Read Dale Moses’ narrative by clicking here: https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20110105/NEWS/110109990/in-dale-moses-own-words-i-was-rescued-and-can-tell-the-tale
PORT TOWNSEND — Dale Moses has the quiet confidence of a man used to being in charge.
A longtime Navy officer who retired as a captain after 35 years, he then worked as a project manager for Snohomish County.
The Kala Point resident recounted his 45-minute brush with death last Thursday in the piercing cold waters of Admiralty Inlet and the Strait of Juan de Fuca as if he’d watched from a distance.
In a way, he did distance himself enough to produce a compelling six-page narrative of every detail.
Putting it down on paper was good therapy, he said.
But as Moses began to recall a simple human gesture by one of his rescuers, his voice halted, he turned his head away, and a listener finished his sentence for him.
“You mean he unzipped his jacket and opened it to shield you from the wind?” Bill Beezley, spokesman for East Jefferson Fire-Rescue, prompted, and Moses nodded.
At that point in the tale, Moses had been pulled aboard The Volunteer, otherwise known as Marine 16, Jefferson County Fire-Rescue’s lone marine vessel for use along the many miles of shoreline that trace the edges of the district’s jurisdiction.
A Coast Guard marine force protection unit out of Naval Submarine Base Bangor also was nearby when Moses got in trouble.
All Moses could see from his position as he was clinging to his kayak were two distant boats that he thought were fishing vessels until The Volunteer moved within 15 feet and began pitching him a line.
It took four tries for the line to come close enough for him to wrap it around his wrist so that he could be pulled to safety.
The day had started gently enough, recalled Moses, a passionate kayaker for the last five years.
It was cold, but the sun was shining. He put his boat in the water at Port Townsend Boat Haven for a trip intended to avoid wind and waves.
“I had minimal wind and waves although I did have a bit of wind-cocking to the north as I paddled along,” his story began in Moses’ written account.
“After reaching Point Hudson, I decided to go around that corner and into Fort Worden bay just to stretch out the outing.
“When I approached Point Wilson at about 1:15 p.m., I failed to detect that the ebb was making me move more quickly along the inside beach leading to the point,” he continued.
As soon as he realized that the sea was pulling him, he tried to turn back and saw what are called standing waves of more than 4 feet directly ahead.
The tide’s strong ebb began carrying him farther out into the channel between Point Wilson and Whidbey Island.
Moses had managed to turn, but he was being pulled backward.
He turned toward shore and found himself “stern-to” and confronted with a large standing wave.
He hoped to ride the wave back to safer water, but the kayak veered, and “the wave rolled me over to starboard and I was in the water.”
And that was just the first time.
Moses kicked out of his kayak and surfaced, his paddle leashed to his flotation vest, grabbed onto his boat and tried kicking toward the shore, but the current was too swift.
Moses held onto his boat and let the current take him.
“I was hoping it would bend around the point to quieter water where I could self-rescue and get back in the kayak,” he wrote.
He struggled to keep his left boot — calf-high neoprene for kayaking — from falling off while being swept past the point and lighthouse, “concerned just how far out in the Strait the current was going to carry me,” he said.
He sensed a lessening of current and waves but still had to struggle to keep his head up to breathe.
Then it hit him.
“I was starting to realize that some water was getting into my dry suit,” he said.
He tried to get back in after righting the kayak as the current carried him at an angle into the Strait — toward Protection Island and into the ocean — but his body rolled, and he was flipped again.
An immediate second attempt also failed.
The water temperature that day was reported at about 46 degrees, but Moses wrote that he didn’t feel especially cold yet.
By this time, both boots were gone, dragged off as the inner booties attached to his leaking suit filled with water.
It was time to rig the paddle float strapped to his kayak to help stabilize it as he attempted a third boarding.
“I hadn’t done this drill for perhaps two years since practicing on a summer lake in my old kayak,” he recalled.
It’s at this point that Moses thinks he started to feel the effects of hypothermia.
He forgot he was supposed to put the paddle inside the inflated pouch. Instead, he stuck it into an outside strap.
He was able to get the top of his body onto the kayak, reduce the exertion of swimming and get some of his breath back.
He tried kicking toward shore, but his booties were filled with water. He could see people watching from near the lighthouse.
After three failed attempts, he didn’t think he could successfully get back into the kayak and paddle to safety.
“I was starting to realize I was in serious trouble,” he wrote.
The 9-1-1 call from birdwatchers Mary Ann and Jay Merrill had come at 1:30 p.m.
When Moses first saw the Coast Guard and fire district boats coming, he had likely been in the water about 45 minutes.
They weren’t yet close enough for him to see rescue was on the way.
“Finally I was within hailing distance and I waved my right arm and the crewman on the bow waved back. I think at that point my self-control started to come unglued with relief,” he wrote.
The rest is history, as they say.
The flatbottomed Volunteer beached at the Marine Science Center to a waiting aid car, Moses’ body was shaking violently, and his temperature may have been down to the low 90s, when “you lose your ability to reason.”
His blood glucose was dangerously high for his diabetic condition, and his blood pressure had also soared.
Emergency treatment at the scene and at later at Jefferson Healthcare hospital allowed him to go home two hours after admission.
“I was very lucky,” Moses wrote.
“My equipment served me fairly well, but it could have been better.
“Even if I could have gotten ashore under my own power, I think hypothermia might well have done me in.”
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Julie McCormick is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend. Phone her at 360-385-4645 or e-mail juliemccormick10@gmail.com.
