Rough water videos and stories

sasqman

Crew Member
As the title states. Anyone have any good videos of their rough water outings in the straight or on the west coast. Would love to see some with the vessel info and how it handles.


Thanks

I have come across a few on YouTube.........



 
I might be wrong but in the video he says 6m waves that would put them in the 18 foot range. they didnt look that big to me. On that note i would have turned around lol
 
Measuring waves is always a point of contention.
Is the height of a wave from top of peak to bottom of trough?
Peak Amplitude vs. Peak to Peak Amplitude.

I personally did not experience 20' waves.
We did have two crew swept overboard, they were attached with life harnesses.
My rotator cuff is still a mess from one of the recoveries.

You did not want to turn around in that stuff.
Luckily the path of least resistance for us was Nanaimo and the wind blew us right into the strip club.
We were truly blown ashore!
 
I was trying to post some of mine but it said the files were too large
 
That 2010 Southern Straits race was truly a gong show...that boat that got scuttled off French Creek, a storm the Straits hadn't seen in many years. Then the other years when it takes 40 hours to pass Trail Islands, crazy...
 
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I wish I took some video of big storms.
I was driving our 'hot' gillnetter back from Smith Inlet in the late 80's and got that puppy surfing above 20 kts, when cruise was 14.
Took some pictures and it looked like just another day!
I started taking pictures out the front window showing all green and then quickly the back window, showing all blue sky!
And now I drive a desk. At least I go home to my daughters every night.
 
I have had some fun times around Cape Caution, we have buried the boat like it was a submarine. I'll see if I can dig up any vids. Now we Plan plan plan and then we do some more planning lol. Hey we used to just look at West Sea Otter (NDBC) and as long as it was under 3m (preferably under 2m with a long amplitude) we would go but recently have found windfinder.com super helpful in that it is predicative for a couple weeks in advance and seems to do a pretty good job at it.
 
I was too busy staying alive to think about making a video. One time was Jeanette Light on the other side of QC Strait opposite Hardy...tide change against lots of wind, water getting squeezed through a really narrow place in Queen Charlotte Strait. Water went from flat calm to 3 meter haystacks—-like being in a boiling cauldron of water.

The other time was Milbanke Sound—-blowing 35 from the S.E. Three hours of 3 - 4 meter seas in a 21 footer. Blue-water against the wheelhouse glass, free-falling off the top of huge spiked waves. I still have PTSD from that experience. To this day I get shivers when I see curling waves free-falling on top of each other.

That Southern Straits race video definitely captures the big wave thing, especially seeing that boat navigating in following seas. If that boat had been in shallower water it would have been the end of the world in a 55 knt blow
 
Yikes, I hate the cross currents if ya time it poor with the inlet on ebb and the tide on flood and the scary in between! I feel for you and your PTSD lol
 
I was racing a Finngulf 41 in this race.
We made it to Nanaimo and my hands were seized on the helm.
We did not film. This is from another boat on the same race.

That crew looks well trained and very calm in a very capable boat. Amazing that in those conditions they are barely getting wet. Wasn’t there another thread about crossing in a 17’ boat? :D
 
My PTSD moment came the first summer with my 27' bayliner explorer. I had just graduated from our trusty double eagle 168 and was moving on to the cruising life.

On what was to be the hottest day of summer, we left sunset marina at about 10am on a Sunday and had the most flat calm day that I have ever seen on the straight. We enjoyed the spectacular, ever changing views our coast has to offer all while the water lapped ever so gently off our bow at a comfortable 8 knot cruise. We made it to secret cove by about 4pm, all 5 crew members safe plus the 7 year old 150lb newfoundland dog.

A night of a few drinks for mom and dad and great dinner as a family made for an incredible day. Off to bed to find about a 200 mosquitoes in the boat.........by the time we killed them all it looked like a bloody murder scene. Was a restless humid night of sleeping in the boat as a family for the first time, but we survived.

Next day started off with breakfast and bold plan to cruise to Lund as our final destination was bold point on Quadra island. Topped the fuel tank off with 45 liters and now had our fuel burn rate at 2.2 gallons per hour.....sweet!!! Gas attendant asked our plans for the day, so I told him and he had a puzzled look on his face...... "supposed to be pretty nasty out there today". Hmmm I said to myself. And kept on our way. Double checked the forecast, said SW 15 to 20...... I've got a big boat now.... no problem. Off we go! Leave secret cove, flat calm obviously as we were behind Thormanby. Start heading north, get a phone call from one of my developer customers..... waters beautiful, I can answer it..... well thats when we got out past Thormanby and following waves started to move my boat in ways I've never felt before......kinda like it was violating me and my new to me big boat. That phone call started with a......."just started our family holiday and the water is beauitful" and 10 minutes later ...... "the waters really changing quick, I'll call you later."

Heart rate goes to about 130 for the next 10 minutes. The further we get away from secret cove the worse it is getting. Heart rate at 160 plus now. The next 15 minutes were spent getting all the safety gear ready, trying not to have a heart attack, and keeping the kids below to try add more ballast. Eventually we realized pretty quick that we were not going to lund so tried our best to tuck in behimd harness island. As I'm trying to time ride the waves as best as I could with my 115 and I keep trying my best not to have a jammer, we finally have the last moment opportunity to veer a hard starboard and tuck in behind the island.


As you can tell, had a nice spot to relax, have a few cigarettes regain composure and spend a few hours waiting for things to change and maybe a high tide so we could take the bargain bay channel to pender harbour.

Eventually we did get there......... not to Quadra by boat...... but to pender harbor through channel. Tied up at Garden Bay marina. Booked a taxi for the next morning. Got up, taxi back to Gibsons, across the ferry. Taxi to sunset marina, grab the truck and trailer and back to pender.

We eventually did get to Quadra and had a fantastic week of exploring and creating great family memories. I'm still alive, and yes those wave may have only been 3-4 footers, but at the time they were 7 plus!!


 
Here is another one, not from around here..... I believe Sweden. This Bayliner 3288 sure seems to handle it well. Skip to about the 8:40 mark.

 
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I used to hit a lot of action crossing the strait; I don't have pics of any of the really rough times because I was too busy piloting - the worst by far was day 3 of minimum 25kts and gusting to 35 or 40; we left about two hours before sunset and it was very, very difficult. I lost sight of a buoy leaving the Fraser...there was too much spray to track it and it disappeared long enough that when I spotted it again it was just off the port bow, maybe fifty feet away at most.

But here are a couple of pics of a 30' flybridge that followed us one time on a moderately rough day. He would bark the props at crests and almost disappear in troughs. Sorry about the quality; they're caps from a very rough video. It had calmed down a bit by this point; we were laughing about it on my boat. But I had talked to this guy at the gas dock in Steveston; he was pretty nervous about the whole thing. There was also a guy in a huge trawler who cut south for Active...when he hung that left and started taking it on the beam he was rolling like a fat pony on fresh grass. Right at the mouth had been really rough but here I think we're down to maybe sixes on average. They were pretty steep though...bad tide to be doing it but I used to be pretty ruthless about when I'd go.

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After the crossing at sunset in 25kt+ wind, I said I would never try that again, even though we were bone dry inside. But it was just too dicey. A lot of waves were solid eights and we had to navigate by instrument for about half the strait between the dark, the spray, and the deep troughs.

Funnily enough, one of the first times I crossed, we were loaded really heavy and punched through a big wave at Sand Heads so hard it ripped the dinghy off the roof...probably a foot of green water up there. But by luck, it split on the dinghy and we didn't have much land in the cockpit...and the dinghy did drop straight into the cockpit, startling the living hell out of me, but otherwise everything was fine. Pretty steep, tightly packed waves to sweep a pilothouse like that, though.
 
I used to hit a lot of action crossing the strait; I don't have pics of any of the really rough times because I was too busy piloting - the worst by far was day 3 of minimum 25kts and gusting to 35 or 40; we left about two hours before sunset and it was very, very difficult. I lost sight of a buoy leaving the Fraser...there was too much spray to track it and it disappeared long enough that when I spotted it again it was just off the port bow, maybe fifty feet away at most.

But here are a couple of pics of a 30' flybridge that followed us one time on a moderately rough day. He would bark the props at crests and almost disappear in troughs. Sorry about the quality; they're caps from a very rough video. It had calmed down a bit by this point; we were laughing about it on my boat. But I had talked to this guy at the gas dock in Steveston; he was pretty nervous about the whole thing. There was also a guy in a huge trawler who cut south for Active...when he hung that left and started taking it on the beam he was rolling like a fat pony on fresh grass. Right at the mouth had been really rough but here I think we're down to maybe sixes on average. They were pretty steep though...bad tide to be doing it but I used to be pretty ruthless about when I'd go.

er6nz5v.png


6p6kOZy.png


After the crossing at sunset in 25kt+ wind, I said I would never try that again, even though we were bone dry inside. But it was just too dicey. A lot of waves were solid eights and we had to navigate by instrument for about half the strait between the dark, the spray, and the deep troughs.

Funnily enough, one of the first times I crossed, we were loaded really heavy and punched through a big wave at Sand Heads so hard it ripped the dinghy off the roof...probably a foot of green water up there. But by luck, it split on the dinghy and we didn't have much land in the cockpit...and the dinghy did drop straight into the cockpit, startling the living hell out of me, but otherwise everything was fine. Pretty steep, tightly packed waves to sweep a pilothouse like that, though.
That's definitely 6' ers in the pics. Maybe more
 
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