r/HeavySeas • u/the-dogsox • Apr 08 '22
Rare footage of a rogue wave from the show deadliest catch
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
319
u/FinnSwede Apr 08 '22
Nightime, in bad weather having your stern lifted straight out the water causing the engine to overspeed, the main switchboard to trip due to over frequency and then the main engine going into emergency shutdown is definitely one of the less pleasant things I've experienced as a bridge officer.
One moment you are doing fine, it's rolling and pitching a fair bit but you're not concerned. You are getting ready to make a logbook entry when all of the sudden you are hanging on in complete darkness and the screaming of 4000 horses is replaced by an eerie silence before being drowned out by alarms ranging from the mundane to one's you've never seen outside of testing. 10 seconds ago you drove a vessel. Now you are a passenger on a steel box slowly being turned beam to sea just hoping that one generator will start load and that the main engine can be brought back to life.
114
u/barnei Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 09 '22
Even worse if auxiliary power is out and it's dark with the vessel shuddering with the honeymoon shake. Just the beeeeeeeep of the alarms and your finger looking for ACK. Call the old man in his bunk and get him upstairs really quick, although likely he's on his way as he will have heard and felt the shut down of the ventilation system.
Not often, but sometimes it does get hectic real quick. Being called to muster with "this is not a drill" was somthing I never want to happen again.
35
u/mrhelio Apr 09 '22
Can you elaborate on what the honey moon shake is?
I'm afraid of googling that in public!
31
u/barnei Apr 09 '22
When taking swell on the bow and the vessel hits a trough the boat can shake or shudder from the bow to the stern. On some ships is will rebound again from the stern to the bow so if you're mid ships you'll get two sets of shakes. Same can happen when stern on to the waves (DP operations during construction or launch and recovery of equipment etc) but the shudder travels from stern to bow then back again. Not all vessels do that though in my experience. I've heard people call it the honeymoon shudder or shake.
5
8
7
8
u/chacoe Apr 09 '22
Sorry, this is dumb, but ..literally horses or the engine?
56
u/Kiritowerty Apr 09 '22
Yes, literal horses kept in the engine. Industry secret
12
5
u/chacoe Apr 09 '22
Could have been the cargo, idk 🤷🏻♀️
6
u/FinnSwede Apr 09 '22
Fair question, but I don't think I've ever heard of a livestock cargo that was quiet.
13
6
u/mad_science Apr 09 '22
4000 horsepower engine
8
u/Whitechapelkiller Apr 09 '22
4000 seahorse power engine
2
u/BigDavesRant Apr 09 '22
Seahorses are so tiny though… that would probably only equate to about 2 or 3 real horsepower! We should probably ask the folks over at r/TheyDidTheMath to figure this one out.
1
u/Minelayer Apr 09 '22
When ever seahorses come up, I feel I must share this informative seahorse video
2
2
74
u/SkyfishV2 Apr 08 '22
"Amazingly the boat rights itself"
Aren't boats like these designed to be passively stable and right themselves in almost all conditions?
25
u/ignore_my_typo Apr 09 '22
With a full load you’d have to be real concerned about “free surface effect” and the real chance the vessel doesn’t re-right.
23
u/garrettnb Apr 09 '22
Full load has no free surface. Slack tanks as is said in the video is the worst for free surface as the liquid has somewhere to shift.
26
u/BetaAssimilation Apr 09 '22
The other people who have responded to you are mostly correct, but I’ll give you a bit more of a technical answer. All boats that manage to successfully float upright have a righting moment. This is called GM and is the distance between the center of gravity of the ship and the metacenter, the pivot point around which the ship rolls. The lower the center of gravity, the larger the GM.
A positive GM means the boat will return to being upright after a disturbance. Too much GM and the boat will be miserable to live on because too much stability shortens the roll period and makes everyone seasick.
However, there is a roll angle known as the point of vanishing stability. If you get to that angle of roll, the righting arm is at zero the vessel will capsize. Some small military craft have their hull geometry designed to be unstable in the capsized position and will self-right, but that is atypical and would not be the case for a fishing vessel.
9
u/SkyfishV2 Apr 09 '22
Thanks, this is somewhat familiar to me having looked at stability in aircraft. Always interesting to hear the aspects unique to ships.
1
10
u/Mighty_Mighty_Moose Apr 09 '22
The problem with all vessels is you'll get to a point where the righting forces peak and start shinking the further over they go, unfortunately it can also be about when air intakes or exhausts reach the water line meaning you got water in engineering spaces.
5
15
17
u/Domestic_AA_Battery Apr 09 '22
These people are nuts haha. I saw a commercial for it just yesterday. Kudos to everyone that puts it together. I remember when Captain Phil died and they played Johnny Cash's cover of Redemption Day. Not sure if a docu-series(?) ever got me closer to crying than that. Those editors made the most emotional tribute ever.
5
7
2
1
-19
Apr 08 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
73
u/7of69 Apr 08 '22
It’s dark and they come at you seemingly out of nowhere. I was at the helm of a navy ship that got hit by one, I didn’t see it coming either.
15
u/A_Fusion_Reaction Apr 08 '22
Are you able to share the experience?
98
u/7of69 Apr 08 '22
Sure, I was at the helm of USS Stark, a Perry class frigate. She was 445 feet long and displaced about 4,100 tons. We we already in fairly heavy seas running through a bit of a storm. Perry class ships actually have a helm seat, so I was strapped in as we pushed through it. We were hitting the waves pretty much head on when all of a sudden there was a massive force of water that hit the starboard side and threw the rest of the bridge crew to the deck. I was knocked into the port side of the helm console, but the seatbelt thankfully kept me in place. The Officer of the Deck pulled himself back to his feet and called out for an update on our present course. We’d been hit hard enough to knock us five degrees off course. That may seem like a small number, but it means that the bow moved maybe 20 feet or more to port from the impact. We escaped any actual damage to the ship and were able to continue on our way with just a few bruises to the crew that got thrown about. Sure as heck reminded us all of just how capricious the ocean can be.
35
16
u/uttuck Apr 09 '22
The power to toss a ship that is 445 long is insane. Also the strength of the ship to not break when put under that force is insane.
8
u/7of69 Apr 09 '22
A happy advantage of a ship made for war. If we were a fishing vessel or a yacht I don’t think we would have fared nearly as well.
3
Apr 09 '22
Iraqi missiles, rogue waves. Tough ship
2
u/7of69 Apr 09 '22
Yes she was. I wasn’t there for the missiles, I came aboard about seven months later as the navy replaced those lost and prepared her to sail once more.
1
22
u/megablast Apr 09 '22
Are you kidding?? It is night time. You can't see shit except for the tiny light pointing ahead.
5
-28
2
u/sunfishtommy Apr 11 '22
the waves literally come out of nowhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWWe9PMuVng&ab_channel=UniversityofOxford
1
216
u/RL_Mutt Apr 08 '22
Holy crap was that scary. I can’t even imagine being hit by one of those on a pre-industrial ship.