PORT TOWNSEND – Pete Hanke has seen rogue waves in his long tour-boat career, but none like the set that slammed into his orca-watching tour boat, Olympas, on Thursday.
The waves left four passengers slightly injured and a window broken over the bow.
“It was a freak accident, not a big deal,” an upset Hanke said Thursday, describing the three surprise waves that hit the vessel in a fog bank.
A two-person crew was operating the boat on Hanke’s day off when the waves hit.
“I think the tricky part today was it was foggy and you had no visibility,” he said.
The 30-passenger vessel had been slowed to 20 knots, which is typical procedure under such conditions, he said.
The Olympas was just west of Point Wilson when he waves hit, shortly after the vessel left the marina at 10 a.m.
The waves jostled the boat and passengers but no one was seriously hurt, he reported.
Upon immediate return to Boat Haven Marina, P.S. Express employees rushed four passengers complaining of back pain to the Madrona Hill Urgent Care clinic on Upper Sims Way, where they were examined and released, said Hanke.
“We gave everybody’s money back,” he said, adding that they were offered free tickets for a future tour.
“We did everything we were supposed to do,” he said.
Water conditions were reported as “low to moderate,” according to Hanke, whose crew normally checks conditions from data originating from the buoy center at Smith Island.
The Olympas‘ window was repaired Thursday afternoon at Port Townsend Boat Haven marina and the vessel was to resume touring today, Hanke said.
The Olympas takes passengers on a half-day tour that loops south of San Juan Island.
The 72-passenger Glacier Spirits makes a full loop around the island, an area popular with orcas, with a two-hour stop at Friday Harbor.
Since 1981, P.S. Express boats have taken thousands of passengers for orca-watching tours near the San Juan Islands.
Often called whales, orcas are actually large dolphins.
The company also offers Puffin Tours to Protection Island, off the mouth of Discovery Bay, where about 70 percent of Puget Sound’s sea birds migrate to nest every year.
P.S. Express, the North Olympic Peninsula’s only orca-watching tour operation, in 2005 expanded to new headquarters at Hudson Point Marina, where tours normally launch.
The demand for tours to see whales and orcas has grown since the 1989 movie, “Free Willy.”
The movie was filmed in Lopez Island’s Mud Bay, not far from P.S. Express tours.
