What is "Current Set" - The San Juan's and Puget Sound are full of potential Catastrophes - Ignornace is Bliss

     "Current set" is the direction water is flowing, and not paying attention to the current set can bite the unwary.         

Boaters deal with currents all the time, especially around docks, floats, pilings and buoys.  But we tend to ignore or not be aware of the current set out in the straits and large water bodies.  

  Is it really a close call if you don't know about it?  If a catastrophe almost happens, is it worthy to note?

        When your boat is drifting towards a lee shore, but still has two hours before running onto the rocks is it a big deal?
      Ignorance really is bliss, that's for sure.

         I don't know how many times I have almost sunk, no one does. "We don't know what we don't know."

      I know this though -- one time in medium fog, slowly crossing Rosario Strait heading into Thatcher Pass, we were all staring out the front and not paying attention to our sideways set (side drift) when out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement that turned out to be rocks coming at us fast. (full flood must have been 3+ knots) The current was forcing us sideways straight onto the rocks of tiny Pointer Island. I swung hard over and pushed her to full throttle, our outboard barely pulled us away with one hundred feet and two or three seconds to spare. I shuddered thinking of my family on board and almost quit boating right then and there.

       Another time, just after leaving Sidney Spit to cross Haro Strait, when suddenly out of the dense fog loomed the green aid marking Mandarte Island.  Once again I had not paid enough attention to the current set and was almost swept onto the rocks.

       And again, once we ran out of gas in the "Narrows," and the current quickly whisked us towards an anchored construction barge under the new Tacoma Bridge.
 Quick action switching tanks averted an unpleasant incident with just minutes to spare.

     So, I have admitted to three times that I know of, where my inattention to currents has almost had disastrous results.  How many more are there that I don't know about? I don't know.

     My problem is, I tend to watch where the boat is pointed or where I want to go and not where we are really going. Of course, being disoriented in fog makes it worse.

     Ignorance is bliss, but it's no way to skipper a boat.

You wouldn't cross in front of a ship making 6 knots.

So why pass barely upstream of rocks in a 6-knot current?

Click below for a satellite view of Saddlebag Island State Park