High Sea's & Update On Sean Seamour II

This is the Saga Cruise Line's, Saga Rose. The vessels characteristics include, Gross Tonnage: 24,474 gt. Length: 620 ft. / 189 m. Crew: 350. Full Capacity: 620.

The Saga Rose was built in 1965 for Norwegian American Lines and was later assigned to Cunard and then purchased by Saga Cruises, a subsidiary of Saga Travel. The ship was previously known as the Sagafjord , Gripsholm and Saga Ruby.

On Nov. 24th, 2006 Sailing from Southampton to Madeir, she hit a storm with 50 + kt. winds for three days and the storm did quite a bite of damage. Let's not also mention the unscheduled and interesting wild ride it's passengers got. Though these waves are not officially reported as freak waves, it will give you an idea what heavy sea states are like. Remember this storm did a lot of damage to the Saga Rose. While your also watching the video (Lower Left Side - Saga Rose - Point and Click ) remember that this is a 620 foot/189 meter ship! Listen to the bridge crew. These are experienced sailors. Now just imagine what a wave such as this could do to a 44 foot sail boat!

I have also added a dramatic video clip of the Cruise Ship Voyager (Lower Left Side - Voyager - Point and Click )with 776 on board who was enroute between Spain's Balearic Islands to the Italian island of Sardinia and ran into Force 11 Winds (100km/hr) on 2 February 2005 off the coast of France. There was a report of a "giant wave" smashing the bridge window and knocking out electronics. Once again imagine a 44 foot sail boat in these seas!

Running down any known facts in the case of the Sean Seamour II is rather difficult. I again appeal to anyone with any information to contact me here. I have communicated with Dr. Paul C. Liu of NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) with regards to the Sean Seamour II. The first thing Dr. Liu said was, "thank God they were rescued." Dr. Lui referring to my email then went on to explain that, "as there is no eyewitness and there is no measurement, it is just not possible to substantiate it one way or the other. The current state of freak/rogue waves research just can not be of any help beyond that." However he goes on to say, "this case clearly occurred during a storm. We know that in general freak/rogue waves can happen during calm or storm conditions."

We know that wave surges can travel thousands of miles in any direction from any storm. Forget the fact that the Sean Seamour II ran into its trouble directly in the middle of a subtropical storm. I am still waiting to see what the National Hurricane Center has to say.

Stay tuned.
RS