Killer Waves

In Adlard Coles’ book he states that one wave in 23 will be twice the size of average, one in 1,175 over three times average and one in 300,000 over four times average. These are the dangerous monsters we must allow for about every 27 days. Over time, we have learned safety actions, improved equipment and techniques.

About 40-years ago near St. Helens in Tasmania, three yachtsman drowned and one lived to tell the tale. The Huon Pine Endurance class yacht Nijumi was hit by a southerly buster without warning and skipper Norman Newman decided to heave-to. For 24 hours the wind gauge registered a maximum velocity estimated at 70 knots. When the worst was over, two freak waves hit. The first rolled the yacht 360 degrees and the second smashed it to splinters. Alan Ralston was the only one not wearing a safety harness. It is believed that the other three were dragged to the bottom with the yacht at such a speed that they could not reach to disconnect the snap hooks in time to survive.

In those days, harnesses were fixed to the waist and had one snap hook at the end of the line.

Alan Ralston floated 32km, hanging on to debris along the Tasmanian coast. At one stage he was only 50m off Cape Portland but was washed out to sea again. Eventually, a fisherman found him on Cape Barren Island. The yacht’s life raft was washed ashore, still in its packaging.

Unattached

At an earlier time, a Victorian yacht was sailing to Tasmania. Three of the crew were below and the owner’s son was at the helm and not wearing a harness when a huge wave came over the boat and carried him away. The father came on deck and saw his son swimming desperately towards the yacht. But it took so long to turn the yacht around that the son was never found.

So, on one of these occasions a man drowned because he was not wearing a harness, while the other man lived because he was not wearing one. Not long after those events, two JOG yachts were in an overnight race and inundated by rogue waves, resulting in a loss of four lives.

The Bermudan Triangle off the Florida, USA coast has a bad reputation for dangerous waves. Joseph Ploeg of the Canadian National Research Council Hydraulics Laboratory says, “The sea bottom profile, tides, winds, and counter currents interact and catch up to each other and create double waves up to 30m high. When it reaches critical height, it breaks.” Many boats are enveloped and never heard of again. Over a five-year period, 2,000 lives were lost at sea in the Bermudan Triangle. But many of the lives in that area are believed to be due to drug smuggling pirates operating between the West Indies and USA. Another overseas region, off the coast of Norway in the North Sea, is proven to be bad for episodic giant waves. This is so prevalent that insurance companies will not provide cover. 

Port Phillip Rip

At a briefing many years ago at the Sandringham Yacht Club, Victoria, the speaker related the story of how some years before that, a full-sized steamer was coming in through The Rip at Port Phillip heads on a calm day. A large overfall came up so suddenly and steeply that it washed an entire family, who were sitting on deck chairs, overboard. There is a large underwater wall in The Rip that causes large waves breaking back against the tide on calm days when the tide is rushing quickly. This writer experienced such an event. We were in a runabout on calm water when a passenger turned and saw a breaker coming at us. He shouted a warning, so I put my foot down and kept ahead of it.

Strategies

The U.S. Coast Guard report states “Even with a sea anchor, the bow of a modern yacht will tend to yaw away from the wind when the towline goes slack, as it will when the boat passes through the trough of a wave. For these reasons the use of a sea anchor is not recommended. For fin keel yachts the drogue/sea anchor should be deployed from the stern, not the bow. When we were doing our research for surviving a storm, we did not find a single positive experience using sea anchors and the unmistakable conclusion for us from this is that in dangerously breaking seas, tactics other than a parachute anchor have a higher chance of success for most situations.”

Most cruising and racing yachties understand the benefit of heaving-to in a storm, usually done by lashing the main to leeward and the jib to windward but this varies depending on the balance and rig of the vessel. There is value in spilling oil on the sea which can cause an amazing difference to the surrounding conditions; but not many carry much spare oil. A boat hove-to and drifting downwind will leave a smooth wake behind and upwind. One crew reported that they were in a 50-55 knot wind with waves approaching, with breaking crests around them, but had only spray on deck with no green seas breaking against heir hull.

Safety Gear

These days, safety harnesses have a snap hook at each end of the line. Some have three. That allows for no jacklines running the full length of the vessel and relying on the lifelines along the sides of the vessel. You use one snap hook here, then when you come to a stanchion, you can attach the third snap hook to the next section, before disconnecting from the previous section; and you have one snap hook at your waist so you can release if you are overboard and need to swim.

Two reported instances prove the need. One was Christopher Reddish, clipped-on when sailing along the British coast. Wearing a harness, he had been tidying sails at the bow when he fell overboard and was dragged alongside the boat. He drowned before his crew could stop and rescue him. Another was Phillip Hitchcock. He fell overboard connected by a harness and was dragged beside his 51-foot boat. His brother David managed to add a longer lead to the harness line to keep him clear of the boat while dropping the sails. By the time he was able to come alongside Phillip, he was dead. David never succeeded in bringing his brother’s body aboard and was forced to set it adrift. Following the disaster, the British Practical Boat Owner magazine conducted in-water test results that proved that anyone in a harness dragged through the water at speed can drown within as little as a minute. Recovery must be with the vessel stopped and with the sails down.

Best Practice

The second-best routine is to connect your harness every time you leave the cockpit. Ideally, be connected all the time. Once, two of us were sailing across the north of Port Phillip on almost glassy water when suddenly a super-strong gust came out of nowhere that put the beam underwater and we were almost thrown overboard.

One safe practice is to wear a harness with a short tether and be connected to a centreline jackline. Also important is to have a number of hook-on spots around the deck that you can connect to with your third snap-hook, then if you do trip up, you stop quickly and not slide down the full length of the jackline. A jackline with a series of loops is ideal to prevent you sliding all the way; and keep you alive.

Published in Afloat July 2025 No. 423