At 6:43am, a neighbor came rapping on the hull. I’d not slept well the night before, so I was out hard when he came knocking. Sanaz elbowed me, “Someone’s knocking.” I got up to discover my neighbor standing there with urgency.
“What’s up?” I inquired with a certain grumble in my voice.
“There’s a Tsunami coming and it’s high tide. Need you to know, so you can prepare to evacuate, should it come to that.”
Tsunami! Well, shit. That’s not ever a way I want to start my day.
I roused the rest of the crew and told everyone to pack evacuation bags. I pulled out hard drives and stuffed them in a bag and powered up NOAA Weather Radio to hear Mechanical Mike tell us to prepare for multiple waves and that mariners should evacuate to water deeper than 180 feet and prepare to stay there for hours, while noting they may not be able to return to harbors.
Sanaz called harbor patrol to get details and they informed her the first wave was to arrive at 7:45am. With the first wave almost upon us, making a run for deep water was out of the question, there just isn’t enough time. I sent her to the parking lot with her daughter to get at least two of our three cars to high ground, leaving our exposure to the boat and my Wrangler. Off they went and I went about preparing the boat by loosening lines, readying safety equipment, etc. The neighbors were all doing the same. There was a palpable anxiety amongst us all.
Checking time, I checked the piling to notice the dock was rising rapidly. “Here we go,” I said to myself with an sigh of capitulation. The first wave was upon us.
I stood watching us rise and then fall over a matter of minutes. “That’s it?” I wondered, knowing the first wave is not the biggest. I waited about twenty more minutes and things started happening again. Checking my tide chart, I knew we were almost at nigh tide when the docks began to rise again, more rapidly this time.
This time we got real close to the top of the piling. If the docks lift off the pilings, the marina can float free and cause all sorts of problems. What came next was the real surprise:
The water started dropping rapidly! We were going DOWN! after a few short minutes, I was staring up at the piling I was just looking down on. I watched it bottom out and begin rising again. Luckily, we never reached that height again.
Sanaz sent me a photo from her vantage point at Serra Cross park on the top of the mountain. She was reporting that she could actually see the swells coming in from the pacific. You can see them in the photo as dark linear patches almost parallel and to left of the Ventura Pier at the bottom of the photo.
With the worst behind us, Sanaz and Soraya returned home and I left to go about my day. All was well, or so I thought…