Rogue Wave

[unbusted67]

Originally Posted by TritonSailor

I mentioned it because in a number of books that are in every cruisers library, they have mathematically assigned values to different boats. One of those values was the boats ability to right itself in the case of a rollover. Based on the math, the Pearson Triton does a damn good job. It just happens to be small. You have to understand I'm the one in the smaller boat, so I need to develop a healthy confidence in her

Jeff

No you are totally right. The Triton is a good boat. Just in the most general sense size does count.

[sailing now]

We were hit by a rogue wave in Maine. We were on a mooring in Bass Harbor. Diane was working in the galley and I was reading in the salon. I happened to look out the port hole and saw a "wall" of water coming at us. No time to react. It slammed into us broadside and broke over the cabin top. We only had two ports open and it blew the screens out, soaking Diane and the galley. I was on the other side of the cabin and I got pretty wet. It must have put 50 or 75 gallons inside. One bilge pump started. I ran up the companionway and there was just one wave breaking on the shoreline. Quite an experience.

[Bash]

Originally Posted by TritonSailor

So was your survival by sheer luck? Do you know how your boat was oriented when the wave hit? I personally don't think that having a bigger boat is a defense against a rogue wave.

A keelboat is not going to pitchpole until the height of the seas surpasses the length of the waterline. A ten-meter wave that could flip a Triton will not have the energy to flip my 14-meter boat. This is not to say anything negative about your boat or anyone else's particular brand of vessel. But the fact is that waterline matters. The bigger the waves, the bigger the boat you want to be in.

The rogue wave that I described hit us bow on. I couldn't tell you how high it was because I never saw it. All I know is that it stood a 48-foot sailboat up on its transom, not entirely vertical but nearly so. We'd been in messy seas for an entire day, and I must have seen the anchor roller go under water 50 times. Lots of green water on deck. The rogue wave was different because the bow just kept going up and up and up, and at just the point where I thought we'd go over backwards it finally came down.

I don't get seasick, but it was a fairly nauseating moment, I must confess. Regardless, I don't think it was luck that saved us, I think it was waterline.

[unbusted67]

Originally Posted by Bash

A keelboat is not going to pitchpole until the height of the seas surpasses the length of the waterline. A ten-meter wave that could flip a Triton will not have the energy to flip my 14-meter boat. This is not to say anything negative about your boat or anyone else's particular brand of vessel. But the fact is that waterline matters. The bigger the waves, the bigger the boat you want to be in.

That's what I meant to say. I thought it was 1/2 the length of the waterline though?

[Jmolan]

Originally Posted by imagine2frolic

I saw the same program. If I remember correctly these waves mostly occur in higher lats, under certain conditions?.....i2f

We get "Curlers" when you have a current involved. I know the one off S. Africa is famous for just those nasty ones. Better to avoid it. In the Aleutian Islands we get huge tides running between the Bearing Sea and the Pacific. There are a bunch of different combinations of wind direction and tide running (up to 8 kts) so we pick our poison......:-)

Anyone who has worked where we do have had the widows blown out of their boat, or know a number of guys who have.

These are 100' to 180' boats. the combination of things is what will do it.....I am a firm belever (I have never lost a window, but I have dented the bow in on my 125' Steel boat) is slowing down...wayyyyy down. Be like a duck, you can just bob along in some pretty terrible stuff this way. Keep the bow up on an angle, high enough to get over them without rolling. But not so high you scoop them up and get a bow full. On our big boat if you fill the bow with water it is slow to recover and will lay bow down till it sheds the weight.....no fun.
Running with it depends on the boat. IF you are wallowing and rolling and do not have good steerage, I think you asking for it. A lightweight race boat or good multihull can do this....all depends.

I have a rule "when the wind picks up, I slow down"....:-)

Pictures by jmolan - Photobucket

[barnakiel]

If you were prepared for it, it was not rougue.

I will try to prepare for the remaining 99.99% of bad waves, and if the rouge one comes I will pray (much as I am not religious) that my preparations were solemn enough.

Interestingly, I have read a study, based on satellite photography sources, where they prove that both the size (height) and the 'it came from impreditable direction' legends were put to grave (let's hope). Objectively, the only wave that is out of the range of normal wave physics is the tsunami then.

Interestingly too, my own boat was once badly knocked down in waves not taller than 7 meters (20ft).

b.

[Pelagic]

TritonSailor….When we are tank testing hulls of any length the “critical” test is when the wave Length is about the same as the boat…regardless of wave height.

That is why in Ocean situations, smaller boats often have time to recover before the next wave hits them, whereas larger ships may still be heading down the back of the first wave when the next wave hits them hard…..(In reality it was not a Rouge, it is just that their momentum was heading downwards when it hit).

That is why Imolan’s advice rings so true….slow down so as to still maintain steerageway, if it is a large breaking sea, allow it to break over your strongest section (the bow) and then belly down the backside, once you top the crest, so as not to gain too much speed before the next one comes.

Trust in your boat to tell you what method feels right and take it easy. There is no escaping bad weather once you are caught in it….. you just have to ride it out until it passes.

[barnakiel]

A word from a sailor who got badly knocked down in moderate conditions - do NOT heave-to. Fore reach. Or run.

OK perhaps you can heave-to in a big boat (>40ft, >10t) but not in a small one. I understand this is because even a small breaking wave will carry enough white water to push the boat to the point where the mast touches the water, and if you happen to be on the slope of the wave then it is .. ??? 140 degs? more?

My boat came back, but how many boats will come back from 140 deg+ roll?

[HobieFan]

If I was going off shore more than a few days, I would carry a sea anchor or series drogue. I'm not interested in turning beam-on to the waves such as a heave-to in a storm. That never struck me as sane and although some people swear by it, i've heard a dozen or more stories of boats taking a breaking wave or just tripping on their keel on a big wave and rolling or laying down.

No fun.

I just read a book for a few minutes at the store that had a half a dozen or more accounts of biggish boats being rolled while beam-on to the waves, along with a few stories of very capable ocean boats rolling turtle and staying there for a disturbing amount of time (likely do to a large amount of unsecured gear acting as ballast at the cabin top after the roll).

I think sailing through it (forereach) seems the best sensibility, but if the crew can't handle it, having sea canvas to keep the the boat pointing (or running) seems like the sane thing to do.

From my reading, the properly sized drogue off the stern has the added benefit of resisting the pitch-pole motion when running down breaking waves in smaller boats.

[HobieFan]

There was a crazy story in that book (i forgot which), about a guy who was thrown from his boat in a knockdown, but was tethered to a long tether on the stern.

He watched his boat roll clean through 360 degrees and then climbed back aboard to bail out water that was almost to the cockpit floor.

I don't want to experience that... ever. :-)

[anjou]

The docu i saw on rogue waves was centred on the South African coast where the eastern current came north and the western moved south causing turbulance where they met. There is a higher incidence of rogue waves there than amywhere else and has caused the loss of many large cargo and bulk carriers. If thats not bad enough, its also prime territory for the worlds 5 deadly sharks. Great white, tiger mako, bull threasher.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by TritonSailor

I mentioned it because in a number of books that are in every cruisers library, they have mathematically assigned values to different boats. One of those values was the boats ability to right itself in the case of a rollover. Based on the math, the Pearson Triton does a damn good job. It just happens to be small. You have to understand I'm the one in the smaller boat, so I need to develop a healthy confidence in her

Jeff

Well, any monohull keelboat will right herself after a roll, some slightly better than others. You are much more likely to get rolled in a smaller boat, especially one which has a narrow beam. Not rolling at all is better than rolling and righting a little faster than some other boat.

The real virtue of your Triton is that it is built like a brick sh*thouse so is likely to retain structural integrity in case of a bad storm. But the size of your boat is definitely a big minus.


Being rolled doesn't need to be fatal, which is why one tactic in horrible weather is just to lie ahull -- that is, take the sails down, go below, batten the hatches, and just hold on tight. Your chances of not sinking are very good no matter how enormous are the waves and awful are the conditions, but being repeatedly rolled will mess up your boat something awful. In a desperate situation this doesn't seem like a bad bargain.

If you read the reports about the sinkings in the 1979 Fastnet storm, you'll see a common pattern -- the boats which were sunk were all boats trying to run with the storm. They couldn't control their speed and broached or fell off the front walls of big waves, which caused them to pitchpole or crash heavily into the back walls of the next wave, causing structural damage and injuring or killing sailors who were, of course, much more vulnerable up on deck trying to sail the boats.

I have never been in a storm like that, so this is a kind of unqualified armchair opinion, but it looks to me that there is a lot of logic in the idea that beyond a certain intensity of storm you need to stop trying to run with the storm and heave to (if your boat can do that, of course, not all fin-keel boats can, but your Triton should do it handsomely). This is a more defensive position which allows you to ride up and down with the waves (waves don't involve water moving horizontally -- the same water goes up and down). Not all that much so very horrible can happen to you if you are well braced down below and somehow protected from flying pots and pans and so forth, assuming you've got strong hatches and washboards. Abandoned boats, even, which have intact hulls and closed hatches rarely sink.

You don't have to drive the boat when you're hove-to or lying ahull. It is true that the wind intensity will seem greater, because you are not reducing the relative wind speed by moving with the wind, as you do when you run with the storm. But I suppose -- again, this is armchair stuff -- that the wind intensity is not as much a problem as the motion of the boat, and the last thing you want is to sail off the top of high waves, broach, pitchpole, and do all that other stuff which can break the back of your boat and sink you, when you're trying to run with the storm. Hove-to you will generally ride up and down on the waves and you might roll if you get run down by a big breaking wave, but you will not pitchpole or fall off.

I admit I was much influenced in this thinking by the Pardeys' book Storm Tactics, which is not accepted by everyone as gospel, but it sure seems logical to me.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by HobieFan

If I was going off shore more than a few days, I would carry a sea anchor or series drogue. I'm not interested in turning beam-on to the waves such as a heave-to in a storm.

Heaving-to properly will NOT present your beam to the waves. If the wind and waves are coming from the same direction, of course, but that is almost always the case in a big storm.

You will hold steady 30 to 40 degrees off the wind presenting one of your bow quarters to the waves.

A drogue makes it that much easier to control attitude of the hove-to boat, as far as I understand, and I would do that too (we always have a drogue with us).

[bitman]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Being rolled doesn't need to be fatal, which is why one tactic in horrible weather is just to lie ahull -- that is, take the sails down, go below, batten the hatches, and just hold on tight.

there is a lot to say for this as how many abandon boats are recovered and didn't sink in the first place?

[S&S]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Well, any monohull keelboat will right herself after a roll, some slightly better than others. You are much more likely to get rolled in a smaller boat, especially one which has a narrow beam. Not rolling at all is better than rolling and righting a little faster than some other boat.

No. a lot are quite happy upside down. Especially beamy boats. This is a bad idea to have that initial stability would be advantageous in a survival storm.

If you read the reports about the sinkings in the 1979 Fastnet storm, you'll see a common pattern -- the boats which were sunk were all boats trying to run with the storm. They couldn't control their speed and broached or fell off the front walls of big waves, which caused them to pitchpole or crash heavily into the back walls of the next wave, causing structural damage and injuring or killing sailors who were, of course, much more vulnerable up on deck trying to sail the boats.
.

The boats which were rolled broached due to their underbodies and a cross sea. it would have been worse if they tried to lie ahull. There was no pitchpoling, but a good deal of athwartships capsizes. You should read the account again.