When Good Waves Go Rogue (2014) | Hacker News Reader

When Good Waves Go Rogue (2014)

oceans.nautil.us

22 pointsdnetesn7 comments

I was once in 10-15 ft seas, not really a big deal but we got hit by a three sisters event and I will say that was the scariest event I have ever seen. Basically it's a set of 3 rouge waves these where about 20-30 ft. We where in a small craft but nothing that could not navigate a single 30 ft rouge wave. Anyways the crazy thing about a three sisters event is you get hit by the first two in rapid succession and they backwash and create a gully under the third wave which pretty much puts you bow down going into it. Fortunately I had a good captain with good instincts, so he gunned it into the gully. Initially burring the bow but caused it to right faster due to buoyancy and get us traveling up the wave before it started to break. It slammed us good and knocked us to the floor but we where no worse for wear and we walked away from it. Had it broke on us in the gully, I can only imagine but by the power we got even busting thru it, if we had been in the gully that boat would have been in two pieces. Now I don't go spearfishing if there is even the remotest possibility that a squall line could whip up.

I read Susan Casey’s The Wave[0] about 8-9 years ago, it is told from alternative perspectives of sailors and big wave surfers - Laird Hamilton to be specific. A fascinating read, I highly recommend it. More I read about it less likely that I’m ever going to take a cruise :)

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Wave-Pursuit-Rogues-Freaks-Giants/dp/...

How can this possibly be true:

> This means you have probably experienced a rogue wave and not noticed. How? “If you’re out in calm conditions,” says Baschek, “and the waves are one meter high, and suddenly you experience a two meter wave, so what?”

Given that the next sentence says:

> In fact, Baschek says one wave per day, somewhere in the world’s oceans, is a rogue wave.

The first quote is clearly true.

A rogue wave is one that almost certainly resulted from a non-linear interaction of waves because its size is statistically unlikely enough under the linear wave model. So anything 2+* the background waves.

It isn't the size of the wave. It is the size relative to the sea around it.

That said, the next sentence does not make sense to me. Particularly not given that it is also estimated that ships in the North Atlantic encounter an average of one rogue wave per year. (But mostly not in sufficiently high seas to be a problem.)

I mean if the second sentence is true then it definitely throws doubt upon the clear trueness of the first. If there is one of these per day in the entire world, then it’s very unlikely that anyone reading this has experienced one.

Point.

However https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave quotes a researcher estimating that at any point in time there are an average of 10 rogue waves somewhere in the world.

So the second quote appears to be a misquote. And everything else makes sense.

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