Logbook Tales – Rogue Wave

• By Michael Smart
• February 1, 2015
• 2 Comments

The wave appeared out of nowhere, on a calm sea. It broke above the deck, flooding the bilges and soaking everything below…

A conversation with cruising sailors, or avid surfers who chase waves around the globe, will invariably include at least one tale of an encounter with a rogue wave, especially if they’ve sailed the southern oceans, the Madagascar straits, or the Mona Passage between Jamaica and Cuba. You think you’ll never actually encounter one, or hope you never do. They can be terrifyingly benign, like the one I’m about to relate, or devastatingly deadly, swallowing a vessel whole in the blink of an eye.

Such rogue waves, also called freak waves, killer waves, and monster waves, were thought to be mythical, the tall tales of ocean going sailors, since there was no hard evidence of their existence. They appeared out of nowhere, and disappeared just as fast. Until 1995, when the Draupner oil platform in the North Sea measured a 26 meter high wave which hit and damaged the rig. Since 2004, orbiting satellites have also recorded their occurrence.

Oceanographers are still attempting to figure out what causes them. Rogue waves are distinct from a tsunami, which are produced by massive displacement of water from movement of the ocean floor, following an earthquake for example. The resultant wave propagates at high speed over a wide area, building to an enormous height as they near the shallows off a coastline. Rogue waves by contrast, are not produced by movement of the sea floor, are generated spontaneously in a limited location, and lasts only briefly. Researchers are studying a number of possible causative factors, such as changes in wind speed and direction combined with other mechanisms, fast opposing ocean currents coinciding, or the focusing effect of several small waves joining to create a large one.

December 24th, Christmas Eve. 1100 hrs.

It is a lazy day aboard the schooner Dugong. The wind is lazy, the sea is lazy, the crew is lazy, and Dugong heads east at a lazy crawl. We planned to do laundry, a process involving hauling buckets of seawater on deck, washing clothes and linens using dish detergent, rinsing in seawater, before a final rinse in fresh water from the schooner’s onboard tanks.

Joe, our skipper, has the watch, seated at the doghouse helm next to Charlie, who is having a rare day free from seasickness. Susan and Joni are below, preparing for our planned laundry day. I am sprawled in the sun on deck, just forward of the doghouse, listening in on Joe and Charlie’s conversation, another of Charlie’s hilarious tales.

A sound draws my attention toward the hatch, Joni’s head and shoulders emerging on deck. I begin to return her greeting smile when I notice the lines on her face rearranging, the smile replaced by eyes opening beyond their normal range, the eyes bulging, her mouth falling open in a wide, silent OMG, her face stricken by fear.

Turning in the direction she faced, I see it. A blue-green wall of water, twice the height above Dugong’s deck. The wave curled in a half pipe, racing toward the schooner.

Joe and Charlie notice my stricken expression, similar to Joni’s, turning their heads in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the huge wave as it rose above the doghouse, covering it like an umbrella, the water never touching the doghouse, the crest breaking above the deck to pour down the open hatch. My next sight of Joni is of her clinging gamely to the hatch rail, soaked to the skin, seawater sluicing off her, her hair a tangle of soaked curls. A scream from Susan below.

The bilges awash, everything below deck soaked. First part of the laundry process completed by mother nature, including items we hadn’t intended on washing. Yet the wave had leapt the aft portion of the deck, leaving the doghouse, Joe, Charlie, and me, as dry as a bone.

More Logbook Tales – true stories from the author’s flying and sailing logbooks.

COMMENT and SUBSCRIBE. Thank you for visiting my blog. I enjoy hearing from my readers. Please leave a comment, sign up for my newsletter to receive news, updates, and blog posts directly to your email inbox, and share this with your friends on social media.