I run a sixteen aluminum. There are days you couldn't pay me to go out there. No fish is worth your life.
I've been caught in some of those sudden blowups. And getting caught in one in the middle of the Strait is the last place I'd want to be.
If I die out there by myself...well, that's one thing. But I'm not taking any innocent others like children or women that can't swim with me.
As the guy in the movie said ....something like: "The best way to avoid a horrible situation is not to be there in the first place".
Check the weather reports with a hawk eye before you do something like that. And have a plan B and emergency/contact equipment in place before you go.
The boating obituaries are full of people that had more balls than brains.
As a guy who crosses all the time, I think this is pretty smart advice. There are days I wouldn't go (although not very many) in a larger boat, and even going only on days when I feel like it'll be rocky without being dangerous, I've had enough green water over the DE20 to rip the little tender I had strapped to the roof right off the hardtop and dump it in the cockpit. Pulled the bow eye right out of the dinghy...probably a solid foot of water swept the hardtop, front to back. Somewhat unsettling. I was lucky to have the tender there - the water was mostly diverted to the sides and hardly any ended up in the cockpit.
Anyway, my philosophy is that you need to prepare for realistic rescue times for any situation you put yourself in. For really gnarly looking weather, I'll wear a shorty wetsuit under my clothes, I have a boat with enough foam that I know it's not sinkable, and I carry a HX870 on me. If the boat gets rolled, chances are good I'll stay with it because it's fairly enclosed; the radio should get rescue on the way unless I'm unconscious, but I'm hard to knock out. That should be enough to survive an hour or two's wait in a swamped boat, which is probably all the Coast Guard would need to get to me. If I had an open boat I'd probably be looking a little differently at the
I'll say this: the first time I did it in real wind, the wind wasn't in the forecast and I left the gas dock at Steveston in maybe 10 knots of westerly - nothing you'd notice at all. Just enough to raise a chop and I thought it'd be a cake walk. By the time I got to Sand Heads it was blowing 30 knots and streaks of foam were blowing fifty feet off every whitecap and the only reason I didn't turn around was that I didn't know if I could. My wife was on board and the only thing I could think about was the jeopardy I'd put her in and although I'd always considered myself an atheist, I was looking at the water and trying to make bargains with it to spare her and take me.
The first two miles out of the river were chaotic and very hard to control - lots of wheel and throttle work, and my right elbow ached for days afterwards; I guess I'd been gripping the throttle to death and it actually gave me a bit of tennis elbow symptoms just from that one hour. After the rivermouth it improved a lot and, like most of my experience with the strait, it became more predictable and we just ground through it.
So I say this not to scare you off at all, but just take precautions and don't forget that even a wave which is only four feet high has a staggering amount of kinetic energy stored inside it. Treat the sea with respect and the gods will let you stay on top of it. Plow the bow on an open boat and you'll regret it.
