Rogue Waves

Rob and I were sailing through the Canary Islands on my twenty-six foot Westerly Centaur. We’d left Gibraltar some four days previous and were headed for Antigua in the Caribbean. It was the last week of July—a bit late to be crossing the Atlantic with hurricane season just around the corner so we weren’t planning any stops on the way.

The wind was blowing a good force seven from astern, kicking up decent sized waves that occasionally broke over the counter and flooded the cockpit. Because of this, I had the hatch closed and the storm boards slotted in so Rob wouldn’t be disturbed. He’d come off watch at six and was doing a Rip-Van-Winkle in the quarter berth.

It was now around eight in the morning and we were running between two of the Canary islands—Tenerife and Grand Canary. I was perched in the cockpit watching the ocean go by.

People often ask me, “Don’t you get bored during these long trips of yours?”

“Never,” I tell them. I can sit in a forest for maybe an hour, watching chipmunks and squirrels darting around and mushrooms and things growing, but then I want to move on. But the sea—I never get enough of it. I guess because it’s as restless as me. We get along just fine.

Anyway, there I was, happily bobbing around as the waves slid under the boat and the wind shoved us south toward the pristine waters of the Caribbean. Then something changed. It took me a moment to figure out what. The wind was still blowing strong but the sea was calm. How could this be?

The Westerly in more placid waters

I looked back and there was my answer.

The ocean was flat as a pond for perhaps three hundred yards. Then it began to slope up…and up…and up…

I’ve been through three hurricanes at sea. They give a few hours warning and I’ve always thought I had a fighting chance. The fact that I’m still here shows I wasn’t off the mark. But this thing…this thing was so big there was no chance of fighting it. This thing was a wall with a little white beard at its top. This thing would crush me like a bug if it decided to do so.

I never wear a safety harness—I find them too restrictive. But with this monster looming behind me, I improvised my own by winding the tail end of the main sheet around my chest and tying it off to a couple of cleats. I felt sure we were going to perform some acrobatics when this bastard got hold of us.

There was no wind now. The wave had blocked it off completely. We just drifted forward under our momentum, sail hanging loose.

Rob - later in the voyage

I disengaged the self-steering gear and clutched the tiller tightly as the wave approached. Before, there’d been the noise of a strong wind—waves splashing about and the creaking of rigging. Now there was nothing but a kind of low hiss made by the breaking top of the wave.

It eased under the boat and began lifting us. Higher, higher...and higher. But we weren’t tipping forward. It was weird—the boat was almost level, with the stern kind of poked into the wave and the bow sticking out. Up and up we went. It was probably one of the most amazing moments of my life. Looking over the side was like looking down the face of a cliff.

We got almost to the top of the thing then the bow tilted down and off we went. We were flying. The bow wave was like that of an old, deep-hulled speed-boat, enclosing me in a tunnel of flying water. But this only lasted for perhaps ten seconds. Then the breaking top of the thing splashed into the cockpit as the peak slid under us.

The wind caught the sails again as the back of the wave eased us down ever so gently.

I looked astern, and there was another one as huge as the first. The same thing happened. It lifted us up to near the top before the bow tipped down and we did our brief mad dash until the wave slipped from under us.

By the time the third one came along I was beginning to feel like an old pro at this surfing business. I took off my improvised harness and stood up as the peak passed under us. Quite amazing. It was like standing atop a huge ridge in the middle of the ocean. For that brief moment, I could see Tenerife and Grand Canary clearly—each of them some twenty miles off.

When that third and last one passed I found myself regretting that I hadn’t had the presence of mind to wake Rob and shift him up forward. Perhaps with his weight up in the bow we might have been able to ride one of those babies all the way to the Caribbean. Imagine that—a three day crossing of the Atlantic!

But then again, with his weight forward, we might have dug the bow into the water and performed the acrobatics I’d initially anticipated. As it was, Rob simply snored his way through our little adventure.

A year or so later, I got talking to a U.S. navy captain in a bar somewhere. He’d encountered a set of waves like I described only once in his thirty-year career. He said they were usually caused by an underwater seismic shift and could be up to one hundred and twenty feet in height. I put my three at around eighty feet.

Edited by Davina