Gender: male Date of Birth: April 04, 1969 Member Since: October 13, 2007 Last Signed In: October 13, 2008 Profile Views: 1555 Blog Views: 628 Memorial Day Weekend On piddle packs, and stowing for sea Rare thanks from Across the Seas Revenge on Telemarketers District Attorney Steve Tyler violates his own requested mediation agreement. Final Call Having your Cake and Eating it too... Heavy Seas March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 Global Security: An excellent website for up to date information concerning our military USS HALSEY DLG/CG 23/DDG 97 VETERANS ASSOCIATION : Website for my old ship and the New Halsey DDG-97 Internet Movie Database : Great site for movie information Triva and goofs. Also a great forum for talking about your favorite movies. Yahoo Answers: Q&A site that runs almost like a forum site but using the question/answer format rather than open discussion Neptunus Lex: Active Duty Naval Captain and F-18 pilot milblogger
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Heavy Seas
You may not like the Ocean, But you darn sure better respect her!
This is a video I came across the other day that shows somewhat what it’s like to be in a ship during heavy seas. It is a containership in the North Pacific during a “blow”. And yes my friends, those are NOT special effects when you see that camera looking down an interior passageway. They really do flex like that. and for scale.. each of those containers you see are the size of a Semi Trailer.
I was in a storm like this once upon a time
While aboard my Ship, USS Halsey CG-23
Back in 1991, I was onboard USS Halsey. We were on deployment to the Persian Gulf. We had stopped in Hawaii and now were on our way to the Island of Guam.
So was Yuri…
We were due to arrive in Apra Harbor late in the after noon of the next day.
So was Yuri…
Halsey was a 533 foot long Guided Missile Cruiser.
Yuri was just wind…
Halsey weighed in at over 7,800 tons displacement.
Yuri was just water…
The captain in his wisdom decided it would be a good idea if Halsey and Yuri not meet in Apra Harbor.
For you see, Yuri was a SuperTyphoon!
The names are different but a Supertyphoon is the same as a Category 5 Hurricane. A Monster. A Massive storm that had a bull’s-eye painted right on the Island we wanted to be at. So the captain ordered all remaining boilers lit off and 4 Westinghouse 1200lb psi boilers brought us to flank speed. Halsey was rated at 33 knots top speed but I think we hit about 34.5 that day and night.
Though due to come in late in the afternoon, our full power run the day before brought us into harbor around 0230 hours (about 2:30AM for you Civvies). All hands turned to and stores onload and refueling was completed shortly. I don’t think we ever secured the special sea and anchor detail and by 0345 we were back underway and heading out the harbor.
We immediately turned south. The idea was to cross the path of the Typhoon to get to the safer southwestern quadrant where the winds and seas were (relatively) calmer. The next 36 hours was a wild rollercoaster ride the like of which you can only dream. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that there was another somewhat smaller storm in the Atlantic only weeks earlier. They made a movie about that one. They called it the ‘Perfect Storm”.
I spent most of that time in my Divisional workspace because we could not just go back and forth when we wanted to, and since we had to keep that space manned it was just easier to rack out there in the workspace. To get to our compartment you had to step out a watertight door down on the 03 level (That’s where the bridge is) . This placed us on the catwalk that runs from the bridge wing back to the signal bridge. You are now exposed to the wind and the elements, huge waves crashing. The ship is rolling heavy to both port and starboard and heaving up and down 30-40 feet. Our rolls were averaging about 35-38 degrees. You had to walk back along that catwalk and around the corner to a vertical ladder going up one level to the 04. You now have to walk drunkenly across an open deck space right behind the forward mast and stack to the other side of the ship where you would then go up another ladder and back inside another watertight door to our space.
Not a trip to be taken lightly.
The problem with being there was a matter of height. To be more specific. Height and distance from the axis of rotation in our ships crazy gyrations. You see, down on the Main deck and lower decks, the ships roll is a leaning from one angle to the left to another angle to the right. At our distance from the point where the ship pivots around those angles, we are not just tilting one way then another, we are moving in a huge arc through space as well. Like a crazed pendulum.
Needless to say we made it through the ordeal with no fatalities (except our appetites) and only minor damage to the ship. Some of the living spaces looked like a tornado hit them (Always secure for sea) and had belongings and other things thrown about.
1 comments from 1 users
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posted by
CollegeGirl
on Mar 28, 2008 at 02:50 PM
WOW!!! I got sea sick just from watching the video. They would have to sedate me!
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