Not meant to scare you - Rogue Waves!

[ckrobyn]

I found this today in my local newspaper - the Toronto Star....

 

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1166310610171&call_pageid=970599119419

[hunnypot1]

Eeek! :eek:

 

Just what a newbie cruiser wants to read about...

 

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I was happy to read that the Queen Mary survived such a wave.

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I am still excited about my cruise!

[bigjimmccruise]

Education is the key...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_waves

 

yes they can happen, odds? quite low. Not 0% but odds of seeing a 60ft wave at sea are very very low.

 

Odds are you're going to be killed in a car crash on the way to your cruise ship.

 

Guess what else can happen? A huge metor can crash into the earth... should you still cruise?

 

Also some couples could have "whoopie" in the elevators in the cruise ship :)

[Cloud9 Bob]

Also some couples could have "whoopie" in the elevators in the cruise ship :)

 

 

That's it...now I'm not going. :D

[aqhacruiser]

They do occur more frequently in some locations than others. It is now thought that rogue waves are actually the real cause of so many ship disappearences in the Bermuda Triangle as they occur more frequently in that area due to underwater currents and the terrain on the seabed. There is no way to detect them as they are random and can occur without warning even on clear sailing days. The NCL Dawn took a 70 ft. wave late this winter 2006 and although it did do quite a bit of damage to the balconys and caused flooding and glass and objects to break on the ship, everyone survived. I think the NCL Spirit also tangled with one this year. Yes, they do happen but it's considered rather rare as there is a lot of shipping traffic and not a great deal of reports considering the traffic. They are working on possibly being able to detect them via sattelite but at present there is no early warning available. The Triangle in the Pacific is also another area that experiences more of them thought to be due to underwater volcanos. Captains are trained and experienced to handle a ship thru a rogue wave as the captain on the Dawn has proven. The Discovery or history channel ran a show recently about them that was interesting and the show did feature the Dawn episode also. The ocean and the great lakes are unpredictable at all times so it's just part of being on a ship but there are risks involved with everything we do in life so I do not worry about them as there is nothing anyone can do to prevent them. :) Yes, the Queen Mary 1 ( not the current QM2 ) did survive a 100 ft rogue in 1942 and so have others.

[rotty2]

Those waves are frightening. We survived them on both, The Mariner Of The Seas and several times on the Adventure Of The Seas. OH...., wait a minute..., that was the Belly Flop Contest, sorry.;)

[Lightsluvr]

Those waves are frightening. We survived them on both, The Mariner Of The Seas and several times on the Adventure Of The Seas. OH...., wait a minute..., that was the Belly Flop Contest, sorry.;)

 

OMG that is so true. It is a frightening experience, even on the deck above the pool... :rolleyes:

 

LL

[takeatrip]

I was on a Disney ship and sailing in smooth seas. All of a sudden a huge something happened and all our breakfast went flying, all the water in the pool went flying, and my understanding is a lot of glasses in the dining room went flying also. We alternatly head they hit a whale, a rouge wave, or someone majorly screwed up and almost missed the turn for the next island. :) It wasn't rouge enough to send me flying over the railing, but the scrambled eggs were no match for the movement.

[wdrl]

Interesting stuff. I found this info on the Wikipedia site.

 

· RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (North Atlantic, 1995), 29 meters, during bad weather in the North Atlantic.

The Master said it "came out of the darkness" and "looked like the White Cliffs of Dover.") Newspaper reports at the time described the cruise liner as attempting to "surf" the near-vertical wave in order not to be sunk.

· Bremen and Caledonian Star (same wave, South Atlantic, 2001)

Bridge windows on both ships smashed, 30 meters above sea level, and all power and instrumentation lost. No adverse currents exist in that part of the world to explain the wave. The First Officer of the Caledonian Star stated it was "just like a mountain, a wall of water coming against us."

· Naval Research Laboratory ocean-floor pressure sensors detected a freak wave caused by HurricaneIvan in the Gulf of Mexico, 2004. The wave was around 27.7 meters high from peak to trough, and around 200 meters long.

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· Norwegian Dawn, (three waves in succession, off the coast of Georgia, 16 April 2005):

"The sea had actually calmed down when the [21 meter] wave seemed to come out of thin air... Our captain, who has 20 years on the job, said he never saw anything like it." (media report)

"The water exerted enough force to shear off the welds for the aluminum rail supports on the [ninth and tenth level] balconies of two cabins, allowing the teak balcony rails to break loose and crash into the cabin windows. The broken glass filling the drains compounded the water damage by allowing a large amount of water to enter the two cabins and damage the carpets in 61 other cabins. The ship’s operating at reduced speed when the waves hit probably limited the damage." from the National Transportation Safety Board report

· Aleutian Ballad, (Bering Sea, 2005): from the television show "Deadliest Catch."

· Norwegian Spirit, (off the coast of Tortola, January, 2006)

Various sources repeat the claim that around 200 large ships have been sunk in recent years by 'freak' waves. That claim is a myth. There are a tiny number of cases in recent years where no obvious explanation has been found, but according to the Lloyd's Register-Fairplay casualty database, fire or poor maintenance are more likely causes. The claim first appeared in the terms of reference for the EU's Max Wave project in 2001, without any supporting evidence. It was phrased as "200 supertankers or containerships of 200m and over sunk in the past 20 years". According to Lloyd's Register, only 143 ships of this size were lost from 1981-2001

 

Was anybody on any of these cruise ships when the waves hit?