What yachts 130' or under?

Hi,

Rogue waves do exist but if you worry about being hit by one too much you will never leave your couch.

I am looking at a project right now where the fwd 1/3 of the vessel is being specially strengthened to withstand rogue waves at special request of the Owner.

I hate big waves.

Rogue waves are big waves.

Jack Madden stopped flying.

If a Super Bowl were to be held in Hawaii, he stated he would take a cruise ship.

Just a matter of personal preference.

Rogue waves

Hapag Lloyd lost a pretty large special cargo vessel (Munich Express) in the late seventies due to a rogue wave in the mid atlantic. The ship just disappeared. There were only one survivor. He was found barely alive on a floating container days later. Those monsters are very hard to predict, because they do not appear with and according to the general wave picture and current wind. A real strange phenomena. Sometimes they can bee seen on non geostationary radar satellite pictures but they are still a danger to the shipping world. In the old days, sailors were concidered lunatic, if they insisted in having seen one. Thanks god, they do not appear very often. The most frightening picture I have seen, is the large oil rig smashed to pieces by one of those waves. This wave must have been more than 100 ft high.

Hi,

Do you have any idea what my ideal boat actually is?

If ever I go mad enough to own a boat I hope it is a Aluminium Dinghy of approx 5 m and equipped with an outboard motor, it can be towed too and from the beach by my old tractor.

It will have good safety gear for a vessel of its size, removeable non corrosive fuel tanks with weight and optical level gauging.

I will use it to dive from and hopefully get back into and to fish then go home and enjoy whatever I have caught at home with the boat in the shed and relax.

After having spent most of my life working on other people boats/ships I think I want as simple as possible to achieve the basic result sought.

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/burger-yacht/22169-any-yachts-being-built.html#post187434

Guess you will not be seeing any northern (Arctic) or southern (Antarctic) sunrises or sunsets.

Icebreaker Snow Dragon Now Stuck in Ice, Six Miles from MV Akademik Shokalskiy | Old Salt Blog – a virtual port of call for all those who love the sea

http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/412863000

I understand personal preferences but am puzzled as to your lack of confidence in the WP 130 crossing the Atlantic, especially with the short leg offshore Island route.

Do not confuse one-leg ocean ocean crossings (a very short list of participating MY's) to the way these types of capable passagemakers are really used.

She will get you there in one piece, come on, you can admit it, it won't feel that bad.....

Old Salt Blog

That is a nice blog, Old Phart. I will keep reading it.

Going into solid ice with your ship is a strange experience. The first time, I had to do this, was during my active duty as a skipper of a 500 ft multi purpose cargo vessel. I was the second ship in a convoy of five cargo vessels behind a finnish icebreaker on the way to Turku, Finnland. We entered 3 to 4 ft solid ice and had to stay in the narrow passageway, the icebreaker left behind. Heavy snowfall and total darkness at 1500 hours already. A radar trail maneuver without a special ice detection radar is no fun at all. If you hear the noise of those pieces of ice, scratching the paint off your ships hull is really frightening. The last ship in the convoy got lost and the icebreaker had to turn around and make a new passageway for that ship to get it back on track .

We finally made it to Turku, I picked up my cargo of pine wood and the icebreaker brought us back to the ice free part of the Baltic Sea. Since that day, I have a huge amount of respect for icebreaker captains and their crews. They do an unbelievable job. And this was only solid ice, packed ice is much worse.

But doing this in the Antartic even during its summer, is a totally different story. From one minute to the other, you can encounter packed ice, stronger than the largest nuclear icebreaker can handle. If you get stuck in one of those barriers of packed ice, you may easily loose your ship and it will take a lot of dynamite to get you out of there. Thanks god, I am to old for that type of business now.

It's the austral summer now. The least icy time to go far south. Even at the right time of year high latitudes can be challenging.

Rescue the rescuer

Now the Chinese Icebreaker is also stuck in packed ice. The Australian icebreaker (which has the rescued people from the Russian ship onboard) had to turn around and help the Chinese icebreaker. Pretty long trip for those passengers and scientist from the Russian ship but the international laws and rules of the seas places helping others higher than personal comfort. Lets hope for a good ending for all of them.

It's a secret government plot to build a floating pontoon bridge from Australia to Antarctica, one icebreaker at a time.

Hi,

I was disappointed to read of one of the so called Scientists onboard grumbling about how it was not fair they had to help and could not be rushed back to their families.

The Chinese rescued them from the Russian ship and got stuck in the process.

I was once in the outback of Nth Queensland on a job. I came across a bit where I had to drop down and drive through a gully as the road ahead was blocked by a transporter with a machine on it where they were cutting trees and moving signs to get it along the road.

I had a tandem trailer on the back, there was a guy in front of me in another 4WD he asked me if he tried to get through and got stuck if I would be able to winch/pull him out. He said if he got through he would wait for me on the other side and help me if I got stuck.

He got through and I followed his tracks and got through myself.

This is generally the spirit of folks in remote locations, these desk jockeys should remember how they got to the warmth and comfort of the Australian Icebreaker and not grumble about the perceived hardships.

Prime example of the much claimed lack of civil courage in our present society. Sad but true.