Oyster Yacht in Storm Video

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

Great Vid, mate, and DID like the music (What was it by the way?) Just one thing: a little surprised to see the bimini up in that, and perhaps more surprised to see it doing so well!

Many people have asked about the music. It's Jesse Cook "Quadukka-L-M" off his Nomad album.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Dr. Sea

Thanks Muckle Flugga, Dockhead, and Ken for affirming what I hope to argue successfully with the Bermuda Newport Race committee. My boat is very similar to all three of yours and is rigged in the same way. That race is extremely safety conscious, which is a very good thing, but I'm certainly hoping for an exception to the "must carry storm jib and storm trysail" rule. I hate to think of buying two sails for a 5-day race, and then removing them from the boat to liberate stowage space for more useful equipment.

Easier might be just to borrow the sails from someone, promising never to use them

Sent from my D6633 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

I agree with those saying it is difficult to estimate the height of a set, and even more difficult to film it. A lot of the reason for this is that the camera has few reference points to judge the height of the wave, and is a single point not a stereoscope like the eyes, so cannot accurately guage scale. Here is one of the few videos I have ever taken that comes close to giving an idea of the sea state. It was shot while ocean racing down the West coast of the Americas around 10 years ago. Apologies for poor quality but digital cameras weren't so great back then. I estimate the upper third of this set to have been averaging 7 to 8 meters or so. What aids in this video is the comparison with the adult figures at the helm and in the cockpit.

Yes, and when you mis-estimate the height of the sea, don't assume you are [/BU]under[/BU]estimating it. Long ocean rollers can be very high before you really notice them, because your boat rides up on them, and they might not appear as high as they are, until the crests start to pile up.

A F9 will produce about 7 meters, with 10 meters significant wave height, in ocean conditions, blowing across a couple thousand miles of fetch for more than a day.

Sent from my D6633 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[ontherocks83]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Here's the North Sea in an F9:

Ok, so that seems scary. So having sailed through that, at what point would you consider deploying a series drogue?

Having never been in something like that I feel like I would have tucked tail and thrown a drogue by the time you shot that video.

What do the experienced / those in the know say?

(On edit I just realized that is a freighter in the video. I was to mesmerized by the waves to take notice)

[Dockhead]

Hi

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Ok, so that seems scary. So having sailed through that, at what point would you consider deploying a series drogue?

Having never been in something like that I feel like I would have tucked tail and thrown a drogue by the time you shot that video.

What do the experienced / those in the know say?

Good question, the answer to which I don't know. I guess Muckle will have something to say.

I would trail warps, and would do it when the boat started racing out of control. Didn't have that problem so far. Problem we had was a wave falling on us.

That was not my video, but I've been in somewhat similar conditions, being a veteran of four North Sea crossings. One of them with 24 hours of F9.

[Wallaby]

Force 9+ with few whitecaps and some wind-driven spray?
No breaking waves to speak of?
Relatively consistent horizon?
Not much water coming over the side?
Lots of boat speed and foam breaking beside the boat because engine is running at 2200 rpm.
No one is puking or getting tossed around!
It looks more like 5-7ft waves with 35-40 kts.

[Palarran]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Ok, so that seems scary. So having sailed through that, at what point would you consider deploying a series drogue?

I highly doubt anyone on this forum has sailed a small sailboat in conditions depicted in that video. Those forward breaking waves would be death - regardless of what your storm tactic is.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by Wallaby

Force 9+ with few whitecaps and some wind-driven spray?
No breaking waves to speak of?
Relatively consistent horizon?
Not much water coming over the side?
Lots of boat speed and foam breaking beside the boat because engine is running at 2200 rpm.
No one is puking or getting tossed around!
It looks more like 5-7ft waves with 35-40 kts.

I thought I saw 47-48 kts. a couple of times on what I think was the wind speed instrument. One that Ken stated he has cross-checked with a hand-held.

Based on my own boat, I bet there's at least 5' of freeboard adjacent to the cockpit area, and the camera looked it like was mounted at least 2-3' above that. Hard to really judge from the camera distortion as has been pointed out, but when the boat was in a trough some of those waves looked pretty towering over the camera height. Hard to estimate, but if the camera is already 7-8' (maybe higher) above the waterline, then your wave height estimate has to be way low.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Wallaby

Force 9+ with few whitecaps and some wind-driven spray?
No breaking waves to speak of?
Relatively consistent horizon?
Not much water coming over the side?
Lots of boat speed and foam breaking beside the boat because engine is running at 2200 rpm.
No one is puking or getting tossed around!
It looks more like 5-7ft waves with 35-40 kts.

This isn't Hollyweird with special effects, this is real life with camera angle distortion from the wide angle GoPro. In real life, the boat rides up over the waves, contrary to the way boats behave in movies. Hollyweird conditions us to believe the breaking waves come crashing down upon the deck... which isn't true. And not all people begin puking in these conditions, I took a seasick pill and my wife is unaffected by the motion, and unlike some other boats we've been on and have owned, we don't get thrown around on the Oyster, mostly because of bracing bars strategically placed all around the boat and cockpit. Watch the video again and pay special attention to the way my wife braces herself in the cockpit. Her back is against the curved surround and her feet against to table supports. No wide open spaces.

[Terra Nova]

The wide angle lens flattens the seas and makes their size disproportionately smaller.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by sailnow2011

companionway open in bad seas? hmmmm....

The companionway is always closed AFTER the first sneaker wave dumps a bunch of water down it

[donradcliffe]

I usually estimate wave height by the height of the camera and whether/how much the horizon is obscured, and I would have said 3 meters from watching the the video. If the (average) wind was over 40k, how much fetch was there??

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by Wallaby

Force 9+ with few whitecaps and some wind-driven spray?
No breaking waves to speak of?
Relatively consistent horizon?
Not much water coming over the side?
Lots of boat speed and foam breaking beside the boat because engine is running at 2200 rpm.
No one is puking or getting tossed around!
It looks more like 5-7ft waves with 35-40 kts.

I'm actually very glad you brought up these points so that I can dispel some of these pre conceived notions about the way boats and people behave in these Force 9.5 conditions.

As I'm sure Dockhead, Boatman and others will agree, mayhem generally doesn't engulf the crew on a properly run boat in storm conditions. On our boat, my wife and I prepare ahead of time and then tend to our specific tasks. She directs her attention towards navigation and radar monitoring whilst I steer and take care of deck duties if they come up. She's also very capable of steering the boat and we can interchange responsibilities if the need arises. So... on our boat calm heads prevail and we enjoy a relatively uneventful day as you can see in the video. Proper preparations were made ahead of time such as attaching jack lines, us wearing PFDs and safety harnesses, stuff inside and outside the boats was mostly put away, the dinghy and paddleboards were secured, etc.

No mayhem.

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I usually estimate wave height by the height of the camera and whether/how much the horizon is obscured, and I would have said 3 meters from watching the the video. If the (average) wind was over 40k, how much fetch was there??

Fetch was the distance between Rome and Olbia Italy with the storm brewing for 48 hours at 40-50 knots. Don't forget the Gopro has an extremely wide 170 degree wide angle lens.

[Palarran]

I know it's just semantics and said wrong on this forum all the time, but you're in a gale, not a storm.