Destruction of Ripple Rock in Seymour Narrows

The friendliest place on the web for anyone who enjoys boating.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
R

roddy

Veteran Member
Joined
Apr 3, 2012
Messages
89
Location
Canada
Vessel Make
Bayliner 4387
Ripple Rock lies between Campbell River BC and Quadra Island, in Seymour Narrows. Until its demise in 1958 it claimed over 100 lives and numerous ships.
Biggest purposeful non nuclear explosion to date ended its dominance in Seymour Narrows.

Video of CBC television news clip of explosion
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...ates-1.4598172

Short video of 3 year construction plan leading up to explosion.
https://www.nfb.ca/film/ripple_rock/
 
Great story and film clips. Seymour Narrows today, even without Ripple Rock, is still formidable with its current and traffic.
 
I’ve only been over RR once.
All the rest on the time I’ve been in the back channels.
If the wind blows (and almost every afternoon there’s a NW wind 12 to 18 knots) and the tidal current is flowing south (half the time) square waves abound. So I take the detour.

Most take the slightly faster route through Seymour Narrows.
 
I cannot imagine navigating through there 62 yrs ago with the limited technology they had or even the earlier years.
If you have never gone through the narrows or navigated the water from Cape Mudge past Campbell River to there you won’t understand.
We go through the Narrows a couple dozen times every season and it simply amazes me the power of water.
If you have time dock at Maude Island and go to the look out to watch a 1/2 mile wide section 300’ deep running up to 15 knots at certain times off year.
 
Imagine the permitting process for that project, if started today.
 
Lol, no seals were harmed during this nuclear explosion.
 
Okydowky wrote;
“I cannot imagine navigating through there 62 yrs ago with the limited technology they had or even the earlier years.”

Why not?
You would have excellent charts in a scale that would have (or did) pinpointed the exact position of the rock and to my knowledge there were no other rocks.
One would need to control your boat either then or now.
What other hazard could you be talking about?
 
Last edited:
Oh Willy! Can always count on you chiming in with your polite criticism’s!
Us people with less grey hair and wrinkles do appreciate our for fathers and there abilities to navigate with a piece of paper and a candle burning in there spot light!
I do appreciate my Furuno, backed up by my 4 other devices with Navioinics giving me up to date info to navigate our waters.
Sorry not even an argument of how many years you have behind the wheel or how many anchors you have.
The End!
 
I didn't sleep so well the night before my wife and I paddled our sea kayaks through there.
 
Okydowky said:
Oh Willy! Can always count on you chiming in with your polite criticism’s!
Us people with less grey hair and wrinkles do appreciate our for fathers and there abilities to navigate with a piece of paper and a candle burning in there spot light!
I do appreciate my Furuno, backed up by my 4 other devices with Navioinics giving me up to date info to navigate our waters.
Sorry not even an argument of how many years you have behind the wheel or how many anchors you have.
The End!
Click to expand...

Oky,
My knee jerk reaction to you’re last post was to say I was not being critical. Hmmm ... but it was. At the time I wasn’t thinking that but I’m frequently amazed at how much importance many put on their newish devices. The thing that allowed me to go many places having never been there was charts .. mostly. And if you took my chart away I’d be scream’in. “I want my chart back”.
It’s all relative. When I ran my OB boat up to Juneau (new build (1971)) I wasn’t prepared .. I Used a Silva FS compass and a map that the FS hands out on the Ak state ferries I made it to Juneau but must admit I had some luck. But not that much.
 
Last edited:
Nomad Willy said:
Oky,
My knee jerk reaction to you’re last post was to say I was not being critical. Hmmm ... but it was. At the time I wasn’t thinking that but I’m frequently amazed at how much importance many put on their newish devices. The thing that allowed me to go many places having never been there was charts .. mostly. And if you took my chart away I’d be scream’in. “I want my chart back”.
It’s all relative. When I ran my OB boat up to Juneau (new build (1971)) I wasn’t prepared .. I Used a Silva FS compass and a map that the FS hands out on the Ak state ferries I made it to Juneau but must admit I had some luck. But not that much.
Click to expand...

You got me there with the charting, this is my weakness. Even though I am not computer savvy! I do depend on our electronics more than I should.....
It’s definitely on my ta do list!
Lol but yah got love the technology Willy, even if your a paper guy. Click! Click! Cliick!
Fuel burn, ETA, Points of Interest LOL!
I know your smiling Willy!
 
Ken E. said:
I bet you checked the time of the slack....many times.:thumb:
Click to expand...

Yup. Snuck along the west shore milking back eddies against the last bit of adverse current, and tried to time it for a free ride through the second half with the current going our way.

There was a big seiner powering into the main current when we went into it, and we were keeping pace for a while using back eddies, but when the current changed it was gone.

There never really was 'slack'...the boils and current lines/rips just started meandering around for a bit until they began moving in the same direction. The weird part was the sound of it; like being near a big river.
 
Okydowky said:
You got me there with the charting, this is my weakness. Even though I am not computer savvy! I do depend on our electronics more than I should.....
It’s definitely on my ta do list!
Lol but yah got love the technology Willy, even if your a paper guy. Click! Click! Cliick!
Fuel burn, ETA, Points of Interest LOL!
I know your smiling Willy!
Click to expand...

My first pass through there was in a Bayliner doing 24 mph, and you basically just drove the road map. Second trip was in the Willard doing 7 knots, suddenly the current was a major factor where at 24 mph it wasn't.

The accuracy of the tide tables now also makes it easy to anticipate making the passage in a single tide, timing it out to begin at an exact point and time. In the early days it must have been SO much harder!

I would hate to make that passage at the wrong point in a tide, at the wrong time of day, or in the dark relying on visual navigation aids while the Rock was still there. Especially in some big, slow, lumbering and underpowered vessel...
 
Mark ... so when did it get de-flowered?

Oky,
OK yes and no.
I’m enjoying my Garmin (15yrs old) and two sounders. One a FF. And I like the weather reports when not in French. Don’t know what I’d do w/o my good binoculars. And of course cruising guides ... the Hemingway’s much preferred.
But I never use waypoints and my days end anchorage is only the strongest candidate as I pull anchor. I’ve been known to change anchorage plans more that once in the day. On occasion I’ve aborted the “planed” anchorage seeing one more interesting along the way. Am I a planner? No. But my wife is.

AKDoug,
Try Wrangle Narrows in the dark. Looks like an airport runway where the’ve never heard of straight lines. I’ve done it many times but only on an Alaska State ferry .. as crew .. dining room waiter.
 
Last edited:
Well this is just an example! We have gone through there a lot over the years and yes you push your limits and then you have schedules that push your boats limits.
We have gone thru being pulled thru at 3-5 and even gone against 3-4’s. One trip we picked the wrong line and a little bit of timing like 20 min early. Our past boat at that time could do 24knot, we ended up going against 6, with our rpm at 3400 we should have been doing 22knot. At this time we were a dead stall, with speed over ground 1mph. I didn’t account for the airy, agitated water and prop slip, or really waited to long to get boat on step.
All in all an eye opener and thankfully we were safe. We were not in any troubles with whirl pools so worse case would have been back off and get spit back up the narrows and attempted again in 20 min.
Don’t think we are the evil con evil people which we are not, we do do our home and know are limits or have learnt our limits.
Just sometimes you might push it a little to much, when your home port is 7 miles on the other side.
 
Well that's one hell of a boom. Kinda makes me wonder if it was maybe a little more than they actually needed.

Imagine being a geologist 500 years from now, trying to figure out how the hell that one random boulder ended up in a crater in the middle of Maude Island. And why are there so many sea creature fossils on it?
 
We've gone through Seymour narrows dozens of times and I may or may not look at the current tables, you can always get in tight to shore and use the eddys. Dent Rapids is an alternative passage and I always check the current tables to time the passage. But the real deal for current is Slingsby Channel current speed there can reach over 18 knots
 
Timing is everything...

It has been many years since my last time through, but I do remember always leaving the locks in Seattle about 24 hours before low-water slack at the narrows, to get here for clack water, then a nice push up the channel, then another push out the other end...

Looking forward to getting my boat from San Francisco to SE Alaska one of these summers - miss those waters!!

~joe :)
 
My great uncle was a Captain for Union Steam Ship going to all sorts of ports of call along the inside passage. He took many ship through the narrows before it was blown up. Captain Harry Roche was a grand gentleman and I remember talking to him after the blast and the difference in navigation. It needs to said that all of the Saturday cartoons were canceled and I was a bit upset about that.
He explained the problems of getting through the narrows in a way that a ten year old could understand, and the new challenges after the rock was blown.
 
Thank you for sharing. My father was a camera technician and part of the CBC team that filmed this. Your post reminds me that I inherited a reel of 16mm film that I think is raw footage of this event. I'll have to go and get it converted to digital.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom