4 ms·

Whenever I hear of someone crossing the Atlantic, be it in a boat or a barrel, my immediate concern is the huge waves, how would they deal with them?

imaginenore 9y ago
I remember reading about that. During storms they close their boat, so the water can't get in, and then they wait it out.
jws 9y ago
The key is to move up and down with them. If you are stationary, then you are looking at things like 5 meter high waves with a 10 second period. So you go up for 5 seconds then down for 5 seconds. You get used to it. For sailors, they tend to be going more or less downwind which makes the period longer for a given wave height. Assuming they aren't going straight down wind, their sail also forms a sort of feedback system which keeps them heeled over at a fairly constant angle so there isn't a lot of boat rocking going on. You can see typical values at http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/papers/seatable.html http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/papers/seatable.html Note that is in "feet@seconds" and the blue values are typical, the white cells wander off into computational fantasy.
clementmas 9y ago
Yes, we had a storm at the end of the first week. 6m high waves. We dropped the para-anchor, locked ourselves in the cabins and waited 36 hours.
- wrigby 9y ago
  I had never heard of a para-anchor[1] before, so I just looked it up - they're really cool! It's a brand of sea-anchor[2] that looks like a big parachute that goes underwater, effectively anchoring the boat where it is without having to reach the sea floor. 1: http://para-anchor.com/ http://para-anchor.com/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    More significantly, a sea anchor orients a craft parallel (and leeward) of the wind, and hence, prevailing swell.
- mason55 9y ago
  That makes me ill just thinking about it. We’re you always invincible to seasickness or was it something you developed?
  - clementmas 9y ago
    It was my first time on the ocean/sea ever. Felt sick the first night puking a couple of times but never felt sick ever again.

imaginenore 9y ago

I remember reading about that. During storms they close their boat, so the water can't get in, and then they wait it out.

jws 9y ago

The key is to move up and down with them. If you are stationary, then you are looking at things like 5 meter high waves with a 10 second period. So you go up for 5 seconds then down for 5 seconds. You get used to it. For sailors, they tend to be going more or less downwind which makes the period longer for a given wave height. Assuming they aren't going straight down wind, their sail also forms a sort of feedback system which keeps them heeled over at a fairly constant angle so there isn't a lot of boat rocking going on. You can see typical values at http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/papers/seatable.html http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/papers/seatable.html Note that is in "feet@seconds" and the blue values are typical, the white cells wander off into computational fantasy.

clementmas 9y ago

Yes, we had a storm at the end of the first week. 6m high waves. We dropped the para-anchor, locked ourselves in the cabins and waited 36 hours.

wrigby 9y ago
I had never heard of a para-anchor[1] before, so I just looked it up - they're really cool! It's a brand of sea-anchor[2] that looks like a big parachute that goes underwater, effectively anchoring the boat where it is without having to reach the sea floor. 1: http://para-anchor.com/ http://para-anchor.com/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  More significantly, a sea anchor orients a craft parallel (and leeward) of the wind, and hence, prevailing swell.
mason55 9y ago
That makes me ill just thinking about it. We’re you always invincible to seasickness or was it something you developed?
- clementmas 9y ago
  It was my first time on the ocean/sea ever. Felt sick the first night puking a couple of times but never felt sick ever again.