@odu_history_1972

3 years ago

I spent 20 years in the Navy, was assigned to four different ships over that time, and went around the world five times. You don't get to sail through weather like this too often. The first deployment I made with my second ship, we hit some pretty heavy seas on the south side of Australia and we had water broach the stern when we slowed to assist a vessel in distress. Then, a few weeks later, we were sailing from Hawaii to San Diego just after a Hurricane. We had heavy seas for five days and had "blue" water hitting the pilothouse windows on a regular basis. The damage that I can remember included a crack in the hurricane bow, lost lifelines all over the ship, a dent in the shell of the 5-inch gun, the ship's bell was ripped off the superstructure, several topside announcement speaker bells either ripped off or flattened on the forward end of the superstructure, the starboard side countermeasure washdown system was hanging on by just a few bolts, the port side was completely ripped off, we lost a few lifeboats, and there was a crack on the O-3 level running from one side of the superstructure to the other. I've been in heavy seas on my other ships, two of them smaller than the Cruiser, but I never had to sail through heavy seas like that. Of course, I know a lot of sailors who have gone a lot further south than I did and it gets pretty bad near the poles. Rounding the Cape of Good Hope can be treacherous because of the fronts from two oceans meeting. You get weird currents, freak storms, and the seas are regularly pretty heavy. Fortunately, I never had to make that transit, because even without major storms, the seas at the southern tip of Africa can be as bad as hurricane seas.

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