7-8 ft waves on 9-12 sec periods. Makes for a crummy ride but the boat can take it. I find the most unnerving part is the down swell ride. You need to really watch your speed. We went up the coast 20 miles a few weeks ago to do some halibut fishing right outside the Golden Gate bridge on the South bar.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[knotflying]

Here is how I make my decisions: If I have any doubt about something I don't do it. Just the fact that you had to ask indicates that you are not sure of what the outcome will be. Perhaps on a good calm day make the trip, but any doubt, go somewhere else.

 

[Gin]

A little over a week ago, I went out out over the Columbia bar in a Tollycraft 42 with another skipper and a retired ocean tugboat captain (who ran his first fishing vessel out of Port Oxford when he was 14, and has captained everything from skiffs to fishing trawlers to ocean tugs to cruise ships). It was an easy crossing out and back, hitting the last of the ebb going out (so swells of 5’ or so, 8 seconds apart) and the first of the flood coming back in (things nearly flattened out except for 2’ to 3’ swells and a surface chop). But we picked our day and timed it so that we would have an easy (that’s a relative term) go of it. My RT 31 could have done it, and I think I could have as well.

But the bigger question is would I want to go up (or down) the outside. Having spent a lot of time now talking to experienced sailors and boaters in Portland who have crossed the bar and gone north up the outside many times over the years (as well as my friend the retired tug captain), I wouldn’t do it in my 31. With today’s electronics and sophisticated forecasting, along with the bouy data available online or through a phone call to the bouy itself, recreational boaters can minimize the likelihood of conditions turning so nasty that things become dangerous for them (the stories of sea sickness for experienced boaters persist though). What everyone worries about more are the crab pots. They can be in your path whether you go out to the deep water or aim for the supposedly crab pot free corridor. Some get set in the corridor despite the prohibition. Others end up there and out in the deep water because the commercial tugs and ships come through, pick them up, drag them awhile, and they fall off randomly and then drift around. The lines on the commercial crab pots are formidable. If they wrap your prop, you will at least be dead in the water, if not have some engine damage. And you still have to figure out how to get it unwrapped to get going again.

We saw one from the Tollycraft coming back in — it was hard to see in the small swells and light chop, even though we were up high on the fly bridge (at least 3 times higher off the water than I am on the helm of my boat) and the float on the line was still bright orange (eventually, they all become stealthy moss green or scudge brown). I would never have been able to see it from the helm of my RT 31 until I was right on it. I don’t have the command bridge, but even it would not be as high as I might want, and it is not the kind of well-protected kind of flybridge/helm I would want for that kind of a trip. The only way I would even consider making the trip up the outside, then, would be to be with one or two other boats who I could follow up. My plan instead is to make the trip, probably next summer, on one of those boats and not my own. 😀

Hope that info helps. Local knowledge and acquired experence is everything. There are some good seminars at the local Portland yacht clubs from time to time on the topic, and lots of people who have done it safely and well who have tons of good advice to give.

Gini

 

[Camasonian]

I’m kind of surprised to hear that crab pots are such a problem in Astoria. But then I think Dungeness crab is now the biggest value commercial fishery in Oregon having passed salmon. Probably safest ways to avoid pots is to stay in deeper water. I doubt they set pots much beyond 50 fathoms. Deeper than that just requires WAY too much line per pot and takes way too long to pull up. The guys who fish for deep water brown king crab in the Aleutians use big boats with special longline pot gear where they string 20 pots in a line with marking buoys on the ends of the string rather than setting and pulling each pot individually. I’d be calling up fish and game to report pots set in no-fishing zones. Their license number is supposed to be printed on each buoy. But yes, you have to watch how the buoys lie on the water. If the water is slack there can be a lot of line laying on the surface behind the buoys.

But that’s more a local issue with Astoria and not so much with the Ranger Tug. Same issues would apply to someone crossing the bar in a 50’ Nordhavn. Although it sounds like the visibility out of the bridge on the R31 might be an issue especially if you are cruising at faster semi-displacement speeds with the bow up. The bow of my old SeaSport would rise higher and higher as I accelerated until finally I could level it off with the trim tabs at full plane.

But I am interested in hearing reports from people who have taken these boats offshore. Everything is a trade off. I would imagine that a Ranger 31 isn’t going to be as seaworthy in a storm as say a 34’ American Tug that has a 3 ft wider beam, heavier displacement, and a hull shape borrowed from commercial Alaska gillnet vessels. But then I think those boats burn twice the fuel and aren’t going to be trailered anywhere due to the wider beam and much heavier displacement.

 

[Bruce Moore]

Check posts by nzfisher. He take his R-25SC "Swims with Tuna" out off the Oregon coast on a regular basis.

 

[Gin]

The problem isn’t around Astoria. It is along the coast lines running north, for sure, and I probably south as well. We just happened to see a loose crab pot float and line as we were coming back in over the bar. And you are right — the biggest issue is in the under 50 fathoms area. Still, the pots and lines can end up there when the commercial vessels hit them and drag them loose. Ultimately, the trip up the outside is a very do-able cruise for all kinds of recreational boats and I’ve had experienced skippers suggest they would do it in mine. I’m explaining my own reservations more than anything. I, too, would be interested in hearing the experience of anyone who has made the trip in a Ranger Tug.

 

[Camasonian]

When we owned a 27’ SeaSport in Juneau we did some exploring of the outer coast between Sitka and Cross Sound. The SeaSport is a smaller 8’6” beam boat with a planing hull and it handled everything we ever encountered just fine. A ton of charter guys out of Sitka use Seaports for fishing offshore. But that coast is also a lot more sheltered than the WA coast. The shoreline is like Swiss cheese with islands and bays all over to hide in if you ever had bad weather come up. I’ve been on commercial fishing boats along the WA/OR coast but never on my own boat. The lack of safe harbors between Astoria and Newport going south or between Astoria and Neah Bay going north would give me pause.

There are always trade offs. Buy a big enough boat and your only way out of Portland is through the Columbia Bar. Buy a trailerable boat like the Ranger and you face the compromises that come with making it trailerable. But you also have alternatives.

Having spent a decade living in Alaska I think the most likely summer scenario for me would be to throw a Ranger Tug on the barge and pick it up at the barge line dock in Juneau so I could spend my full vacation in SE Alaska and not in transit. I have no idea what shipping a 30’ boat on the barge would cost. A decade ago it cost me about $700 to ship a pickup. I’d imagine a boat on a trailer would be double that. And that would also call for a trailerable boat obviously. But then I have a lot of friends and family in Juneau and more reason to be there that most cruisers I think.