If so, how often do those truly monstrous storms come up? I mean, you never hear about them affecting tourist-based transatlantic crossings, but they surely must. Is it just that the passengers are so traumatised they suppress the memory?

Ocean-going vessels fascinate me, but I am sure I am not alone in thinking of them more in terms of relatively calm water than in the monumental waves they must face.

Anyone know just how often an ocean-going vessel would face the kind of serious seas that now get posted on YouTube?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG5SouF96TQ[/video]

This is a car ferry, despite looking like the start of Hawaii-Five-O.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7NB-bN-ns4[/video]

talking to people, ‘fairly regularly in winter’ is the answer on this route. They don’t set off if it’s ‘too rough’.

I work at sea (navigation officer). We would normally use a weather routing service when on a long trans ocean passage to ensure that we avoid the worst of the weather, especially hurricanes & ice.

The worst I’ve ever seen was in the North Sea. Think it was just over 100 knots sustained wind speed (about 125 mph). The sea state was similar to above. I don’t mind admitting it’s bl***y horrible and I spent about 3 days throwing up. Days like that make you question why you do it. Luckily it’s only a handful of days each year that I have to put up eith anything quite that bad though.

My mate Dougie was washed over the side once re-fueling with another ship, this happened about 50 miles within the Artic circle, poor old Dougie wasnt spotted in the confusion of the freak wave and subsequent wash and once we realised he was missing the shit hit the vent fans, luckily an observant Canadian on the Guardship spotted his bright orange life jacket and he was picked up, he spent about ten minutes in the water and was reported to have mild hypothermia, he spent the next week convalescing 🙄 courtesy of the Canadian Navy till we reached Bremerhaven whereupon he was bollocked for returning from ashore minus his beret and having salt stains on his boots.
We did suggest to Dougie he change his name to Bob 🙂

My uncle George was a Chief Petty Officer in the RN during WW2 & spent time on Atlantic convoys, God knows what that was like!
At what point do trawlermen not go out? Hard as nails those buggers.

Dalesjoe… I watch those videos and think it would be great fun! Can I assume from your experience the novelty quickly wears off? Does everyone get ill when it’s that bad? I’d assumed hardened sea dogs wouldn’t hurl?

i was in the merchant navy for eight years , straight from school –deep sea , sometimes it does get rough , the worst is that you dont really get rest, as your body is aware of the movements and reacts, when a ship hits a big wave at the right moment, it shudders sometimes violently , you realise the power of nature thats for sure..
when a ship is rolling , if your centre of gravity is high , you get a long slow roll that can seem to take for ever to come back, conversley when your centre of gravity is low , its a quick roll , when its really bad you have to slow the engines and ride out a bad storm , this is rare nowadays because of advances in technology, but sometimes its unavoidable.
one of the worst nights i can remember is on a coaster (1599 ton vessel ) in the irish sea off north wales, we couldnt get to shelter so rode it out, with all of us on the bridge with lifejackets –it was that bad!
ships often get damaged in rough weather , usully just fittings , but sometimes catastrophically, a coaster went down with all hands only a few years ago in the irish sea after loading stone in a north wales quarry , her back was broken –they had no time to do anything –poor souls –because they were mainly russian crew it didnt get much media attention …..-

ships often get damaged in rough weather , usully just fittings , but sometimes catastrophically

Yup: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-34467626

I’ve been caught in the front end of a Hurricane and once ended up in the eye of a tropical storm, all very interesting.
The worst experience though was in the North Sea, someone thought it was a good idea to try a seismic survey in January, this using a Russian vessel which had been modified and the stability calculations messed up (found this out later). We got caught in a severe storm, which sunk another vessel, we rolled so much the bridge wings were dipping in the sea and the majority of the crew spent the night wearing survival suits etc. I stayed in my cabin clinging to the bed, my toiled broke free and was smashing around the bathroom all night. We had to heave too into the weather for a day because we would have gone over if we’d tried to head to shelter.

It was nice to eventually get into port for a beer 😀

It’s no fun! Seasickness is a terrible thing. It’s the dizziness that’s the real nasty part. I find you build a tolerance to it but everyone has their breaking point. I used to be able to put up with a good force 10 in the north sea before it would kick in. Now my north sea days are behind me I’ve softened up. What you don’t get ftom the videos though us the days of no sleep. That really messes you up. Luckily most storms pass within a couple if days. Still, everyone ends up in a foul mood due to lack of sleep. We used to joke that you know it’s bad when you have to sit down to take a p**s.

What rudebwoy said is very true though. An American ship went down last week in a TRS in the Atlantic. All lost at sea, presumed drowned. Hot a brief mention on the news. Had that have been an aircraft it would have been all over the press.

i’ve spent a reasonable amount of time offshore and to be honest i find its the middle sea states that are worse.

The big stuff is a bit like a rollercoaster, the 5-6 sea states just grind you down especially when you need to keep working.

A mate of mine was on RRS Discovery when they hit a storm up near Iceland. Biggest waves ever recorded from a ship, at one point they rolled 55deg. The point of no return for that ship is 56degrees…

We were on a rather, err, bouncy ferry over to Dublin a few years back. The captain told us he was taking a different route to say out of the worst of it, we were in a big catermaran. As we pulled out of Holyhead it started getting rough and the lads on the piss at the bar started going “Waheyy!” etc, and as it gradually got rougher they got rowdier and cheered as the bottles on the bar started smashing all over the place.
Then about 45 mins in we pulled out of what I assume was the lea of the land and into the real bad stuff. Then they went quiet! The boat was a big one and it was being thrown around like a cork. You could hear the engines straining.
Walking about was impossible. We were on motorbikes and of the 12 bikes in the hold, 6 went over, including mine. The worst was a big BMW Gs which fell into someone’s Merc.
I was so dosed up on sea sickness pills I didn’t puke, but it was genuinely scary seeing nothing but sea, then nothing but sky out of the bike side windows whilst holding onto a rail just to stay in my seat.
But it was better then staying in Holyhead…..

Worst I’ve known was on a charter sea fishing trip out of Hartlepool a couple of years ago. The boat (a Blyth catamaran hulled affair of about 40ft long) is reckoned to be very stable, the swell was about 30-40ft & we were still fishing. I was hauling cod & ling up through my own puke. I was a lovely shade of green.
Didn’t put me off though, been out a few times since then.

a Russian vessel which had been modified and the stability calculations messed up

The Geo Pacific? If so I was on that ~20 years ago, had two sets of coffee machines, one with wimpy western coffee and one with a dark, oily, toxic brew for the Russians.

Was on a ship on the way into Galveston from the Gulf. Trip was supposed to take 18 hours, we got caught in a storm and I spent 60 hours puking. As rudebwoy pointed out we lost kit off the boat. Made me get a job in an office.

Went to shetland once in a gale. Was touch and go whether ferry would sail at all.

The bow was coming high out the water and crashing into waves small boat style.

This is a mates boat, well not his exactly but he’s the skipper of it and some of the video’s/pics of the seas they encounter and fish in are utterly horrific, – you wonder how it is possible for a boat to survive such seas and sometimes they unfortunately don’t, a sister ship to the local fleet in Kirkcudbright (the solway harvester) went down with all 7 crew (all local boys) back in january 2000 and my mate above was skippering the nearest boat so they went searching for it – horrible horrible time and still raw to talk about as we all knew the crew – it’s a deadly job they do for not much money considering the amount of hours they work on a trip. I’ve mates who have lost fingers, hands, arms etc and i could name at least 15 folk i know who’ve been lost at sea.

Some old pics of his boat,

Another mate is chief navigational officer (or perhaps captain now? – he was doing the exam yonks ago but work is never something we talk about) on the irish ferries and has been for a few years since leaving deep sea oil n’ gas ships and a few others work the North Sea oil rig supply boats – they are proper crazy **** though but the sort of folk to have on your side when the shit hits the fan so to speak, crazy lifestyle and crazy folk indeed.

Ex-professional yacht skipper here, back in the 80’s. Two trans-Atlantics and 10’s of thousands of sea miles in yachts from 40′ to 90′.

I’ve seen some big seas, stories that’ll make your hair curl 😉

As a young 20 something, it taught me many things, not least of which, humility and the power of Mother Nature.

And yes, sea-sickness is extremely unpleasant 😕

The Indian Ocean is fairly flat this morning but over the years I have had some character building moments. A big sea, no functioning bilge pumps and a popped plank springs to mind.
I spend most of my time on a 28m wooden motor boat around The Maldives. We are not insured to operate more than 30 miles off shore but you don’t need to be way out in the ocean to get extreme conditions. Three boats went down in bad weather here in the last month. It is not like the brochure pictures every day!

somafunk has touched on the craziness of the ;seafarer’ -indeed , you are in a unique institutuion , and in order to cope you do tend to do things to the extreme , which then becomes the norm ….it took me a number of years to adjust to what seemed mundane life ashore ,technically we would be termed mentally ill ,trying to get any help was useless….i was lucky , got out at a relativly young age.
in some ways it was a great life for a single bloke, but memory glosses over the exreme boredom that occurs, being lookout in the pacific , where you might not see anything for weeks, but have to try and remain alert all the same….in my days the ganja culture was big on deep sea ships –you even tried to pick ships that were going to areras of the world where cheap hash/weed was available–the best runs for me were caribean and gulf ports through panama canal(excellent weed the panama red)-down to aussie and kiwi where it was 24/7 party time fuelled by said weed/alchol /black bombers….one skipper told me he much preffered a stoner crew to pisshead ones –they at least turned too and were reliable–doing monotonous things like steering a wheel hour about is much easier when your stoned ….you are in tune with the feel of the ship….unless youve done it its unlikely you can appreciate what i mean –but drunks on the wheel are a menace sometimes -but can be funny –i’m sure those days have probably gone now–most of the fun been taken out of the job…containerisation has altered ways of work so much…

I visited a company recently who are heavily invested in the future of shipping being autonomous. Crew less container ships anyone?

When the waves come in through the bridge windows, you know you’re either on the wrong boat, or in the wrong place. 20metre wave in the north sea didn’t do this thing much good on my first trip on it…

i sailed on the BenCruachan -a super fast general cargo ship built when the suez was shut, so speed round the cape was a big asset–during one trip she hit the notorious seas off durban and broke her back-very luckily she didnt sink, was towed into port , patched up and escorted back to the uk –totally repaired –they claim she only survived due to the construction quality and design–built on the clyde–when i sailed on her we had no such dramas -just a wild time out in the far east ,good ol days ..

Worked with a guy at a despatch company who did 6 months on a boat he was the Navigator and 6 month in Oxford. He would only work UK registered vessels. Mad as a hatter, he said that his worst trip was in the Pacific going from Peru to China on an ore carrier. it wasn’t rough just a constant large swell. Constant movement, he said everyone was puking after about 2 weeks of this.

Much respect to people who go to sea.

All that said, 90% of the time it’s fine. I’ve seen some amazing sights at sea. The night sky mid pacific, water spouts, elmos fire, so many whales I don’t even bother taking notice anymore. Job security is there, pays well plus 6 months paid holiday a year. Plenty of mid week mountain biking with empty trails! I’d certainly recommend it as a career so long as you don’t mind spending time away from home.

I visited a company recently who are heavily invested in the future of shipping being autonomous. Crew less container ships anyone?

Been saying that for the past decade and probably before, I’ll believe it when I see it. UMS systems might flag alarms but they can’t fix a burst fuel line in the middle of the pacific or navigate through a fishing fleet.

As for my experiences, seen worse than that video but luckily I was on a container ship at the time which just shrugged it off. Mostly. Wasn’t nice being at the bow and the ground suddenly dropping under your feet before getting pushed back up again at speed. Watching compainionways flexing along the length of the ship was slightly disconcerting as well (though no worse than watching overhead lockers along the length of a plane). Still don’t find a need to hold handrails unless the stairs are turning vertical 😛

There are the other amusing incidents such as when a micro storm washes across the middle third of the deck leaving the bow and accomodation block dry and everyone working in the middle wondering what just happened 🙂

dalesjo – deep sea might have security but North Sea definitely doesn’t, my mate was one of many made redundant when Gulf decided to lay up their ships. Now back with Tarmac who have a decidedly revolving door culture…

I was with gulf too untill a few months back. Put myself gorward and opted for the voluntary pay off as managed to line up another job. Get out before it gets really bad etc! When I say security I mean more within the industry than specific companies. Certainly nice going into this winter & not being in the N’S though! Be interesting to see what happens in the N’S but that’s a whole new topic! Hope it recovers as I’ve still hot a lot of friends working there.