PORTLAND - The Army Corps of Engineers is moving up a scheduled underwater survey of Tillamook Bay following a charter boat capsizing that claimed the lives of nine people with two more missing and presumed dead.

The corps had planned next month to survey the navigation channel it maintains between two jetties at the entrance to the bay but now will conduct the survey next week to assist the National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the capsizing, said Matt Rabe, spokesman for the corps.

The corps maintains a channel that extends about 3,000 feet beyond the end of the jetties with a depth ranging from 20 feet to 35 feet. The minimum depth before it must be dredged is 18 feet, Rabe said.

The channel was last dredged in 1976.

But he said the narrow entrance from the shallow bay to the Pacific Ocean - called a "bar" - acts as a "self-dredging system."

"The jetties help concentrate the flow out of the bay into the ocean - and by concentrating that discharge, it scours the sand out of the navigation channel," Rabe said.

Veteran charter boat skippers say the Oregon coast has always been dangerous for small boats, but some places are more dangerous than others, and the entrance to Tillamook Bay ranks among them.

One charter operator who sails out of Tillamook Bay said he had canceled his trips on Saturday, the day the 32-foot Taki Tooo overturned in the surf just outside the jetties.

"I was booked to go out," said Kim Johns, owner of USIA Adventure Charters and a licensed master with 11 years experience.

"I called my customers and said, 'You know what? It's just not the day. I can get out. But do you really want to suffer 12-foot swells to catch fish?"' Johns said.

His charter operation features high-speed military attack boats, requiring customers to dress in specialized survival gear called "dry suits" that can allow them to survive more than 15 hours in the ocean, which typically is a chilly 50 degrees and can quickly trigger deadly hypothermia without protective gear.

The customers aboard the capsized Taki Tooo simply had life jackets, and most of them were not wearing the jackets when it overturned. Nearly everybody who survived grabbed a life jacket as the boat foundered.

Johns said a small boat can easily be turned broadside to the waves and crashing surf, making it vulnerable to rolling over or being swamped.

The sloping shore and narrow entrance to the bay between the jetties also tends to concentrate waves, he said.

"A lot of people tell you the Tillamook bar is the most dangerous place to go out," Johns said.

One survivor of the accident says he now wishes everybody aboard the Taki Tooo had taken the danger seriously and worn their life jackets.

"You don't expect that stuff to happen to charter boats," said Richard Forsman of Vancouver, Wash., one of the eight survivors.

"You see it happen to smaller, private boats quite a lot," Forsman said. "But you go on a big charter boat and you feel safe."

He said he hopes the accident leads to tougher regulations. "That might be something good that comes out of this," Forsman said.

The Oregon Marine Board says charter boat accidents are rare, but it recommends wearing life jackets at all times and has extensive safety education programs for boaters, said board spokesman Randy Henry.

"We've always pushed safety all the way down the coast,"' Henry said.

But he added that conditions at Tillamook "are difficult. We lose people there almost every year."