Which Ocean is the bad boy??

[Giulietta]

I have a question that may turn into a good debate..

Which ocean do you think is the worst one?? Who has expereince in them, to say something?

The Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indic??

I have excluded the Med..that altough feisty sometimes..it's not that bad...

Please, don't tell me yours, just because you sail there...based on real experience, and what you read/heard.

Thanks

[AdamLein]

Does the Southern Ocean count?

[Giulietta]

Well I think the Southern is not considerd by many as an ocean, but part of others that extend to the South, right??

But by all means..I think we shoud count it too.

Off course..the Southern is a hard Ocean, especially in the 2 great capes...but there are 2 hard points, when compared to the rest...and both are in the Pacific and Atlantic

But yes...you are right, let's count it in.

[tommays]

I only know the Atlantic Ocean were it merges with Long Island Sound form the races i have been in

The LI sound has always been worse than the ocean during the same race because as the water gets shallow the waves break much more

[Amgine]

I'd guess that, from a sailing point of view, the Arctic is the most difficult.

Following that, probably the Southern Ocean.

But I note that neither are very rough for the critters which are evolved to live there, or the vessels designed solely for those locations.

And, just to be contrary, I believe some archeologists say more vessels have foundered in the Mediterranean than any other body of water.

[CalebD]

Good question Alex. I just don't think that there really is a definitive really 'bad boy' ocean out there as they all can be pretty unforgiving at times and have nasty reputations (like the 'Southern Ocean').
Even though I have only a tiny resume when it comes to sailing on ocean waters in small boats (< 100') I have some friends who became merchant seamen. From them I learned about Plimsoll marks or load lines where merchant ships are marked with permanent lines on the hull to delineate how much cargo a ship could carry on the course (and waters) they were intending. These marks on commercial ships were universally adopted by all maritime nations around 1900 and are brought to you by your friends in the insurance industry who were remarkably concerned with the cargo (and to some extent the crew) that a ship was carrying. They wanted their cargo delivered safely if it could be done.
The lowest (meaning: least amount of cargo allowed to be loaded) of the Plimsoll Marks is 'WNA' (or Winter North Atlantic) which probably gives the North Atlantic a nod for the worst of the bad boy oceans but - given the Euro-centric nature of the time all of this was implemented I am going to guess that the WNA Plimsoll mark is also observed for many of the other 'bad boy' oceans out there - especially in our summer when the 'Southern Ocean' is in her worst or winter phase.

From Wikipedia:
Standard load line marks
Load Line Mark and Lines and Timber Load Line Mark and Lines for power driven merchant vessels
Load Line Mark and Lines for commercial sailing vessels

The original "Plimsoll Mark" was a circle with a horizontal line through it to show the maximum draft of a ship. Additional marks have been added over the years, allowing for different water densities and expected sea conditions.

Letters may also appear to the sides of the mark indicating the classification society that has surveyed the vessel's load line. The initials used include AB for the American Bureau of Shipping, LR for Lloyd's Register, GL for Germanischer Lloyd, BV for Bureau Veritas, IR for the Indian Register of Shipping, RI for the Registro Italiano Navale and NV for Det Norske Veritas. These letters should be approximately 115 millimetres in height and 75 millimetres in width.[4] The Scantling length is usually referred to during and following load line calculations.

The letters on the Load line marks have the following meanings:

* TF – Tropical Fresh Water
* F – Fresh Water
* T – Tropical Seawater
* S – Summer Temperate Seawater
* W – Winter Temperate Seawater
* WNA – Winter North Atlantic

Fresh water is considered to have a density of 1000 kg/m³ and sea water 1025 kg/m³. Fresh water marks make allowance for the fact that the ship will float deeper in fresh water than salt water. A ship loaded to her Fresh Water mark in fresh water will float at her Summer Mark once she has passed into sea water. Similarly if loaded to her Tropical Fresh water mark she will float at her Tropical Mark once she passes in to sea water.

The Summer load line is the primary load line and it is from this mark that all other marks are derived. The position of the summer load line is calculated from the Load Line Rules and depends on many factors such as length of ship, type of ship, type and number of superstructures, amount of sheer, bow height and so on. The horizontal line through the circle of the Plimsoll mark is at the same level as the summer load line.

The Winter load line is one forty-eighth of the summer load draft below the summer load line.

The Tropical load line is one forty-eighth of the summer load draft above the summer load line.
The Fresh Water load line is an amount equal to \tfrac{\triangle}**40T} millimetres above the summer load line where \triangle is the displacement in metric tonnes at the summer load draft and T is the metric tonnes per centimetre immersion at that draft.
In any case where \triangle cannot be ascertained the fresh water load line is at the same level as the tropical load line.
The position of the Tropical Fresh load line relative to the tropical load line is found in the same way as the fresh water load line is to the summer load line.
The Winter North Atlantic load line is used by vessels not exceeding 100 metres in length when in certain areas of the North Atlantic Ocean during the winter period. When assigned it is 50 millimetres below the winter mark.

See for yourself though: Waterline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[BlueWaterMD]

I would have to second the arctic. It would be pretty hard to sail to the north pole.

In all seriousness, I don't have the experience to even begin to guess what the ocean is the worst. Many will say the southern or artic, just because of the ice and cold (and maybe watching Deadliest Catch, even though that is the Pacific). I know some marines who have told me of crazy storms they have encountered in the Indian Ocean. I really couldn't begin to guess, but hope to someday get to experience them all.

[CalebD]

It is not really all that silly.
Mankind has been sailing on the Mediterranean for thousands of years in various manner of vessels. It is a bit on the shallow side and has a reputation for getting snotty fairly quickly so it stands to reason that many boats line the bottom of that sea as there were more of them exposed to bad conditions that they could not handle over the ages. We really do not know how many boats are sitting on the bottom of the ocean in say, 6000' of water as we can't find them quite as easily as they can be found in the Med. There are many vessels that were just marked as 'overdue' that never arrived at their ports of call and were presumed lost. Today things are only a little different now that we have better building materials for ships, electronics and satellite technology to help us.
To harken back to Tommays point about the LI Sound being a rough body of water because it is more shallow and therefore rough in a blow: at least a big ocean going vessel can wait out at sea before trying to come into an area where there are lots of pointy rocks and bits of land they could run into. In the old days ... glub, glub, glub. Even the Great Lakes of the US have a pretty fearsome reputation for swallowing ships and they have lots of shoreline too. Anywhere near shore is a danger for a large seagoing vessel. Staying in the big water is generally safer for them - not for us little guys, even though we risk running aground and all the other hundreds of things that could go wrong.
Plenty of boats lost in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Plenty of boats have been lost near all coasts due to gales. Even with today's technologies there are shipping disasters happening all over the world right now (and I don't just mean off the coast of Somalia). Click this link and scroll down a bit for the 'Daily Casualty Report': The Law Offices of Countryman & McDaniel

[Amgine]

Nah, I just meant that trying to pick one sea as more the bad boy than another is silly. As you point out, the shallower waters of the Med or the Great Lakes can result in nastier conditions than the deep unobstructed fetch of the Southern Ocean. There's no objective measure for danger from the mother sea - it's all dangerous, from 1" of depth to miles deep.

[CalebD]

Amgine,
Agreed. The contest of which body of water is more destructive then another is silly. They can all behave perfectly horrendously at times, even the protected bays and sounds.
The Pacific Ocean gets its origins from the word Pacific which means 'peaceful' in a way but that ocean is anything but gentle in most respects. The Atlantic is just narrower with more land masses that mess with its currents and weather patterns. The Indian Ocean is sometimes shallower with more islands about and the Southern Ocean is just that; the south end of all of them and includes the roaring '40's'.
Anyone trying to sail into the Arctic or Antarctic is just plain asking for trouble IMHO; whales, seals and other wildlife not withstanding - they have a hard life too as do the Inuit people.