What a lovely day at sea. After breakfast Tom went off to a talk on the St Lawrence Seaway. I went up to the library to send emails to the girls and print off a photo they sent, for our room. I later joined Tom for the talk on the great cruise liners which was followed by a talk on shopping in Sydney (not our Sydney), Halifax and Bar Harbour.

I did a load of washing - machines are at a premium, one week at sea and we're not in port. After lunch Tom went and saw "Gothica" while I found a cosy spot in the Winter Garden and read.

Dinner was formal with cocktails with the Captain beforehand. The Commodore says he does an annual bridgeclimb when he's in our Sydney. We found the chief of security (Allan Parker) and had a great chat with him - he's really interesting. We had photos taken before dinner, meeting the commodore, and at dinner.

Allan Parker (security) said he was on the QE2 when she was hit by the rogue wave back in 1995 - just before our first sailing on her, no wonder our rough weather back then didn't phase them, they'd been through much worse just weeks before!! Allan said they saw it coming on the radar and put the nose into it. The wave was taller than the bridge - it crumpled a forward hatch and some water washed through a few decks.


In one prominent rogue-wave encounter, Capt. Ronald Warwick, who followed in his father's footsteps to command the British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II, was on the bridge at 4 a.m. on Sept. 11, 1995. Two hundred miles off Newfoundland, headed for New York, Warwick had been trying, without success, to dodge Hurricane Luis.

Minutes before, monstrous seas smashed windows in the Grand Salon, 72 feet off the water. Warwick had given the order confining passengers to quarters.

Suddenly, a huge wave loomed off the bow, huge even for a ship the size of the QE2, at nearly 1,000 feet long, more than 100 feet wide, carrying nearly 3,000 people.

Hundreds of miles from shore, the face of the wave was steep, like a breaking wall of water. Warwick later described that "it looked as though the ship was headed for the white cliffs of Dover."

Officers on the bridge estimated the wave at 92 feet, because they were eyeball to eyeball with the crest.

"(I)t broke with tremendous force over the bow. An incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later by two smaller shudders," Warwick recalled in a 1996 article in Marine Observer.

The ship's bow dropped into a "hole" of a trough behind the first wave and was hit by a second wave of between 91 and 96 feet high that cleaned a mast right off the foredeck.

Warwick, his passengers and crew were lucky. No one was injured. It was a far different fate for the German container ship Munchen, which sank in the middle of the Atlantic in 1978 with no warning, no May Day.__________________


Rogue wave smashes the queen elizabeth iiSeptember 11, 1995. North Atlantic. Aboard the Queen Elizabeth II enroute from Cherbourg to New York.During this crossing of the Atlantic, the Queen Elizabeth II had to change course to avoid Hurricane Luis. Despite this precaution, the vessel encountered seas of 18 meters with occasional higher crests. At 0400 the Grand Lounge windows, 22 meters above the water, stove in. But this was only a precursor."At 0410 the rogue wave was sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness from 220°, it looked as though the ship was heading straight for the white cliffs of Dover. The wave seemed to take ages to arrive but it was probably less than a minute before it broke with tremendous force over the bow. An incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later by two smaller shudders. There seemed to be two waves in succession as the ship fell into the 'hole' behind the first one. The second wave of 28-29 m (period 13 seconds), whilst breaking, crashed over the foredeck, carrying away the forward whistle mast......"Captain Warwick admits that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the height of a wave, but in this case the crest was more or less level with the line of sight for those on the bridge, about 29 m above the surface; additionally, the officers on the bridge confirmed that it was definitely not a swell wave. The presence of extreme waves was also recorded by Canadian weather buoys moored in the area, and the maximum measured height from buoy 44141 was 30 m (98 feet.)"The Queen Elizabeth II survived the onslaught with minor damage; no passengers or crew members were injured.(Warwick, R.W., et al; "Hurricane 'Luis', the Queen Elizabeth 2 and a Rogue Wave," Marine Observer, 66:134, 1996)