Along the craggy coastline of the Pacific Northwest, children are warned never to turn their backs on the ocean. An unpredictable wave or current can carry an unwary swimmer or wader – or even a small boat – into an unseen riptide or rocky waters in seconds.

Beth Slade, a native of Spokane, Wash., grew up with a healthy fear of the ocean's deadly power and she did not turn her back on it – she embraced it instead.

Training in Clatsop Spit on the mouth of the Columbia River.Slade is one of five "surfmen" at the Yaquina Bay Coast Guard Station in Newport, Ore., and the first active duty woman to be certified to an elite class of rescue lifeboat captains trained to respond in violent storms and swells. Surfman is the term for an enlisted Coast Guard member who is authorized to operate rescue boats in heavy surf and under extreme weather and rough seas. It's the highest Coast Guard rank for a boat handler and requires hundreds of hours of training in these conditions.

Strapping on a crash helmet and maneuvering a 47- or 52-foot motor lifeboat through heavy fog and 14-foot breaking waves is the job – so is saving imperiled vessels and the lives of their crew.

"I've had a handful of cases when I had to go out in the middle of the night and there were anywhere from 14- to 16-foot-plus waves," Slade says. "Once you get off shore you might be in the big ocean swell and you know you are going to encounter 18- to 20-plus swells when the ocean meets the river. There have been nerve-wracking moments trying to get a boat in across the bar. But I haven't had any lost tows, and I've been able to maintain all the way in. I haven't had any casualties."

PROVING GROUND

During one particular harrowing rescue a few years ago, an 86-foot fishing boat radioed the Coast Guard for assistance. Slade was stationed at Cape Disappointment, a dramatic bluff on the Washington side of the mouth of the Columbia River. Another surfman from her station responded, expecting simply to tow the fisherman and his boat safely into port. But then the vessel's nets entangled the propellers, both onthefishing boat and the rescue craft trying to save it.

The Coast Guard crew tried to set anchor to keep its boat in place while another rescue team was dispatched to the scene. But the three-inch nylon line holding the fishing vessel snapped, and both boats were being carried downstream, quickly heading straight for the pilings of a nearby bridge.

Slade set out in a smaller, 47-foot craft that was unevenly matched to save the two larger boats. Their combined weight exceeded the towing limitations of her lifeboat. Undaunted, Slade tested the boat-handling skills she developed as a child on Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where her dad had a cabin.

Though the anchor-line had snapped, she was able to tether the fishing boat with another three-inch nylon rope. Speed and accuracy were critical. Both vessels had drifted within 100 yards of the bridge pilings with certain wreck just minutes away.

At one point, her lifeboat was pulled back 100 yards and began sinking under the strain before she could gain traction with the help of the current to overcome the weight of both boats.

"I was sucked down in the water – there was six feet left before the stern of my boat was under water," she says.

Ultimately, Slade used the current and some deft handling to get both boats safely into the dock.

CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT

With its frequent large wave patterns, pounding storms, dense fog and rough, wide-swept shores, the coastline in Oregon and Washington is the perfect Coast Guard proving ground. The heavy surf and unpredictable currents have sent many mariners to their graves. The region is sometimes called the "Graveyard of the Pacific."

Cape Disappointment often lives up to its name. It is home to the Coast Guard's National Motor Lifeboat School, where Slade met her husband, who is now stationed at Depoe Bay, 20 miles to the north. Only a handful of candidates qualify as surfmen, the highest echelon of small-boat operators, and only after heavy-weather training that usually takes four to six years.

Slade got her start on Cape Cod's Woods Hole Station. She saw an opportunity to move back to her West Coast origins when another petty officer signed up for training at Cape Disappointment but decided to get out of the service at the last minute. Slade volunteered to take her place, and she qualified as a surfman at the age of 24. She's a Petty Officer 1st Class and in 2005 won the Coast Guard district's Enlisted Person of the Year award.

Now 29, she has no regrets and would like to follow in the footsteps of her husband and train others, a way for the couple to stay in Oregon where they want to raise their two young daughters.

Only 133 Coast Guard surfmen who have made the cut are still in active service. While Slade was the first woman to do so, two others have followed in her wake.