A Wake(up) Story
It’s the kind of day we all dream about, and some get to experience it once in a while. Rare and beautiful, could hardly be more ideal even in a dream. Twenty five miles of glass flat crossing on a cloudless, steady high pressure system day in the middle of a stretch of days to make you wish for nothing but time on the boat and unlimited fuel, because sailing would be only down current conditions.
The crossing from Cattle Point, south end of San Juan Island, south to Sequim Bay is a straight shot, and some days takes an hour and a half, some days much longer depending on conditions. Today because of the conditions it was going to take longer. It was just too nice to hurry, so a slow cruise was in order. The auto pilot is nice for that. I can stand at the center window; eat lunch, watching for floaters, wildlife and for traffic. Everything from the small fishing vessels, to fast passenger cats, slower sailboats and all up to large freighters or tankers, often 800+ feet and moving at ~20 knots. VTS reports 3 east bound vessels, one east of me, and 2 west, and I can see all three. The second one will cross my bow with about 12 miles to spare and is moving at 18 knots. No worries there. The third is much smaller and according to the AIS (which I am learning to love) is going to make this crossing much more interesting. It is a 400 foot freighter, traveling at 11.7 knots. Not big, and not fast. Maintaining current everything our CPA (closest point of approach) is going to be 212 feet in 54 minutes. Hummmm, that’s close and pretty exact figuring for that little box. I decided to maintain a close watch.
Checking the AIS on about 5 minute intervals, and maintaining my speed and heading, the readings stayed very close to the same, varying from 190 to 225 feet. That is still pretty close, so at 6 miles of separation I dropped my speed to 3.5 knots from about 12, and decided to give the freighter a 1 mile clearance. The CPA changed to 1 mile and the radar confirmed that he crossed my bow at just outside the 1 mile ring. It’s all good now. Not wanting to rush into his wake, I bumped my speed up to almost splashing ( about 5 knots) and not wanting to waste any of this beautiful flat water, I was just moseying along and watching for the wake.
With the glass flat water, not even wind ripples, that wake should show up easy, and eventually it did. Just a hint of a raise, the darker reflection, and then occasionally a bright highlight, almost looking like it was behind. On closer approach, maybe a100 yards, there is a definite highlight following that benign looking little wave. At 100 feet, there is little change. It looks like about a 12 – 18 inch wave, no problem, and still followed by that highlight, which now looks like a small broken crest following that little wave. Weird. An now at closing speed definition develops. That small leading wave is running in front of a big hole in the ocean. Defying what I know of wave physics, the hole is about 5-6 feet deep, and short, and that “highlight” is a collapsing crest, falling into that hole. My intention was to take this seemingly minor wavelet at about 45 of the bow, not changing my course for that Sequim Bay outer marker. NOW, IT’s Time For A Correction. Hard to starboard, to take that dead on the bow, and right now I am very glad for the habit of having the bow hatch dogged down any time I am outside the home bay – period, no matter the weather or conditions. (I already learned that lesson.)
The bow hardly rises on the little wave, and then we are near standing on the nose as we fall into that hole in the ocean. The bow rail half disappears, the anchor, bow cleat and everything forward of the doghouse bend heads for Neptune’s locker. Oh but the C-Dory floats, and she remembers that and just as that crashing break is falling over the forward hatch, we rise to the occasion and are looking up at the sky, just in time to see over the hump and there is another hole in the ocean. BAM, that flat bottom hits the front of that hole and we are doing it all over again, twins rev up as there is nothing to bite in the air. Bow is down, green water heading for the windows again, then breaking off at the curve below the hatch. Again, we bounce up, regain a grip on the water with the props and nothing but glass flat in front of us, except for the other wake moving off in the distance from the other side of that little 400 foot slow moving freighter. Surprise, surprise. Not that the C-Dory could handle it. No surprise there. Surprise in that there could be such a deep hole behind such a small leading edge to that wave. Surprise that in a mile and a half, that wave had not weakened more, and that it was not easier to see, given the flat calm conditions.
Live and learn, learn and live. Just sharing this for a couple of reasons. One is that with the radar and AIS, it was fun to do the crossing calculations and now the numbers. Two, is for the safety concerns, and there are several. If I had not seen that coming, and made the turn to take it directly, it would have severely rocked the boat. To take a wave that steep beam on would have easily emptied the shelf and cupboards, opened the drawers and pitched me around in the cabin. Would it have rolled the boat? I don’t like to think so, but I have to say, I have never seen water walls that steep before. (And no, I wasn’t smoking or drinking anything and no little pills either.) I have to wonder what that would have done to the guy I saw on an earlier crossing, 6-7 miles out in an open aluminum skiff, by himself, putting along and just watching his rod tip.
Lesson learned, don’t ever take everything you see as concrete, and appearances are not always what they seem.
Harvey
SleepyC:moon
It’s the kind of day we all dream about, and some get to experience it once in a while. Rare and beautiful, could hardly be more ideal even in a dream. Twenty five miles of glass flat crossing on a cloudless, steady high pressure system day in the middle of a stretch of days to make you wish for nothing but time on the boat and unlimited fuel, because sailing would be only down current conditions.
The crossing from Cattle Point, south end of San Juan Island, south to Sequim Bay is a straight shot, and some days takes an hour and a half, some days much longer depending on conditions. Today because of the conditions it was going to take longer. It was just too nice to hurry, so a slow cruise was in order. The auto pilot is nice for that. I can stand at the center window; eat lunch, watching for floaters, wildlife and for traffic. Everything from the small fishing vessels, to fast passenger cats, slower sailboats and all up to large freighters or tankers, often 800+ feet and moving at ~20 knots. VTS reports 3 east bound vessels, one east of me, and 2 west, and I can see all three. The second one will cross my bow with about 12 miles to spare and is moving at 18 knots. No worries there. The third is much smaller and according to the AIS (which I am learning to love) is going to make this crossing much more interesting. It is a 400 foot freighter, traveling at 11.7 knots. Not big, and not fast. Maintaining current everything our CPA (closest point of approach) is going to be 212 feet in 54 minutes. Hummmm, that’s close and pretty exact figuring for that little box. I decided to maintain a close watch.
Checking the AIS on about 5 minute intervals, and maintaining my speed and heading, the readings stayed very close to the same, varying from 190 to 225 feet. That is still pretty close, so at 6 miles of separation I dropped my speed to 3.5 knots from about 12, and decided to give the freighter a 1 mile clearance. The CPA changed to 1 mile and the radar confirmed that he crossed my bow at just outside the 1 mile ring. It’s all good now. Not wanting to rush into his wake, I bumped my speed up to almost splashing ( about 5 knots) and not wanting to waste any of this beautiful flat water, I was just moseying along and watching for the wake.
With the glass flat water, not even wind ripples, that wake should show up easy, and eventually it did. Just a hint of a raise, the darker reflection, and then occasionally a bright highlight, almost looking like it was behind. On closer approach, maybe a100 yards, there is a definite highlight following that benign looking little wave. At 100 feet, there is little change. It looks like about a 12 – 18 inch wave, no problem, and still followed by that highlight, which now looks like a small broken crest following that little wave. Weird. An now at closing speed definition develops. That small leading wave is running in front of a big hole in the ocean. Defying what I know of wave physics, the hole is about 5-6 feet deep, and short, and that “highlight” is a collapsing crest, falling into that hole. My intention was to take this seemingly minor wavelet at about 45 of the bow, not changing my course for that Sequim Bay outer marker. NOW, IT’s Time For A Correction. Hard to starboard, to take that dead on the bow, and right now I am very glad for the habit of having the bow hatch dogged down any time I am outside the home bay – period, no matter the weather or conditions. (I already learned that lesson.)
The bow hardly rises on the little wave, and then we are near standing on the nose as we fall into that hole in the ocean. The bow rail half disappears, the anchor, bow cleat and everything forward of the doghouse bend heads for Neptune’s locker. Oh but the C-Dory floats, and she remembers that and just as that crashing break is falling over the forward hatch, we rise to the occasion and are looking up at the sky, just in time to see over the hump and there is another hole in the ocean. BAM, that flat bottom hits the front of that hole and we are doing it all over again, twins rev up as there is nothing to bite in the air. Bow is down, green water heading for the windows again, then breaking off at the curve below the hatch. Again, we bounce up, regain a grip on the water with the props and nothing but glass flat in front of us, except for the other wake moving off in the distance from the other side of that little 400 foot slow moving freighter. Surprise, surprise. Not that the C-Dory could handle it. No surprise there. Surprise in that there could be such a deep hole behind such a small leading edge to that wave. Surprise that in a mile and a half, that wave had not weakened more, and that it was not easier to see, given the flat calm conditions.
Live and learn, learn and live. Just sharing this for a couple of reasons. One is that with the radar and AIS, it was fun to do the crossing calculations and now the numbers. Two, is for the safety concerns, and there are several. If I had not seen that coming, and made the turn to take it directly, it would have severely rocked the boat. To take a wave that steep beam on would have easily emptied the shelf and cupboards, opened the drawers and pitched me around in the cabin. Would it have rolled the boat? I don’t like to think so, but I have to say, I have never seen water walls that steep before. (And no, I wasn’t smoking or drinking anything and no little pills either.) I have to wonder what that would have done to the guy I saw on an earlier crossing, 6-7 miles out in an open aluminum skiff, by himself, putting along and just watching his rod tip.
Lesson learned, don’t ever take everything you see as concrete, and appearances are not always what they seem.
Harvey
SleepyC:moon
:roll: