By Ron Sudlow

Pan-pan. Pan-pan. Pan-pan.
Comox Coast Guard radio. Comox Coast Guard radio. Comox Coast Guard Radio.
This is Freya.
Go ahead Freya.

All hell was about to break loose.

We had recently entered Grace Harbour in Desolation Sound Marine Park, set the anchor and secured a stern tie around a tree on the shoreline.

We were looking forward to relief from the stifling July 28 heat. Tom had already plunged into the harbour off Freya’s stern gate which serves as a swim platform when lowered.

We were about to join him and later bathe in a nearby lake but our plans suddenly changed when Di noticed a puff of white smoke coming from the cabin of a large power boat on the far side of our anchorage. You could see flames
through the window. She sounded an alarm with blasts on Freya’s air horn while Tom went to the nav station and radioed the coast guard.

SHOCK AND AWE - Boaters in Grace Harbour Marine Park could only look on helplessly as motor vessel Bagan burned to the waterline and sank.

It didn’t take long for the fire to fully engulf Bagan, an older-style yacht we estimated to be longer than 50 feet, that was anchored near the shore. Fortunately the stricken vessel was not stern-tied close to a tinder-dry tree. The smoke turned to grey, then to black as the superstructure, stretching nearly from bow to stern, was consumed by the blaze. The radar mast crashed over the side.

A number of boaters approached the stricken Bagan in inflatables but it quickly became evident the fire was out of control, possibly threatening the forest in this pristine marine park.

Freya became the principal contact for the coast guard during the early stages of the blaze but other boaters joined in. Some, who were not in the harbour, reported what they thought was a forest fire.

However one key question was soon answered: There was nobody aboard. The owners of the Victoria-based pleasure craft were walking their dogs.

We also learned by monitoring Channel 16 that the owner had been found and the coast guard told Bagan had three fuel tanks with a total capacity of 1,200 litres of diesel.

The pyrotechnics would soon begin.

The first responders to our VHF radio transmissions was a fire warden crew who arrived in an aluminum work boat. After circling the blazing Bagan for several minutes they pumped sea water on her but to no avail. A coast guard
inflatable with three aboard soon arrived and asked the forestry crew to stand down.

The smoke became thicker and darker as it billowed straight up into the sky. Explosions rocked the harbour and boomed through the nearby hillsides when the propane and outboard gas tanks blew up. We thought we could hear
the whizzing of spent distress flares but didn’t see any. We broke out two fire extinguishers, just in case flaming debris came our way.

A huge fireball, accompanied by acrid black smoke, shot skyward when a fuel tank on the burning vessel Bagan ruptured.

Some boaters near the wreck hastily weighed anchor and left, passing even closer to the inferno as they made for open water. We decided to stay put because the blazing boat was anchored close to the narrow harbour entrance. Other boaters closer than Freya also kept their anchors down. There were no warnings from the coast guard crew on site or from authorities in Comox to evacuate. Using a chart, I determined we were about one-quarter of a nautical mile away.

The coast guard cutter Cape Caution soon arrived and it became apparent the decision had been made to let the boat burn, presumably because there was no hope of saving her and fuel consumed by fire couldn`t leave an oil slick.

Then the fireballs began, about 90 minutes after we had sounded the initial alarm.

They shot into the air with loud whooshing sounds like Roman candles as the diesel tanks ruptured one by one. Flames shot as high as the nearby hillside and the acrid smoke billowed even higher.

We could feel the heat from the flames when the tanks blew. The show was spectacular, scary and sad.

The boat was still afire as flames licked along the waterline, the last of the fuel tanks had gone and we determined it was safe enough to leave.

Good thing, too. Bagan eventually sank that evening, leaving diesel-soaked debris in Grace Harbour by morning. There was a diesel sheen on the water as
the fuel tanks floated to the surface to be recovered by the coast guard. Federal agencies determined the fuel on the surface was unrecoverable and would
eventually evaporate.

We later met the inflatable’s coast guard crew when they came past us in Squirrel Cove en route to investigate another report of oil on the water. They told us that the cause of the fire aboard Bagan had not been determined but an 18-year-old pet cat died in the flames.

EPILOGUE: We left Grace Harbour for Susan Islets, a small, quiet anchorage about an hour away off Lancelot Inlet (yes, there are Grail and Galahad points in the area).

We could still see the black pall of smoke rising over the hill as we dined on gourmet burgers in the cockpit. And we finally managed to cool down with a moonlight swim and relax with a glass (or two) of wine as John Coltrane ballads
wafted through the cockpit speakers. Freya`s instrumentation measured the surface water temperature at a very comfortable 28C.

After what we had witnessed, it doesn’t get much better than this. It had been a long (we left Rebecca Spit on Quadra Island at 0730h) day but we finally managed to have a memorable boating experience – one memorable for all the right reasons.

September 22nd, 2009