Handling overhead breaking waves, or not (from Dec, 2015)

Sadly I don't have any solutions here just questions, and the answer may be not much could be done, or it might be I did everything wrong.

There was no clear path out of Oceanside harbor yesterday. With three people on board we did some basic practice within the harbor while watching the breakers across the mouth and eventually decided to give it a go. Getting out wasn't going to be too much of a problem, the timing is easier between sets as you are closing with the waves pretty fast, the question was what was it going to be coming back in.

Coming back in I saw a wave several hundred yards out but decided it looked small enough to still commit, and also perhaps interesting. Given another pass at this situation I'd wait as in the end it was luck rather than skill that got us through unscathed.

A few things were learnt though!

We lined up for the harbor mouth, missing the main shoal area that was breaking a long way out and coming in close the the breakwater. I'd noticed that waves were either breaking on the shoal or the breakwater never on both and tried to hit the shoulder in between the two. This wave though came up right behind us and I didn't want to get any closer to the breakwater than we were.

I gunned the motor, didn't check water speed but likely 7.5 knots average. The waves were overtaking us pretty fast. When the wave of main concern started standing up it was obviously bigger than I'd thought and stood up right behind Kraken - perhaps six feet over the transom as it peaked to a vertical face right behind the boat. The nose dug down and we accelerated hard with the nose starting to dig in in front. Pitch poling is obviously a concerning problem and for a few seconds before the hull started really working I got really worried then the nose started coming up, with water pouring back across the boat on boat sides. At the same time water was pouring into the back of the boat and running through the cockpit hard while I struggled on the wheel to keep the boat straight.

Ivan was washed across the boat onto the lifelines with his lifejacket popping open and Edda was hanging on hard.

The wave settled down and started coming under the boat and at some point the rudder gave up. By this time things were actually relatively sane and we spun up in the white water before gunning the engine and getting the eff out of there.

Who knows how fast we got going. It felt like a surfboard or a kayak on a wave for a while there, only without the ability to dig a rail in and cross the wave.

I tried to hold the boat straight to the wave, but with people floating across the boat may have been distracted. The final round up to the right was the opposite direction to the initial turn I'd been fighting - its very possible I over-steered. Its also possible that the rudder just had no grip at this point.

So:

1. Don't try that experiment again, play it safe
2. Put the boards in the hatch. It was stupid not to think about this.
3. We had life vests on, but should have been clipped on too.
4. Everyone should have had much better grip on the boat before committing to the most dangerous part.
5. Phew.