Why are our words for waves so inadequate?

[Pelagic]

I don't think comfort would add anything as it is so subjective.
Same wave following or head on has a different comfort factor

[Dsanduril]

The textbooks are great for quantitative descriptions, but they don't give you the qualitative words that evoke an emotional response. There are all kinds of textbooks about snow too, with water contents and densities and geometries, and while very accurate, they're not the words we use when describing skiing conditions.

There's a place on the coast north here that my diving buddies and I call the 'washing machine' because it looks (and feels) like one of those old top-loading clothes washers when the agitation is active. If I talk with them about going for a dive and propose the washing machine they know exactly what I'm talking about, what to expect, the shape and frequency of the waves we can expect but there is no technical description involved. The words reach the qualitative/emotional place rather than the technical center of the brain.

For me at least, a lot of the joy of sailing is in the emotional/qualitative realm, not the technical/quantitative.

[TeddyDiver]

I found in finnish synonym vocabulary 19 words meaning wave of water. Maybe english is just a "landlubber" language?