Water Storms in Miami, Fla.

Cindyt

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WIP2 Crime thriller. Hero lives aboard an 85-foot yacht docked on a fictional island just off Downtown Miami proper. (There's a little unnamed island there on the map.) Anyway, the boat basin is on the far side, facing Fisher Island The bow faces Fisher, too. All right. So, it's Labor Day weekend, hot as the devil's codpiece. The hero and a lady are on the fore sundeck when out of the black yonder rushes a wall of water. It's just high enough to wash over yacht. (I was in a storm like this on land, but not in a boat.)

Keep in mind it's tied down fore and aft and has fenders.

My question is: how would the yacht react?
 
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Cindyt

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It's not a wave. It's a wall of water, a squall. And it's not that violent. However, this video gives me access to another layer of research. Thanks so much! If I can't come up with something realistic I'll just have a downpour. :tongue
 

Cindyt

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Try Googling "boat wave simulation". I did so a few minutes ago and found a bunch of YouTube videos, including this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eMBU1eXDYDc

I found exactly what I needed to know on youtube. Exactly!
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It never occurred to me to search videos.
8083c9_e4654976c556471eb4e41c4145c1ff7d.gif

Thanks again!

And here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2wnqI1SrKk
 
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frimble3

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85 feet is a big craft, and I know nothing about how they would handle, but, out of curiousity, is your yacht moored to a floating dock, or to a fixed pier? I'm thinking that on tidal water, if it's tied to a floating dock, there may be less 'play' in the ropes than if it were tied to a fixed mooring, where the ropes would have to allow for the tides. Also, beware other boats that may not be as well secured, as the boat floating towards the guy filming that video shows. But, at 85 feet, it should be fairly safe unless it breaks loose and runs aground.
(Closest I've ever been to seeing something like your scenario was seeing a sailing yacht that had either broken loose or lost power in a winter gale, slammed up onto the beach at English Bay in Vancouver - it must have been going at quite a speed, because that's shallow water, and it was fully exposed.)
 

Cindyt

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Thanks trimble3. Smallish floating dock on a private island. The yacht is tied down good. I'm not going to go to extremes describing it, though. I can see from the video what could happen.
 

MaeZe

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I've seen squalls like that, and microbursts, (a severe downdraft). I was in a microburst once, on land. I watched it coming from a long ways off, lightning and thunder but in a narrow spot as opposed to weather that takes up most of the sky. Watching it coming reminded me of a sci fi scenario because it was something I'd never seen before. When it got to my house it blew everything over, bent the legs on my sun canopy in the process, but it explained what it was I'd been watching approach.
 

Cindyt

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I was sweeping my front porch off and didn't see mine coming until it was just there. It was a wall of water, and when it hit it was like somebody had tossed a giant bucket of water across the house. Don't know how I did it, but I threw the broom down and made it inside. Never saw anything like it in my life.
 

blacbird

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What you experienced is likely something called a "rogue wave", and yes, it is physically a wave, really. Just a lot bigger and longer than the average ones. These have been recognized now at sea and on shorelines, and are studied by oceanographers, still trying to work out the physics of how they form and travel.

caw
 

Cindyt

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What you experienced is likely something called a "rogue wave", and yes, it is physically a wave, really. Just a lot bigger and longer than the average ones. These have been recognized now at sea and on shorelines, and are studied by oceanographers, still trying to work out the physics of how they form and travel.

caw
I was in a landlocked area.
 

blacbird

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I was in a landlocked area.

Well, that wasn't entirely clear from your original post, but okay, I was incorrect in that interpretation. However, I still don't know what you mean by a "wall of water". My image was of a rapid flood of surface water, the kind of thing you get with a storm surge or a big rogue wave, or even a tsunami, in shoreline areas. A tsunami is commonly described as a "wall of water". If you are speaking of a sudden enormous violent downpour of rain from above, that needs to be described in more specific terms. If that is what you mean, it likely was a microburst, mentioned by Maeze. They are sudden, violent and nasty, and among other things, have contributed to major deadly airline crashes. I was living in Dallas, Texas in the mid 1980s when exactly this even slammed an airliner into the ground as it attempted to land at DFW airport, and earlier in the 1980s in New Orleans, when the same thing happened to an airliner taking off.

caw
 

Cindyt

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Sorry.

The scene in my story takes place at a boat harbor. It's literally a wall of water that you can see coming.

The one I experience was inland.