Oyster Yacht in Storm Video

[SaltyMonkey]

Nice boat though indeed. Always wanted to be on Kenomac's boat going around and around and around backwards and forwards with him on it or knot. WHEEEEEEEEE! Now I know what it's like.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Nice video, Ken!

Thanks. Are the conditions similar to the weather and waves you encountered on your Fall 2014 Baltic crossing?

[CS Cruiser]

Thanks for sharing and nice yacht!

[cards26]

The boat looks real solid going through the water.

[cards26]

When seen by my wife though, she doesn't understand why I want to do this. She's sadly a landlubber.

[arsenelupiga]

nice ride although waves look like 2-3m, with occasional 4-5.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by arsenelupiga

nice ride although waves look like 2-3m, with occasional 4-5.

Videos always seems to flatten out the waves. Has to do with the roll and motion of the boat, along with the camera being attached to the boat and not hand held. It's hard to explain, but remember, if you hand hold the camera vs mounting it fixed on a rail, your body will act as a gimbal always wanting to be perpendicular to the earth rather than the boat. This is what causes the distortion. Also, as the boat rides up the wave, it tends to list towards the down wind side, again distorting the angle.

Anther distortion to take into consideration, is that I'm actually standing over six feet above the water on top of the seats, with the camera mounted 8ft above the water and my head nearly ten feet above the waterline. So, the camera is never really at the bottom of the wave looking up. Anyone who's tried to film this sort of action will know what I'm talking about. Without a gimbal mounted camera, there's really no way to get the proper perspective.

[Palarran]

Originally Posted by arsenelupiga

nice ride although waves look like 2-3m, with occasional 4-5.

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Videos always seems to flatten out the waves. Has to do with the roll and motion of the boat, along with the camera being attached to the boat and not hand held. It's hard to explain, but remember, if you hand hold the camera vs mounting it fixed on a rail, your body will act as a gimbal always wanting to be perpendicular to the earth rather than the boat. This is what causes the distortion. Also, as the boat rides up the wave, it tends to list towards the down wind side, again distorting the angle.

Anther distortion to take into consideration, is that I'm actually standing over six feet above the water on top of the seats, with the camera mounted 8ft above the water and my head nearly ten feet above the waterline. So, the camera is never really at the bottom of the wave looking up. Anyone who's tried to film this sort of action will know what I'm talking about. Without a gimbal mounted camera, there's really no way to get the proper perspective.

I don't think there's ever been a video posted quoting wave height (including mine) where it wasn't questioned. After seeing so many though, IMO, we totally overestimate the heights and the camera probably represents the actual waves more accurately. 20 to 25 foot waves on the Mediterranean would be near catastrophic for any boat.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Palarran

I don't think there's ever been a video posted quoting wave height (including mine) where it wasn't questioned. After seeing so many though, IMO, we totally overestimate the heights and the camera probably represents the actual waves more accurately. 20 to 25 foot waves on the Mediterranean would be near catastrophic for any boat.

The video is really mean to be enjoyed and not debated, but I'll post another video here that I did last year about riding on the LA Velodrome which demonstrates what I've tried to explain on my camera angle distortion explanation. The banking on the LA velodrome is 47 degrees and 25ft high at the far corners (two ends), yet, when a cyclist (me) travels around the velodrome at speed, the corners are visually flattened out by the rider who remains at a right angle to the wall banking. The same effect as boats riding up and down waves, which is especially enhanced, or rather diminished when running somewhat parallel to the waves.

Remember also, I just had a Gopro mounted on a hand rail on front of the wheel.... no hollywierd special effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OnApCF_FDE

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Thanks. Are the conditions similar to the weather and waves you encountered on your Fall 2014 Baltic crossing?

I don't think we ever experienced an F9 in the Baltic. The hardest weather I can remember was beating upwind and tacking against an F7 from the Swedish mainland to Gotland, and that was something awful in the short, steep seas of the Baltic, which behaves just like the Med. We arrived exhausted in Vysby and my Finnish crewman was elated -- he loves sailing hard in hard weather

In the open Atlantic, the sea behaves very differently, than in waters like the Baltic or Med. Fetch is the key. When it blows SW for a few days across the whole Atlantic, the sea really piles up. It is not as steep, but much higher, for a given wind force. An F9 will typically produce about 10 meters of wave height, and you will get dangerous breaking crests.

Last May, when we got knocked down in the North Sea, it was blowing F9, and what got us was when the whole top of a wave got blown off onto us -- tons and tons of green water.

This is what it looked like the morning before, when it was still an F8:







Walls of water, towering over you.

An F8, after it has blown for a day or two across thousands of miles, will pile up the sea to 6 or 7 meters, like you see in the photos. A F9 will get the sea up to about 10 meters. When it gets like that, the sails start to be blanketed in the troughs, and you know it's time to be afraid. Very afraid!

Beaufort wind force scale - Met Office

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Videos always seems to flatten out the waves. Has to do with the roll and motion of the boat, along with the camera being attached to the boat and not hand held. It's hard to explain, but remember, if you hand hold the camera vs mounting it fixed on a rail, your body will act as a gimbal always wanting to be perpendicular to the earth rather than the boat. This is what causes the distortion. Also, as the boat rides up the wave, it tends to list towards the down wind side, again distorting the angle.

Anther distortion to take into consideration, is that I'm actually standing over six feet above the water on top of the seats, with the camera mounted 8ft above the water and my head nearly ten feet above the waterline. So, the camera is never really at the bottom of the wave looking up. Anyone who's tried to film this sort of action will know what I'm talking about. Without a gimbal mounted camera, there's really no way to get the proper perspective.

Correct -- it's impossible to photograph sea state in way that makes it vividly obvious. The camera flattens it out. Therefore you can't really tell that much about sea state from videos or photos without a certain amount of experience. Subtle differences to the camera can mean huge differences in the reality.

Nor can we really judge wave height all that well with our eyes. I could never really tell all that much the first years. It took a while to figure it out. I use my first spreader as a rough yardstick. It's 10 meters above the water surface and about 6 meters above my eye height, from standing on deck.


Another thing about wave height which is often said, but worth repeating -- it's not the height so much, as the period and steepness, that creates problems for us.

In the Baltic and in the Med, I find that the waves are consistently lower by one or two whole forces, compared to what they would be in the Atlantic with the same wind force, but often they are harder to deal with because they are often much steeper.

The big rollers of the open ocean are not a problem -- until the tops of them start to blow off. Which causes avalanches of water, which are very dangerous.

[Kenomac]

Dockhead,

Those are big waves in those pictures. I also feel that folks who've never experienced larger seas... myself included, tend to think it will be like Hollywood movies with the waves breaking down on them. When in reality, the boat just tends to ride up and down like a float with the occasional crest dumping some water on deck. Unless of course the crest of the wave curls over and you just happen to be at the wrong angle to it at the wrong time.

I would have loved to shoot some stills or video from different angles, but I had my hands kinda full at the time, in just wanting to get safely across the worst of it. I set up the GoPro, and basically just hit the start button and changed the camera angle around every ten minutes or so.

The only way I could judge wave height was by comparing size to the Velodrome that I've gone around many tens of thousands of times. It was about the same.

[Terra Nova]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

...it's impossible to photograph sea state in way that makes it vividly obvious...

Liquid Mountains: I Captured Lake Erie On The Day It Came Alive And Showed Its True Power | Bored Panda

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Terra Nova

Liquid Mountains: I Captured Lake Erie On The Day It Came Alive And Showed Its True Power | Bored Panda

That's surf. Not something the sea does in open water without interaction with the bottom, or perhaps a tidal race.

[Dockhead]

Here's the North Sea in an F9:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPy2DHHnlqQ