North Sea: pics of huge seas this week

[jfm]

My brother just sent me these, from a reliable source - a friend of his who works in N Sea exploration and has lot of mates/contacts in that business. So they're not photshopped, i believe. Apparently these were taken from the Beryl Alpha stand-by vessel this week. The guy said Northern North Sea Platforms were recording waves in excess of 17.5m yesterday. Serious stuff. (When I said in the other thread (sq78 build) I wanted rough conditions in the N Sea tomorrow I didn't quite mean this. Careful what you wish for).

[tico]

Oh Sh**...... noticed that the Saturday afternoon sailing of the 'Isle of Innishmore' (Pembroke - Rosslare) had been cancelled due to bad weather, wind was howling well on Saturday night.

[benjenbav]

Sweet fecking jaysus.

I know fisherman are renowned for having their dayshapes welded to the mast but you'd think they would take the trouble not to indicate that they are trawling when there's no sign of any trawling going on.

[MarieK]

I know it would be a nightmare situation but do you think that 78/70 could survive in those seas? Or any 80 foot pleasure boat for that matter?

[jfm]

I know it would be a nightmare situation but do you think that 78/70 could survive in those seas? Or any 80 foot pleasure boat for that matter?

Tee hee. Funny, cos as I opened the email and looked at the pics this morning, I wondered what sort of pleasure boat you'd need to survive that. I don't know and have never had to endure such seas so i can only guess. I would think that with a good skipper you could possible survive an hour of that in an 80 footer, but you'd have to make zero mistakes so as not to broach and have a lot of luck. You'd lose loads of things, including maybe the radar mast, and you'd risk being thwacked in the back of the head by flying dishwashers and things. Thing is, not many people could withstand it physically and once everyone on board is uber seasick you wont have the helmsman skill to not broach.

Also you can lose the boat through a window failure (remember the superyacht Nadine that went down off Sardinia, over 10 years ago? It could have survived but the hard tender came loose and smashed thru the saloon windows, causing the seas to come in and the boat to sink)

So that's a "no" I suppose!

Remember also, as has been said on here many times, the sea looks better in pictures than in real life. So the reality of that must have been hell

[paultallett]

WOW!! I'm going to show these to SWMBO to stop her moaning when the run to Cowes gets a little choppy!!

[idpnd]

Impressive pics..

you'd think they would take the trouble not to indicate that they are trawling when there's no sign of any trawling going on.

Well-spotted!

[benjenbav]

Some stats and background on PD98 "Harvester":

http://www.worldfishingtoday.com/new...an_harvest.asp

At 28m, not that different in length to a Sq78

[Philiz]

Thanks for that JFM, I was just sitting in the office wishing I was out on the boat as the sun is shining, but suddenly it doesn't seem so bad being here for some reason.
Good photos by the way.

[Phoenix of Hamble]

Holy cow!

That doesn't look a lot of fun!!!!!!!

I don't think it want to put ANY boat to the test in that... sod the academic arguments... it makes shiver just thinking about it.