Rogue Waves

I encountered one. My lock on my sailboat, a Prindle 16, rusted and I had to cut it off. Before I had a chance to replace it, a group of kids had pushed the boat out in the ocean. The coast guard found it about 20 miles North in the gulf stream and towed it to the Jupiter lighthouse. One of my friends saw it and called me.

Two of us packed up the sails, radio/cd player and cooler and set off to retrieve the boat. We made it about half way home before the sun set and the wind died. We stopped near the Juno Pier and reloaded the cooler and picked up some sandwiches at a gas station. About 3am we finally floated home and turned the boat toward the beach. About 40 yards out, I heard this noise behind us and before I knew it we were surfing this six footer in to the shore. It was a bear trying not to capsize. There was still no wind and we already had our weight balanced. We ended up using the jib to help steer the boat.

The wave was not huge by any means but the seas had been flat the entire day/night.

Big ship wake.

I would like a better definition of a rogue wave. I have encountered what would probally be a rogue wave when in the coast guard. a few hundred miles offshore. with no ship traffic within 50 miles. In my definition what most people call a rougue wave. is usally a refracted swell off some sort of point or shore line. when the wave hits a point and bounces it is now going againt the normal swell patteren and when these collide this exagerates the swell. Is this a rogue wave or just a confused sea. does anybody know the proper definition?

Rouge wave..... Looks more imresive on video. A wave travelling at a different angle colides with the regular waves.

A couple of weeks ago there was a big storm with 60kt+ winds and one of the offshore measurement bouys register a 65ft wave over the Northsea. It looked as though the measurement was correct, but to be sure they took the bouy out to check whether the sensors where working properly.

(65ft, that the equivalent of 6 storey building!)

My question would be

Who was out there taking the picture with the wave here

Clayton
[list]

I've surfed most of my life all over Australia and various other countries and rogue waves, sneekers in surf lingo, are often encountered. Of all the places Margaret River on the Aus. sth/west coast is possibly to most imfamous in this regard. Seen some big buggers there, some close up.

On the hand, while sailing/racing last Satdy on Sydney Harbour I encountered a set of three monsters [for the harbour] which were possibly 4ft/6ft and very close together. Caught me by the bows and the ensueing series of nose dives caused my spi pole to bend when the sock filled with water. I had just turned for the run/reach home of a marathon and could only use the kite running square. Bugger.

awsome picture. thx for the definition. sorta like bodysurfing the wedge

How do you define a ‘rogue wave’ ?

“There’s no clear definition of what a rogue is,” says Paul C. Liu, an oceanographer with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Scientists don’t have many detailed shipboard measurements of rogue waves because they tend to appear without warning, and bobbing ships make poor observation platforms.
A wave typically achieves rogue status not by growing to a certain minimum size but by exceeding the surrounding waves by a certain proportion. The basis for comparison is an oceanographic parameter called significant wave height, which researchers typically calculate by taking the average of the tallest one-third of the waves in a particular patch of ocean. Many scientists define a wave as a rogue if it’s 2.2 times as tall as the significant wave height. (Science News 11/18/06, p. 328).

thanks jeff. so by that defination a confused sea of wave/swells of equal size would not be considered a rogue wave. example being the picture above not being a rogue wave. and beny's example of and outsider/sneeker would/could be. question then in a confused sea when the sea's collide and the insuing wave jacks up upon collision. can you measure that? or is that just a by product. the reason i ask these stupid questions. I've had many beer/driven arguments/friendly discussions on this. and I've been told i'm flat wrong. but Jeff's definition is what i thought a rogue wave was.

there's no clear definition of what a rogue wave is

dude it was triple overhead

boy, you shoulda been here yesterday

Also the true rogue waves tend to occur in the pacific with greater frequency. I think it has something to do with the gulf stream thats limits their formation in the atlantic. Sometimes strong cross currents can create the type of confused seas shown in that pic. Wind created surface current moving in opposition to the prevailing ocean current.

The 1998 Sydney to Hobart race was decimated by large seas and strong winds, killing 6 competitors and leaving many injured and / or drifting at sea inside and outside of life rafts. 55 people rescued from sailboats, 5 boats sank and 66 boats retired out of the 115 starters when multiple storms merged and hurricane force wind and waves descended on the fleet. Conditions reported by the sailors and rescue crews during the hight of the storm were 90 knot winds and 30 meter (100 foot) waves.

These conditions are not uncommon in Bass Strait.

Below is a great link to stories and pics of monster waves.
http://dode777.jeeran.com/announcement_page1.html

Hers a few good movies in big seas... <img src=

alt=

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxvP3DWi7_k

Remember that scene from the movie Jaws when Brody said,

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

They're gonna need a bigger boat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsY87ykIBiY

I found this pic posted a while back and it seemed apprpriate for this topic.
I'll let the judges out there decide if its real or not. <img src=

alt=

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Bandit:

That one has been doctored. They were bad at the Worrell race. But NOT that bad.

Doug

Wow, is that the new sail power submarine?

Old multihull history - Phil Weld, sailing the Dick Newick designed Gulfstreamer was capsized by a rogue wave in - you guessed it, the Gulf stream. Lived in the updturned boat until rescued. Newick also created his replacement boat - named Rogue Wave...

It was sometime over the last year or so that a cruise liner was hit by a rogue wave off the east coast of the US - lots of broken windows in suites and some other damage if I remember right.

Awwww c'mon. We even know that Dan Delave did that piece of work.

I saw one, while delivering a 36ft mono from Rio to Santos to race it back a week later (220 NM) in 1980, plus or less one year.

The wave was about twice the size of the 3-4 meter waves we were beating against under second reef and #3 headsail. The boat climbed nearly three quarters up the wave and the remaining wall of water and foam washed the deck.

Only one stay broke and one structural bulkhead delaminated from the deck - besides three folks that opened the hatch to see what the laughing was all about and were soaked to the bone. The boat took about one ton of water through the partially opened hatch, smashing them against the floor.

Two boats that came from the south running downwind reported a rogue wave that almost certainly was the same one: one of them lost the rudder and the other washed the crostrees unwillingly. But we only knew about it after we arrived.

It was supposed to be scary, but I was just 20 and all I did was laugh at the wet folks who stayed inside exactly because they wanted to avoid the rain/spray...

The story goes on: After the wave, we used some halyards to help hold the mast, shortened to third reef/storm jib and went on - cautiously but safely. After a couple of hours, already close to sheltered waters, I was at the helm. A small boat approached coming from the port, rolling wildly in the heavy weather. I became truly concerned about the safety of that small orange tug that followed us with their crew making strange signs and shouting. I even considered calling them on radio. But after a few minutes they headed back to port, so I just followed them. 15 minutes later, in sheltered waters, I turned on the engine and followed to the club - never too far from the orange tug boat.

When we arrived the orange boat was already there. Out of it came a very angry commodore shouting at me (assuming I was the skipper) because I asked for assistance, forcing him and his fellows to leave the comfort of the bar to take the RC boat outside and tug our boat - only to find us in perfect shape and return.

What could I say? They were really brave to go outside in such a small boat in that weather in the middle of the night , but I (and the other guys on deck) knew nothing about a distress call. Maybe from another boat?

That made things worse. They KNEW what they were talking about (in spite of coming from the bar, as I insinuated - only to make things worse AGAIN). After some minutes of anger, indignation and curses that enriched my vocabulary, they left - back to the bar, but not without promising to expell me from the club, from sailing, from the world, etc...

It was only then that the boat owner came out of the cabin (with his bodygard, his phisician and his friend, a South African navigator who managed to miss Brazil and ended near the equator when he crossed the Atlantic) and confessed that they was so freightened after the wave and the hardware failures, that they had radioed the club asking for help. They were ashamed to tell us (and unwilling to get wet outside - again) so they went to sleep until the shouting and cursing woke them.

Luckily, one of the other two guys on deck was a well known photographer/reporter/sailor, knew the commodore and was old enough not to be considered a young delinquent, pathologic lier and a hazard to navigation. He helped clear things and the commodore half understood what happened. Anyway, he did not call security and I was allowed to return a week later for the race. But it did not keep us from becoming the joke of the fleet during the entire season.

Luiz