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Tuesday, December 4. 2012

Boats in nasty weather

Gotta hate it when the bow digs down into green water. The ocean is not your friend, always wants to kill you, but you want to accomplish something, or have some fun, and survive. That's the game.


From Illusions, Storms, and Very Big Trees:


 




Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:32 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

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And this is the reason why so many of us are landlubbers, or, in the very least, fair-weather sailors - we just don't have the stomach for this kind of thrill ride.

Cool to watch though.

p.s. No, I don't like roller-coasters either.
#1 Charles on 2012-12-04 13:02 (Reply)
Brings back all the fond memories of life on a destroyer.
#2 Greg on 2012-12-04 14:06 (Reply)
I went to grad school with a guy who served in an elderly, leftover DE in a Pacific cyclone during the Vietnamese War. They got green water in the bridge. Lost a forward 5 in gun mount, their stacks and all antennas and lose stuff. Rolled almost to the capsize limit, 70 degrees I think. Were swinging like monkeys off the steel pipes set in the ceiling and walls.
#3 bob sykes on 2012-12-04 15:02 (Reply)
I went to sea for 35 years and only once in weather like that.....three days off Cape Hatteras. Read Joseph Conrad's Typhoon for for a good description. 100 coolies in a forward hold with nothing to hold-on to.
#4 brobro on 2012-12-04 15:27 (Reply)
After forty years of commercial fishing out here on the placid Pacific, I must block similar scenes from my memory as I need to keep going to work.
#5 william on 2012-12-04 16:26 (Reply)
I live close enough to this weather and seas. No way I'm going out there.

Woulda been a Z-ticket ride at Disneyland.
#6 Sam L. on 2012-12-04 16:45 (Reply)
Spent a few days on a LST in a storm in the Pacific. The puking... once it started... it just didn't end.
#7 NJSoldier on 2012-12-04 16:46 (Reply)
'This is the reason I didn't take the promotion offered to me when I worked for Texaco - I was not going to the North Sea - period, end of discussion.

Second, my Dad commanded a DE during WWII on North Atlantic convoy duty - he and his XO (who he was life long friends with) often said that they spent more time underwater than on top of it during storms.
#8 Tom Francis on 2012-12-04 17:54 (Reply)
so Tom, what did you do instead?
#9 brobro on 2012-12-04 17:56 (Reply)
Moved back to New England in '76, married my high school sweetheart and went to work with one of the many mini-computer companies that populated Rt 128. Left in a buy out and switched to machine tools, when that company was purchased, I started a consultant service as a PE and the rest is history.
#9.1 Tom Francis on 2012-12-05 06:48 (Reply)
One small correction. The sea doesn't want to kill you. The sea doesn't care about you one way or another.

If you do everything right, if your machines do not fail, if the material of strength of your hull is sufficient, then you will survive. If one thing goes wrong, one glitch in the system, one weakness in the steel, the sea will work at the tiniest flaw until all that man has wrought is torn asunder. You and yours will cry to the heavens, curse the sea, but you will succumb floating on the surface or sinking to the bottom. And after all the terror, all the pain, all the suffering, the sea will not care. The sea will not notice.

It is this realization that forces those who got to sea to accept how small and insignificant they are. To know, there is no evil, only an eternal universe in which you reside for but an instant. It is then you reach for God, for there is nothing so terrible as realizing you are insignificant in the face of nature.
#10 JKB on 2012-12-04 18:54 (Reply)
Beautiful, JKB.
#10.1 arcs on 2012-12-05 13:06 (Reply)
Consider the shipwreak that the Apostle Paul survived at Malta...he and all his shipmates. Consider Jonah, inside the great fish....doomed and then vomited out. Consider me, almost drowned at the beach at Durbin S.A. or almost going over into a deep creek bed while bushhogging....except at the last moment the tractor clutch peddle engaged and I was able to stop.....Nature does not care..and certainly not the sea....but God does.
#11 JkB, on 2012-12-04 19:28 (Reply)
When I was in the Navy, that is when ships were made of wood and sailors were made of steel, we'd call this a pleasure cruise.

Even in rough weather, when a ship can run perpendicular to the waves rather than parallel, it looks and feels dramatic but not that life-threatening.

By the way, if a ship rolls to 70 degrees it'll capsize. Think about it....
#12 Sven Svenson on 2012-12-04 23:19 (Reply)
I served on a Fram 1 Gearing class destroyer from 1968-1971, 3500 tons, approx. 390 ft. long. My first deployment was to WestPAC (VN). We left Yokosuka Japan with 2 other DD's coming home in 1969 and ran in 35' seas almost all the way to Midway Island. Height of eye on the bridge was 36'. We ran a loose line abreast formation at 2000 yards. All you could see of the other 2 ships was the very top of the antennas on the mast. All we could do was stand our watch and hang on. I was standing bridge watch with my arms rapped around the pelorus when I saw the roll angle indicator hit 45 degrees more than once. Fortunately, we had plenty of fuel on board and were well ballasted down. The bow would ride over one swell, crash down, and go thru the next while the screws came out of the water aft. Looked like an aquarium looking out from the bridge. It beat the crap out of us for about 3 days. We finally got out of it before getting to Midway Island for fuel. I have had a very healthy respect for the sea since then.
#13 MikeNC on 2012-12-05 11:55 (Reply)
Find me curled in my bunk, whimpering.
#14 Estoy Listo on 2012-12-30 11:41 (Reply)

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