Freak Wave Yacht
Here is a prime example of not watching where you are going. If you look carefully, you will see the wave that overtops the rail, when it is about 1000 feet out. There is nothing freak about this. The boat appears to be about 130 feet in length. If the boat had been say 60-70 feet it would most likely have just rode up and over the wave. The bigger a boat gets the more resistant it is to moving aside in response to a wave. This has an advantage with small waves, but the result is that a bigger wave encountering a bigger boat has an increased tendency to just climb over the top instead of raise the boat up.

Marajeda  This next one is the second part   Rescate , now the test video where the real ship and it's model in the test tank are switched back and forth.  Abielle Flandre Test

Crisscross Waves

Waterspout at Sea

Out at Sea

Monster Wave  
This is a very short clip of a big wave coming over a big ship.

A few comments to keep in mind when you watch it.
We have no idea how fast the ship was going in the moments before this wave was encountered. Failure to cut speed and momentum in such conditions is a fine way to encourage a big wave to come aboard. I can only speculate as to how this may have been a factor in this picture.

Similar waves but on a smaller scale, but about the same size relative to the boats we operate occur off the Pacific NW Coast. In other words, this sort of thing is not frequent, but it is routine. Most times it happens on one of the bars, the rest in the open ocean.

I have never personally had the windows broken out, but I have a number of acquaintances who have. There are several factors at work here.

1. The folks around here are not necessarily tougher, but we are expecting trouble, since it seems to come naturally.
2. The fellows who run big ships most likely see waves of this scale so rarely that they get complacent. Complacency is another one of the natural things that happens to people. There is no monopoly on complacency.

I trust you will learn something from the video.

Stormy Weather

This is another video. This one is a big ship in a fairly nasty seaway. Notice that the wind is coming from the port side. Also, note that at this sort of sea state there is a chance of a much bigger one coming along. If it comes from the side it will be more likely to cause some serious damage.

Wave over deck of my ship  No Comment.

Rough Seas   The fact is that the ocean is not all that rough. The wind is about 20 knots. Big ships throw water over the bow like this for the simple reason that the ship won't "give" out of the way like a small vessel.

Storm in the Drake Passage
Typical storm conditions, could have been photographed anywhere.  Wind speeds appear to be about 40 knots.

Rock and rolling the biscaye
Wind speeds seem about 60-80 knots, might? be higher. The voices appear to be in German. I could not translate what they are saying. Notice that they are broadside to the waves. I would assume that conditions have not reached the dangerous stage or there would have been a change of course. They must be trying to run up/down the French coast in the Bay of Biscaye. For some reason they don't want to head into the storm.

US Coast Guard Rescue Crews
This is about 5 mintues and will take some serious time to critique. You will see Cape Disapointment, Columbia River  in the background during one sequence.
I have not watched the entire piece but once, so my recollections may not be all that complete. But, I would comment that a 44' Marine Trader with careful handling could cope with anything shown in the video.  The 47' Coast Guard boats shown have only been in use for about 15 years. The 44' boats that were in use since about 1960 I have far more experience with. The 44' boats were far more capable and would cope with conditions that can only be described as severe. The conditions shown in the video I would describe as moderate, but look pretty spectacular.

To be blunt about it. The 47' boats are fast, but not near as effective on the breaking bars  that the 44' boats were. Don't expect the kind of rescue work out of the 47' as the 44' was capable of. A helicopter will have to do things that the 44' was used for.

This is a first attempt at creating a video to explain, in this case, how to use the FNMOC web site. The video is a bit grainy, but usable. The max length which can be uploaded to the site is about 10 minutes. Over the next few weeks, I will experiment with this sort of thing. I have major improvements planned for doing videos like this, including ones showing computer screens. The changes will be implemented over the next few weeks.
There have been questions in the past on the forum that have been hard to explain in words, but can be demonstrated very easy with some video.

Using the Fleet Numeric Web Site