Bloody Hell!!!

[themount2]

Last week I watched Horizon - all about BIG waves. I followed that up on Monday with The Perfect Storm (classic case of throwing caution to the wind I thought!!). Now, I'm fairly new to sailing on the sea and prepared to start mixing it with the rough stuff, but please, that surely wasn't real - was it???!!! Has anyone ever experienced anything remotely like that and lived to reply to this post? Does it ever happen in the Solent with the combined wake of all those boats (transferrence of wave energy etc) - and before all you old timers - sorry regulars - start having a dig, that was meant to be humurous.
I must say it did make a change to watch a disaster movie without a happy ending - SHMBO wasn't best pleased though!

 

[Mr Cassandra]

Hello Brian welcome to the forum. Thank [any ] god I sail on a pond !!The med or at least that what most poster think it is like. however it not that bad most of the time
cheers bob t

Bob T

 

[snowleopard]

the key fact that may have been overlooked is that these monsters appeared against a background of 12m seas, i.e. 40ft! to get that you need a lot of open sea and at least force 12 blowing for a long time. that only happens in high-risk areas (southern ocean etc) or exceptional circumstances (north sea in winter storms) so i go about my normal sailing and keep an eye on the weather. i leave the danger zones to nutters like blyth, mcarthur etc.

 

[BrendanS]

Yep, does happen in the Solent...well almost..went to see off the round the world last year. Left Lymington and headed down Solent to meet the fleet. Flat calm, hardly a ripple. Then in distance could see white wave.

When the fleet (hundreds and hundreds of boats) went past, the swell was 4 to 6 feet for nearly an hour afterwards

 

[themount2]

Thanks for the welcome Bob and the reassurance - I can get some sleep now, I've been awake since Monday night worrying about it.
Cheers

 

[Guest]

Go here:

http://www.ybw.com/cgi-bin/forums/s...=276366&page=1&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=93&part=

How do you post links on this site btw?

 

[BrendanS]

Re: Links

Type

{url} your link (without http:// as it gets added anyway) {/url}

but replace the { brackets with [ brackets

difficult to show, as if you put the square brackets in, it gets posted as a link!

 

[Jacket]

You get 12m waves in the North sea? Bloody hell, I'm giving up sailing and learning to knit!

 

[Guest]

Re: Links

Thanks Brendan, forums seem to differ slightly on this.

Is there somewhere I can look to find out what all the commands are?

 

[BrendanS]

Re: Links

Top right of screen. Help. Can't remember which section, but have to scroll down to bottom

 

[Guest]

Re: Links

Got it. Ta.

Who'd have thought it, it's all under Help..

Mark-up tags is the one, so I've found the smilies at last...haha!

 

[Joe_Cole]

Re: Links

You want "Markup tags" in "Help"

Joe

 

[kingfisher]

This scared the beejeezus out of me

http://www.naval.com/heavy-seas/

For the Channel, the Belgian administration of waterways and sea have the telemetry of the weather bouys off the Flemish Banks on line at:
http://www.vliz.be/cgi-bin/mvb2web.exe?language=EN&action=parlist

At the peak of the heavy storm of last month, they were at +6m

Group of people on the pontoon: skipper is the one with the toolbox.
http://sirocco31.tripod.com

 

[Col]

Re:Heavy seas

Wow, that's pretty impressive!!

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.arweb.co.uk/argallery/colspics> Cols Picture Album</A>

 

[AndrewB]

Nice set of pics, Kingfisher.

Course, we get them like that all the time out in Channel. ;-)

Here's a shot I took looking out of Dover Harbour, Sunday a couple of weeks ago. Never mind the relatively sheltered harbour, check the outside through the entrance.

Surf's up guys, get those boards waxed!

 

[Chris_Stannard]

I spent 20 years at sea in the navy and from my experience the scientists did not begin to kno what they are talking about. There always is a problem if you get a strong wind, Force 6 or more against a current of 2 or more knots. Add to that some shallow water and you can get all sorts of funny affects, I came over a big wave off Brittany and it had no back. The boat dropped about 15 feet vertically.

If and when you start crossing the channel you will soon observe that every 7th wave is bigger than the rest and that the sea height is not constant but variable. You then get into a long series and every so often the waves get much bigger. The physics of the ordinary sea wave includes a factor that says the wave front will advance at a speed proportional to the speed of the wind, thus the wind starts blowing at 15 knots and the wave front starts advancing. If the wind now goes up to 25 knots, the new wave front advances faster than the 15 knot wave front and will start ot overtake it. You then get a combination of two sine wave systems, some of which add and some subtract, hence the variation in wave height.

Having said all of that, it is not the wave height that is the problem it is the breaking wave, which dumps tons of water on you, so if you ever do get caught out in a real blow that is what you have to try to avoid.

Adlard Coles "Heavy weather Sailing" gives lots of tips on the best way to deal with bad weather and if you are going any distance I would suggest you get a copy, It is worth more than a £99 computer weather programme for your pc and costs a lot less.

Good sailing

Chris Stannard

 

[themount2]

Well done Chris, you have explained more succinctly in one paragraph where it took Horizon took almost an hour to get close. Thanks
Heavy Weather Sailing is on the pressie list.
Good sailing to you too
Cheers