Small Craft Route - Lama Passage - Mile 387 - 398

Of course, before modern electronic navigation like radar and GPS, going through here in night or fog was a lot tricker. This is the fast steamer Mariposa in Lama Passage in 1917. The passengers just waited until the next steamer came along, jumped aboard, and continued their trip to Alaska. Photo from Seattle Museum of History and Industry.

  Lama Passage is one of those places where the skipper makes sure that he is up in the pilothouse to make sure whoever is on watch makes all the turns when he should. I was southbound one October in fog and I had this suspicion that my engineer, on watch at the time, wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box when it came to navigation, so I stood up there wih him in the pilothouse with my coffee as we steamed past the Dryad Point lighthouse where we should have turned. I waited another couple of minutes, to make sure he had missed the turn and then asked, casually, "So, Eric, where are we...?" He pointed on the chart to a point about a mile behind us. I opened the pilothouse side door so he could clearly hear the foghorn at Dryad Pt. and said, "That's Dryad Pt, buddy... " He turned sheet white as he realised his mistake. And I wondered, if I hadn't been there, would we have the hit the underwater rocks ahead before he realised his error?