Deception Pass.

[Hayden Watson]

I am starting this thread for a discussion of all things Deception Pass.

For background, I moved to Oak Harbor, WA in 2005 and had a job in Burlington so I drove across the bridge at least 10-times each week. I always gave myself enough time to stop on Pass Island and walk out onto the bridge with current table and notebook to record the conditions at different current speeds.
What I found by that research and the added experience of more than 100 trips through is that there is a definite safe lane for any current speed up to and above 6-kts outbound and 5-kts inbound. If there is a safe lane that infers that there is a dangerous lane and that is also very true. FYI, I have never attempted to go through the northern Canoe Pass so cannot offer any advice there.

The safe lane is the same both in and out.

• When approaching the bridge from either side, divide the pass into thirds. The safe lane is the northern 1/3 of the width.
• Place your boat no farther south than the northern third line and don't let anyone push you south of midspan.
  • To stay in the northern 1/3, you will need to angle about 10º towards the Pass Island shore and it is almost impossible to actually hit it. This is because the water on the north half of the pass is flowing in a rolling column of water. It flows up the face of the Pass Island and then out/through the pass and back down at midspan. This means that the along with the current pushing you through the pass, it is also pushing you towards midspan.
  • The reason that it is "safe" is because the water is in laminar flow on the north half of the pass. This means that the water is moving in a straight line which few eddies or lateral currents. This is because the face of Pass Island is a vertical cliff that makes a nearly straight line for its full legth.
• The danger zone is anywhere south of midspan, and I never go there, period.
  • In the danger zone, the water has turbulent flow with a series of whirlpools that alternate between clockwise and counterclockwise. This makes any boat out there repeatedly turn sharply into the Whidbey shoreline. This is caused by rock outcrops that extend well out from the Whidbey shore and are just barely covered at a minus tide. Nothing good on the south half of the channel.​
• I almost always go with the current. The only exception to that is to push against the last of an opposing current at idle until it slacks enough to let me in.
• I do not try to hit the slack because it can vary up to 45-minutes from predicted and if it is going to opposed, you will not get through.
• Once you clear the pass, do not fight the wheel in an attempt to keep the boat pointed "in the right direction".
  • There are whirlpools which are easy to avoid and will not do you any harm in a boat of 25ft or more.
  • There are upwells which cannot be avoided but do nothing more that rotate the boat as you slide on through them.
  • These currents will cause the bow to swing back and forth but let your boat have her head and gently guide her back in the direction you want because they are all out beyond the pass and there is nothing to hit if you drift around.
  • The worst thing to do in the whirlpools and upwells is the try to keep the boat pointed in one direction because it adds a great deal of useless stress to the steering gear and everyone on board as the boat is jerked around.

Here are a couple of screen grabs from Google Earth.

 

[Terry Cox]

Nice writeup, Hayden. thank you. Been through the pass many times and have found the slack water tide predictions to be pretty close. When I'm heading say for Parks Bay from Coronet Bay, I will plan a slack before the flood. That way I can get a nice flood current push up San Juan Channel by the time I arrive at Middle Channel. Likewise, coming home I will plan a slack before the ebb to get a bit of a current push heading south.

Usually, there is a thirty minute slack water window for a safe passage. I does take some time for the flow to build to maximum. But I will always try to shoot for that slack water moment to get the least amount of turbulence during passage.

 

[MikeHoncho]

I went through two weeks ago of which my plotter said there would be a opposing current of 2.4 knots. I had a current with me of about .75-1. Technology isn’t always precise. This was about 45 minutes post slack.

 

[Terry Cox]

Good morning, Mike. Ditto my chart plotter. I tend to use published paper tide table predictions, such as Ports and Passes, that seem to be a bit more accurate.

 

[Hayden Watson]

Nice writeup, Hayden. thank you. Been through the pass many times and have found the slack water tide predictions to be pretty close. When I'm heading say for Parks Bay from Coronet Bay, I will plan a slack before the flood. That way I can get a nice flood current push up San Juan Channel by the time I arrive at Middle Channel. Likewise, coming home I will plan a slack before the ebb to get a bit of a current push heading south.

Usually, there is a thirty-minute slack water window for a safe passage. I does take some time for the flow to build to maximum. But I will always try to shoot for that slack water moment to get the least amount of turbulence during passage.

The reason that I do not try to time for slack water, especially if it is slack going to opposing current is due to my observations one day from the bridge. As I said, for more than a year, I stopped at the bridge every workday coming and going with the tide tables and note pad in hand. One evening on my way home I went out to make my observations and it was about 15-minutes to slack going to flood. As I was making my observations, I saw the Lady Washington coming around the headlands at Bowman Bay. I figured this would be fun to watch so I stayed for the show.

As she nosed into the pass, it was 5-minutes to slack on the table but the current was already starting to flow west. That is a big boat in a narrow canyon and was quite the site. This was in 2005 and I didn't have a smartphone with camera but I enjoyed it greatly. She made slow but adiquiate headway as the masts passed under the bridge. You know how it always looks like the mast is going to hit the bridge when you are looking up from the deck? It is the same when looking down from the bridge!
Her progress continued to slow until the bow was just beyond the eastern end of Pass Island where she stopped moving forward. I then saw a belch of black smoke and heard the engine go to WOT and she made a bit more progress but soon stopped again. The helmsman tried some latteram movement closer and farther from Pass Island but it didn't help. A couple of people next to me were talking about what would happen if she had to turn around because the ship is 112' LOA which is more than 1/3 the pass width at that point. I responded that she could not turn around and would have to back out.
Not long after that, we could hear the engine lower the rpm's back to where they had been earlier and still leaving a nice bow wake, she very gracefully backed under the bridge and out to the west of Pass Island. Once she was well clear of the pass, she turned around and went into Bowman Bay where she dropped anchor and used her long boat to shuttle the paying passengers to shore.
FYI, the next day I was out sailing when the Lady steamed up to Coupeville which was her next stop on the annual tour. I positioned Papillon so that I could pull along a parallel course to get some nice on the water photos. As she came abreast, I was at WOT making 6.4kts and she just walked away from me. That means that she can easily make over 7-kts but was unable to get through the pass at the scheduled slack.
After maybe 5-minutes with no more progress.

After this experience, I made the decision to time my passages to arrive at least a full hour before slack going to adverse. Having figured out how to transite with the current running I now have a full 6-hour window twice a day for each direction. If I am doing a short cruise, we will usually leave as soon as we can after work and head through the pass to anchor at Bowman. On three occations, that has meant going through the pass between 11:00pm and 1:00am with up to 6.1-kts of current. If we did not do that, we would be unable to clear the pass the next day until after noon.

 

[jssailem]

Deception Passage is one of the many tidal passages that control the waters of the Salish Sea.

Good seamanship demands review of these passages before attempting passage.

Source data can be found in guide books, websites, information from nearby facilities, pilot chart books etc. When in doubt, you can often times scout the passage (as Hayden has done) from a high vantage point.

 

[Hayden Watson]

Deception Passage is one of the many tidal passages that control the waters of the Salish Sea.

Good seamanship demands review of these passages before attempting passage.

Source data can be found in guide books, websites, information from nearby facilities, pilot chart books etc. When in doubt, you can often times scout the passage (as Hayden has done) from a high vantage point.

Yep.
When I moved to Oak Harbor, I had heard all of the horror stories about Deception pass and knew that I would often be making that passage. Given that I had the opportunity to study it in depth I jumped on it. In the twenty years since, I have used that knowledge often and share it with others who need to travel that way. By knowing the pass in all of its moods, I have 12-hours in any given day that I can go through. Trying to time for slack reduces that to 4 narrow windows of time, two of which can delay you by 6-hours on those frequent times with she does not behave "by the book".

 

[shemandr]

A good topic even though I don't think I've ever been within 600 miles (Sun Valley) of that pass! I do have some of the charts from the PNW downloaded to view in Open CPN, so I can follow cruiser reports. Hayden's last was excellent but it slipped away before I finished.
Regarding current tables, I view them as suggestions from my experiences in the NE. What tables can't predict is the wind which can push water around. In the Peconic Estuary, a 3 day blow from the NW can cause days without any high tide and little incoming current. You'll find rocks you never knew about. But when that wind shuts off there won't be much outgoing and certainly not on schedule. Trying to hit the LIS Race at slack tide is a fool's errand. Try to transit it with the tide by all means. But LIS is gonna be done draining when it's done.
And we saw how much water SS Sandy could push West.
I think air pressure has a role in the unpredictability of current as well but I'll leave it to the weather gurus to comment on that. And rain water. All that water from most of New England runs out in rivers and that water has to run out the race too.

 

[Hayden Watson]

We came through Deception Pass today and DeepZoom indicated that the current was 4.4-kts but that must have been average because most of the way from directly under the bridge until I cleared past Strawberry Island, the GPS indicated 11-kts to high 12-knts over the ground at 1900-rpms which is a speed through water of 5.4-kts.
I snapped some photos of the passing through to show what it looks like with +6 knots of flood current. They aren't the best phots but considering that I was driving in a 6-knt white water river with one hand and trying to take one-handed cell phone pictures with the other, all the while trying to appease the Admiral who was saying "If you drop that phone over the side your clients are going to be really pissed." Today was the second day of erection of a 4-story precast parking garage that I designed, and I had already had two zoom meetings and over a dozen phone calls and it was just noon.
I think the photos showed what I was trying to get. That was to show the difference in the water turbulence on the north half and south half of the channel. The north half is a one-handed steer. I do not personally know what the south half is like because I have NEVER gone there. I have seen others take that path and held up the score cards for entertainment points. The best was the 60-70 foot motor launch that when completely sideways in the channel pointed straight at the Whidbey shore and almost put the rail in the water bringing the nose back around. Let me repeat, NEVER GO SOUTH OF MID CHANNEL.

 

[Terry Cox]

Hi Hayden. Which one is Strawberry Island? My chart has no name for the island beneath the bridge, the location of the center span support. When heading west from Cornet Bay, I always use the pass to the left, or south side. Never have I experienced turbulence like that in your pictures when using my paper tide book that references slack water. Just wondering.

 

[Hayden Watson]

Hi Hayden. Which one is Strawberry Island? My chart has no name for the island beneath the bridge, the location of the center span support. When heading west from Cornet Bay, I always use the pass to the left, or south side. Never have I experienced turbulence like that in your pictures when using my paper tide book that references slack water. Just wondering.

The island that the two bridges land on is Pass Island which separates the main channel (Deception Pass) from the secondary channel (Canoe Pass). The small island between Ben Ure Island and Fidalgo Island is Strawberry Island.
I do not usually try to time slack unless it is slack changing to my direction because I have seen slack be early by up to an hour and if you are an hour after the actual slack going to adverse on a big tide, you will not make it through. I go through anytime that the flow is with me. In the photos in my previous post, you can see that there is considerable turbulence on the Whidbey side of the channel, but the water is smooth on the north side. I was able to drive the full length of the pass with just one hand and never needed to turn the wheel more than 1/4 turn.

 

[Hayden Watson]

I found this video of Deception Pass. It was taken on a fairly low flood current but does show how the water is much calmer on the north side of the channel than it is on the south. In higher currents, the north side does not get much if any rougher. The south however gets much worse than shown in this video which is why I say never go south of centerline.
For the 20-minutes that the water is slack [5-minutes each for the 4-slacks per day] it doesn't really matter but for the other 11 hours and 40 minutes of the day when the current is going your direction, the north side is your friend.

 

[Hello Below]

Thanks again @Hayden Watson for the very helpful information. This thread is a keeper. We transited the pass on the 15th Sep and your guidance worked like a champ. Our intention was to arrive at slack turning to flood but we were a little early so took the chance heeding your advice to "never go South of mid-channel". Pretty much a straight run with very little turbulence against a 1.5 kt ebb. Other than the dozen or so small fishing vessels in mid channel drifting quickly to the North, thanks to you guidance things were pretty uneventful.