The Wild World of Marine Navigation
a review of "How to Read the Water" by Tristan Gooley
Mid-morning in Reid Harbor last May cold wind blasted me in the face. It was day 10 of our 70-day paddling expedition, and we were about to cross the border from Stuart Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State into British Columbia, Canada. We would spend the afternoon hiking to the northernmost point on the island to find enough cell service to submit out customs papers.
The next morning, we woke to the the same winds around the same time, despite a forecast for calm weather. I chalked it up to a sea breeze, fueled by the long and low shape of Reid Harbor compared to the dark forested hills of Stuart Island. We took off into the light headwind, and once leaving Reid Harbor, found ourselves out of any wind at all. From Stuart Island, we paddled a calm 18-miles into Sidney, BC, and then another six up to our campsite for the night.
I didn’t think about Reid Harbor and it’s breezes again until this year; this past month I’ve spent almost every weekend guiding three-day sea kayaking trips out to Stuart Island with Outdoor Odysseys.
Every morning, I’ve woke up to the same light breeze in my face off the water, and very quickly learned not to take it as an indicator of what is happening outside the harbor.
The sea breeze created by the unequal heating of land and water explains the perennial Reid Harbor sea breeze, but later last summer when we arrived in Toba Inlet come mid-morning we greeted with something else completely.
Toba Inlet is about 22 miles long and two miles wide, lined with steep mountains on all sides— a true fjord.
In the mid-morning after we ate breakfast and planned to get on the water, wicked wind picked up sending white caps, foam, and waves shivering across the inlet mouth. Unexpectedly, the wind was coming from the the land and blowing out to sea.
It took a lot of reading local paddling guides and time on google to put together exactly what we were witnessing in Toba Inlet, and it wasn’t until I read the chapter on katabatic winds in Tristan Gooley’s How to Read the Water that I understood exactly what I was looking at.
While in a place like Reid Harbor, the dark hills heat faster in the morning than the water, sending cold air rushing to shore to take the place of the hot, rising air, things work a little differently around mountains. In a mountain-lined Toba Inlet, the cold air at the tops of the mountains hovers over snowpack. In the morning the land near the water and water itself heats quickly above the temperature at the tops of the mountains; that air rises, and the cold air at the mountain tops is pulled down by gravity, careening down the steep slops and into then out of the fjord, creating the dramatic katabatic winds we witnessed in Toba Inlet every morning.
While I had read about katabatic winds before, Gooley’s description in How to Read the Water offered something that Wikipedia articles and short, two sentence warnings in guidebook’s did not— a detailed description of why and how katabatic winds work, and the tools to visualize and predict them.
A Review of How to Read the Water, by Navigator Tristan Gooley
Like learning any language, the best way to learn to read the water is to be immersed (rather than sub-mersed lol) in it. While Gooley poses in How to Read the Water that many of the principals can be applied, observed, and practiced on your local pond, the book is still likely most useful to someone interested learning about the behavior of water on the ocean with access to/experience in large bodies of water with current to observe.
As an expedition sea kayaker and current paddling guide I found it overall an extremely useful and interesting overview of a lot of the phenomenons I’ve witnessed on the water, and would definitely recommend it most especially to any beginner or recreational paddler. The book is perfectly set up to augment a beginner-intermediate level sea kayaker or canoeists on water knowledge or experience, however if you’re looking for a book that goes into great detail on navigation by the stars, or the tides, or the winds, you’ll likely be disappointed. (Any one of these topics could fill it’s own 300-page book easily).
Overall, How to Read the Water is filled with useful tidbits and explanations, and put words to a lot of the things I had witnessed and even understood to be true about the water but not so explicitly labeled. How to Read the Water is successful in demystifying things like Katabatic winds, general weather patterns, and individual tricks and heuristics that can be used as clues to what is happening with the water (for example, you can look at the direction of kelp below the surface of water to gauge the direction of current, or you can look at the shape of a ripple in the sand to to gauge the same thing) but often barely scratches the surface of explaining the larger systems at play.
In Gooley’s defense, the systems that influence the water are large and deeply complicated, and he does a good job explaining that the surface has been barely scratched.
For example Gooley’s chapter on the tides is a far cry from Jonathan White’s masterpiece TIDES (which i mention like, once a blog post). In contrast to White’s artful integration of science and storytelling, Gooley’s use of personal narratives in the writing often feels disjointed and jammed in.
The difference of course being that White was a navigator turned nonfiction writer who made TIDES the culmination of both of his interests, and Gooley is a navigator who has made a business out of teaching accessible navigation. White’s purpose was to tell the in-depth story of the tides and to tell it extremely well, and he is willing to make the reader work for it; Gooley’s purpose is to attract and educate as many readers as possible.
Neither goal is better or worse than the other, but the two books while seemingly similar on the surface have markedly different approaches to the same topics.
Some quick notes on How to Read the Water:
I enjoyed the section on apparent wind vs true wind. I can’t even count the amount of people on paddling trips who have remarked that the “wind died” upon turning a corner and having the wind at our backs instead of in our faces. The wind has not died; when moving in the same direction as the wind the apparent wind is now the true wind minus your speed (ie, there appears to be less wind when you are moving with it). The opposite effect is also true; when you are moving into the wind the apparent wind is the true wind plus your speed, explaining why heading into the wind you casually observe a markedly different wind speed than paddling with it.
“Rayleigh Scattering” is a one of those phenomenons which I had been using to gauge distance and hadn’t known the name for. Rayleigh Scattering accounts for why more distant objects appear paler. I’ve regularly used this in navigating to gauge relative distance between two islands.
Morse Code for a request for medical assistance is the letter “W”, or ._ _ (seems useful)
How to Read the Water overall is a great read for anyone looking to scratch the surface of nautical navigation and an excellent place to start for paddlers looking to learn more about the water in front of them. It’s an easy read and does a great job setting up the framework to learn more.
Orca updates from your local Orca writer (me):
On the last day of my three day trip this week we encountered the L-pod of Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW)! Earlier this month, I had an incredible encounter with J-pod on a small tour of just two people where we surrounded by the pod on all sides for over an hour.
This time, we saw the pod from a greater distance as they were headed north through Haro Strait, but it was still pretty incredible. We also were lucky to spot the new calves travelling with L-pod! The SRKW orca (redundant) population is endangered, and it’s always super exciting to see new healthy calves.
Another Orca Update:
No, the Iberian Orcas are not representative of the Salish Sea Orcas! Orcas in general are not violent. Resident orcas (including J, K, and L pods) only eat salmon. Transient, or Biggs Orcas, hunt other marine mammals but there are no recorded attacks of this orca population on kayakers.
The Iberian Orcas are for some reason going after the rudders of boats, not the people on those boats; an important distinction. Orcas are incredible and you don’t need to be afraid of them.
a few quick sea kayak guiding FAQs:
Ew, an FAQ. I always find that super cringey, because the implication is that lots of people are asking me lots of questions, but still! I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to book a tour with me lately, and messages trying to book a tour with me, and so I thought I would clear up the process real quick!
wait, what’s your job?
I’m a sea kayaking guide for Outdoor Odysseys on San Juan Island! I guide overnight kayaking trips and day trips! We’re a small team of less than ten people that run trips into the islands.
how do I book a tour with you?
Right now there’s no way to book a tour with me directly! To book a kayaking trip like the ones I lead, call Outdoor Odysseys! I believe there is still plenty of availability on July and August overnight kayaking trips, and there is definitely room in September. While there’s no way to guarantee me as a guide on your trip, you can definitely call and ask for Maddy M and give it a shot— you could also ask for my partner, Andy, who is probably objectively a better guide than me (he’s way funnier and a super strong paddler). Either way though, all our guides are awesome!
why would I want to kayak camp the San Juan Islands?
Kayaking the San Juan Islands is literally incredible and I’m so happy to call it my job! There are really beautiful campsites, beautiful cliffside paddling, and awesome wildlife sighting opportunities. I would say we see orcas about 30% of trips, and seals, bald eagles, and otters closer to every single trip. The camp food is fun, the types of people you get on overnight kayaking trips are always awesome, and it’s a really incredible way to experience and learn more about the ocean.
a few more photos & stories from the past few weeks for my paid subscribers! Thank you all for sticking around— you’re keeping the lights on around here!
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