Surviving a Super Storm at Sea

Posted by Alex in Car & Vehicle, Pictures on April 14, 2008 at 9:24 am



Photo: Karsten Petersen

On October 1977, the good ship "Stolt Surf," a chemical tanker, left Singapore on a routine voyage across the Pacific Ocean.

The ship was advised by a weather routing agency to keep far to the north, to avoid a storm further south. The captain said that going north at this time of the year was contrary to his sailor experience, but the weather agency had all sorts of satellites and computers and whatnot. And so the Stolt Surf went north against his instinct and years of experience.

A big mistake:

During the storm, it soon became clear, that this one was NOT one of the usual storms with "only" 10 meter waves! No,- on the "Stolt Surf" we experienced to our astonishment, that when the big waves came crashing towards us, we had to look UP in order to see the top of the waves! And that was from the bridge deck, which is already 22 meters above sea level! 22 meters!!! And still you had to look UP!!! Crazy!

Link – Thanks Christophe!


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11 comments to "Surviving a Super Storm at Sea"

  1. Alannah
    April 14th, 2008 at 9:37 am

    "The ship was heavily damaged, and could very easily have sunk, -, but to the shore people it was much more a concern, that the red carpet were NOT immediately laid out for them."

    WTF?!

  2. stacyj
    April 14th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    Good lord, those are some amazing pictures, if that had been me I never would have gotten within twenty feet of any body of water larger than a soup bowl again after that ... How amazing that everyone ended up okay (well, maybe "okay but for some tragic condition that rendered the author incapable of writing without excessive use of exclamation points" ;) )

  3. kid_icarus
    April 14th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    wow....that is amazing.....and to think, the BIG waves couldn't be photographed cos of the mist.......

  4. Larry Sheldon
    April 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    And what if he had stayed south, and encountered a big storm?

  5. MosselKots
    April 14th, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    here's a vid of the same ship in that storm...

    http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=G1epdL2LerQ

  6. empty-minded
    April 14th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    From what I remember in 1977, the weather forecasting was awful. You were better off consulting an almanac.

  7. oezicomix
    April 14th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    its just like that really boring george clooney movie, only real! wow!

  8. Ali S.
    April 14th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    I have a fascination with the large bodies of water of our planet. And this is just awe-inspiring.

  9. CheeseDuck
    April 14th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Ahh! Hydrophobia kikcing in!

  10. Roger Harkness
    November 11th, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    Nice Picture, I've used it on my blog for my poem "The Sea" I was out in the North Atlantic in 78 for 21 days in 21 to 24 foot seas dodging storms all around us, our superstructure cracked and I became the master helmsman for special evolutions. We made 4 attempts at taking on fuel and decided to give it up and go to the straights to fuel before we ran out, thank goodness. After that, I always loved the ocean and never could understand why.

  11. diecky
    March 1st, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    very good experience,i have seen before,in my own trip from singapore to shang hai,the wave is 45feet (+/- 12 meter) but its not to make scared to sailing again,by the way this is my phone number

    +62 81 330 599 989
    diecky


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