On Sep 3, 8:25?am, HK wrote:
Chuck Gould wrote:
On Sep 3, 5:56?am, Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Mon, 3 Sep 2007 07:58:24 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:
I attempted to go out in the little Boston Whaler to help but
quickly determined that I'd probably just add to the problem as another
possible casualty due to the sea state we've had up here for the past few
days. (3-5 footers in close chop).
According to Chuck, those don't exist in the North Atlantic. And we
wouldn't be able to properly judge sea state anyway because "most" of
us are bozos with no experience in judging wave action. :)

Only the Manly Men of the Great Pacific North West can properly judge
sea states. :)

After a moment's thought, I realized that your crap-stuffed comment
was either an unprovoked mean and nasty crack or you hadn't read my
comment in the other thread. You being a bright enough guy that you
don't need to resort to the habitual loser's devices of
misrepresenting the remarks of another party to the discussion and
peppering your retort with personal remarks, I'm sure you missed my
comment where I addressed similar insinuations in the other thread.
You either didn't see it, or chose to ignore it while selectively
assembling the evidence to support your accusation.

So here it is again, Tom.

*************************

We seem to be holding two different conversations simultaneously.

It's deja Chuck, all over again. And again. And again.

Is Chuck transmogrifying into...Skipper? Will we hear tales of sudden
onset 25-footers?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hardly. Pay some attention, Krause. I'm claiming that most people
overestimate wave height, not that I'm out braving hurricane force
winds in a 20-some foot trailer boat. My other claim is that it takes
a lot of energy to increase chop from 3 feet to 7 feet, and that the
wind is going to need to be involved. Seems like my remark generated a
lot of wind on this issue, and some of it smells like it's blowing off
a stockyard. :-)

One year just before Thanksgiving I was writing an article about a
medium size Grand Banks. I think it was the 43 East Bay. Winds were up
to the point where we could have easily decided to scrub the outing,
but conditions weren't flat-out dangerous so we went anyway.

When we got out to the lake, winds were a legitmate 25 knots. Chop
was 3-4 feet, as one would expect in winds of that magnitude on an
open body of water with several miles of fetch. One of the best ways
across the lake in those conditions is to crowd the leeward side of
one of the floating bridges. The pontoons, the roadway, and the
concrete margins are probably 10-12 feet above the surface and create
a very nice lee. You can easily see just where the wind begins to have
its way with the surface again, as the water becomes progressively
rougher the farther away from the lee side of the foating bridge.

Just for schlitz and grins, the broker suggested that we run the
*windward* side of the bridge. That's a different story entirely. The
windwaves bounce off the pontoons and double back into the oncoming
chop. As a result, the chop gets unnaturally steep and the period
between crests is cut to about half. They often close the bridge
during very high winds because there is water splashing onto the
roadway......
*but* (!) that doesn't mean there are 10-12 foot windwaves. The water
that splashes onto the roadway is primarily spray produced when the
smaller waves smash into the side of the pontoons and burst apart.

(I don't know about the East Coast, but out this way we don't include
spray in wave height. We often get spray over the cabin top in a
serious head sea, sometimes with every wave, but you won't hear me
claiming those are "10-foot seas."). :-)

The pontoon stretch of the floating bridge runs for almost exactly a
nautical mile. (Marks on the side of the bridge are used by folks who
want to run a "measured mile" for purposes of establishing speed). We
ran that mile in 25-knot winds, doubled back by the bridge, beam-to
waves that were easily increased from 3-4 feet to a legitmate 5-6.
Spacing was so short that we had crests well above the bulwarks on
both sides, simulataneously. We were shipping water on the decks. Even
remaining seated required a firm grip on something for support, and
standing would have been out of the question. Quite the ride- I'd
recommend a similar but probably less severe experience for anybody
contemplating the purchase of a cruising boat. All too often the
weather available for sea trial is so calm that you really don't have
a clue how the boat will perform in any sort of seaway.

That's a description of experience in 5-6 footers on the West Coast.
99% of pleasure boaters, including me, won't normally venture out when
prevailing conditions create 5-6 foot windwaves. With this experience
and similar frames of reference, it's hard to visualize 7 footers
springing up unexpectedly with wind speeds of 10-15 knots. Maybe the
laws of physics are different on the East Coast, or maybe the
unfortunate crew with the new boat overestimated the height of the
waves.