Sunday, November 18, 2012


                                       Rogue Waves

As many of you know the sailing World Cup is happening in the Bay Area in 2013.  There was a tragic boating accident last year where only 3 of the 8 crewmen were found after the sailboat-in-training crashed.  The crash was caused by a rogue wave near the Furlong Islands just outside the bay.  Seeing that I am going to be spending a lot of time on the ocean this year, I figured why not look into what makes a rogue wave a rogue wave.  Well, for starters, until 2001 they were classified as a freak wave and thought to happen only once every 10,000 years.  This figure was made by the scientific committee but quickly justified due to electronic measurements and official accounts of the events. What where once thought to be impossible, actually are thought to happen much more frequently than originally thought.  But, what a freak or rogue wave is, is a wave in rogue water that takes the energy from the wave in front and the wave behind.  But the deadly thing about them is the shape.  They’re not like your normal smooth wave, but instead they break on you like a wave that you would surf on.  So, not only are they bigger, but they also have more forces behind them.  The only problem is that you can never predict where or when they will happen, which is what makes them so deadly.

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