classroom with 40 foot waves

CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT, Wash. — Metal clinked on metal as three small groups of U.S. Coast Guard students and their instructors clipped canvas waist belts to both sides of their 47-foot rescue boats, vital lifelines for staying onboard when the big waves come.

And on these waters, they always come.

The Columbia River, the fourth largest in America by volume, surges into the turbulent tides and currents of the Pacific Ocean here at a spot called the Columbia River Bar, where two far-west corners of Oregon and Washington meet at the river’s mouth to form a pincer. Waves 30 to 40 feet high are common in winter as river energy and ocean energy collide and then perversely recombine, swirling in complex patterns driven by tidal surges, winds and storms. Read on, thanks to the NY Times.

Read more on Sailing Anarchy