Let me assure you that, after riding a tin can, two cruisers, a battleship, and an amphib, I'm more than a little familiar with how heavy seas will affect shipboard life. I, too, rode out a typhoon while returning home from a cruise to Japan aboard USS Columbus (CG-12). And for anyone who may not be familiar with that ship, Columbus, like her sister ship, USS Chicago (CG-11), which I helped commission, had been refitted with towering macks, vice masts, that planners long had had questions about whether the ship could stay upright in a major storm. Suffice it to say that we proved her seaworthiness on that trip. Other than watchstanders manning their posts, all other ship's work was knocked off, and all hands slept in their coffin racks with straps across our chests and legs to keep us from being thrown out and injured.
I still can remember those long, eerie nights, lying awake in my rack and listening to those all-too-familiar extended groans the ship emitted as it lay over in one of those heavier rolls.
It would be an understatement to say we were anything but immensely relieved once the seas calmed, and our workdays returned to being routine. To see an aircraft carrier, such as the Kitty Hawk, take water across the bow, with some even reaching the flight deck, as depicted in the earlier video, is indeed an extreme circumstance. We cruised in formation with many a carrier during my career, and I don't recall another incident that equaled what you see in the foregoing video. By and large, aircraft carriers are among the stablest of platforms you'll find anywhere.
But let us turn our attention to bass boats and the ride you get from one of them in rough seas. Consider this account I found during my online research.
A 21-year-old had drawn a "wild man" of sorts during a BFL tournament.
Said the 21-year-old, "We were on Texoma. He had a Bumble Bee single-console with a 225 Merc on back. That motor sputtered and died five or six times while we were idling out to the main group. The owner constantly had to put it in neutral and rev it up just to keep it running.
"As we were idling toward the call boat, he asked, 'You like fast boat rides?'
"I said you bet. I was young and stupid at the time, and this thing sounded like it was going to blow up at any minute, much less run fast. We left the group and headed to our first stop.
"He said 'I've had a little work done on her' as he gave it the throttle.' My thought was that someone had seen him coming and had stuck it to him. Wrong! That was before we started somewhere around 160-ish in the pack and soon was leading all the other boats. I bet we were going 85 or better.
"With nothing but clear water in front of us, and maybe a 6-inch chop, everything was fine, except for the chine walking the boat was doing. I thought I would get thrown over the side...at the same time thinking, though, this is cool."
Coming back was an altogether different story. The wind had gotten up, and Texoma was showing what it could do wave-wise. That, however, didn't bother the driver. He never backed off the hand throttle, even a little bit. Instead, he kept both hands on the steering wheel. After submarining three or four waves, we had water in the boat about a foot deep or more, which helped slow the idiot down. It also washed my tackle bag from between my legs and over the back deck.
I figured he probably still was hitting about 60 or better. It was beating the daylights out of both of us. It was too rough to go back and look for the bag, as I figured it had sunk anyway.
"I ripped the screws holding the strap handle from the fiberglass and pulled a bicep muscle," said the 21-year-old. "That was the absolute worst boat ride I ever had taken. The handle on the left side stayed on the boat. Otherwise, I would have been bounced out."
Then there was this account from a gent who described a bass tournament in which he was at the helm, taking "the scariest boat ride of his life.
"We knew there was supposed to be some bad weather coming in, so the tournament director made the call at the morning briefing to cut the day short by 2 hours. Well, I started back about 30 minutes early, but that was too late. The wind was blowing up the lake, creating some big waves, but because of all the ski boats that had been out, they weren't timed.
"Some would be 5 feet apart, some 30 feet, plus the cross waves...it was like driving in a washing machine. That's so far the only time I've been in a boat that speared a wave, and it was because of the timing. I was running the tops of the waves, and I had it timed to hit the top of the next wave to keep the bow up...kind of like in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMjDckn8Dec.
"I was a co-angler in the video I just cited. The boater was doing a very good job of keeping the bow up and throttling the motor up on the downside of a wave, so the bow wouldn't fall. Perhaps this video will help someone drive a boat in these conditions. Incidentally, three different forecasts this day were calling for only 6 mph winds.
"Getting back to my original story, though, there were two waves close together, and then two further apart. The two close together caused me to misjudge the third, and I ended up going up that wave, let off, and tried to get back on it, but the bow just dropped between the waves. We were doing about 20 or 22 mph, so still a safe speed, but I learned something that day: Never trust the weather."
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