ASTORIA, Oregon — Harbor pilots at the mouth of the Columbia River have begun keeping a separate sheet for a low bank of fog that has delayed several morning crossings. The new form sits beside the ordinary tide and visibility charts. It has no official designation and does not change the port’s navigation rules.
Pilots asked for the distinction because conditions at the dock have not consistently described conditions in the channel. On nine mornings since late August, observers on shore reported clear or improving visibility while crews closer to the water described a gray bank near the river mouth. The office began putting those accounts in their own column.
Harbormaster Celia Reed said the sheet is meant to make routine decisions easier. “If a pilot needs to wait, we ought to have a useful record of what they were waiting for,” she said. Reed does not consider the form a forecast, and it is not posted as advice to private vessels.
Fog can be uneven where the river meets the sea. A National Weather Service meteorologist who reviewed the office’s observations said local wind and temperature differences could explain reports that seem inconsistent from opposite banks. The service is collecting more data before classifying the pattern.
One vessel waited 38 minutes for a clear channel on September 9, according to the pilot log. Its deck crew could see the loading cranes throughout the delay. The bridge reported that the nearest buoy disappeared and returned twice. Both accounts are in the log, and neither crew member interviewed by the Register described anything unusual beyond the poor visibility.
The supplementary sheet predicts no arrival times. Staff have begun noting when a bank is first observed, the wind direction and which fixed camera records it. On Friday, the bank was visible from the north-bank camera but absent from the south-bank image. A technician said the cameras were operating and that angle and distance may explain the difference.
Deckhand Morgan Keene said it has become useful to ask whether an observation is “shore clear” or “channel clear” before calling for a pilot. Those words are unofficial. Keene said the crew used to treat them as the same condition, which sometimes meant moving equipment to the dock only to wait for another report.
A line in one morning’s handwritten log was recopied after the original became wet. The office’s carbon copy gives the bank’s disappearance as 8:14 a.m.; the clean copy gives 8:41. Reed said the transposed figures are being checked against the radio log. The discrepancy has not affected any recorded transit time.
The sheet also records a faint bell heard on two mornings while the closest marked buoy was under repair. Harbor staff said the sound may have come from a working marker farther downriver. Because sound carries differently in fog, the office has left it as an observation rather than naming a source.
None of the pilots who spoke with the Register wanted a new warning notice. Several said the extra paperwork was enough. One pilot pointed out that the bank has been observed for only a few weeks and may disappear when the season changes, leaving a redundant column on the desk.
Reed intends to keep the sheet through October. The blue forms are clipped to the standard harbor reports each evening. An early copy was filed separately and was not in the binder when the Register reviewed it; staff later located it in the map drawer, folded inside a blank chart.