Tuesday, December 17, 2013

It's enough to make me feel seasick!


Winter storm Xaver battered Europe and the North Sea earlier this month.  The oil rig standby safety vessel Grampian Protector (only about 127 feet long and weighing just 573 tons) was caught in the storm. Someone on board filmed this spectacular footage of the rough seas.





That looked to have been a very rough ride!  I'm surprised so small a ship handled it so well;  but I note that she has a very high bow, designed for precisely those conditions.

Peter

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't look so bad to me. Both pitch and roll are relatively mild.
OTOH, check this http://gcaptain.com/classic-video-fishing-boats-battle/
if you want to see some severe heaving and wallowing.
Notice the difference between the stability of the leading and trailing vessels!
I'm really glad I wasn't on that one.

Old NFO said...

I;m betting they ballasted down as far as the could... And if you keep bow on to the seas, it's not 'that' bad... When they are quartering is when it really sucks... Then you are corkscrewing, and that's gonna hurt!

But you can bet they got everybody out of the bow :-)

Anonymous said...

Ugh. Reminds me of the installment of "Victory at Sea" about Adm. Halsey's typhoon. First time I got seasick sitting in my living room.

LittleRed1

Rev. Paul said...

Been there ... done that. But only 127 feet long? My WWII-edition destroyer (small by modern standards) was three times that long. Wow.