The 55-foot pleasure cruiser started sinking Tuesday about a half mile off shore from the Little Point Sable Lighthouse when its bow snapped off in five-foot waves.

http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?S=8726635

Article and the home video...

Nothing too exciting for us - however, I'm sure the adrenaline was flowing for the two guys onboard.

Bob

This is about all I heard, "... a 45' Sea Ray..."



Seriously, those white caps looked too serious for my 19' Sea Ray.

So now that their boat sank...

Do they HAVE to salvage it? Or can they just let it be another shipwreck?

Do you think their insurance will make them whole again?

The bow snapped off in 5-foot waves?? What's wrong with that picture? An old boat and termites?

It was a wood boat if I recall.

And, if you have ever been out on Lake Michigan, the problem with 5ft waves isn't so much that they are 5ft high, but they are also very close together. You almost never see a swell type wave out there - but a severe chop.

I am sure the bow nosed in.

Wind waves usually have a dangerously short period.

it happened a couple of weeks ago. there was a thread back then. since it is a wooden boat, marine growth will take care of salvaging it.

Those waves look like the crap I got to boat in on those windier afternoons. choppy, choppy.

Cold, fresh water in the Great Lakes has left many wooden wrecks intact for hundreds of years. Clearer water due to filtering by invasive species has made shipwreck diving a bigger deal. I stumpled upon the article below with more info about this wreck.

Photos
Photos

“Along the Waterfront” writer Bob VandeVusse is a Holland resident. Contact him at jim.hayden@hollandsentinel.com or (616) 546-4274.

By Bob VandeVusse
Holland Sentinel columnist
Posted Jul 26, 2008 @ 07:39 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holland, MI — The original “Requiem for a Heavyweight” was an award-winning television drama. Today, I have a requiem for a heavyweight of a different kind. This heavyweight was a wooden boat, a 1966, 65-foot Chris Craft Constellation named Pizzazz. It was one of only eleven such models built by Chris Craft between 1964 and 1968, three of them in 1966.



The 65-foot “Connies” were only one foot shorter than the largest wooden boats built by Chris Craft. This one had spent most of its life in Florida, but this spring it was brought to the Great Lakes by way of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the Hudson River and the Erie Canal.



A little more than a month ago, it arrived in Saugatuck to begin a new career as a Great Lakes charter vessel. I saw it there a few weeks ago, and it was a diamond in the rough.



Those familiar with the vessel said that it had encountered a significant storm in northern Lake Michigan last month and sustained some damage to the bow but was repaired. It appeared to need a little tender loving care but still was striking in appearance. Then last Tuesday, while on a cruise to Charlevoix, it sank about a half-mile west of Little Point Sable in Oceana County. The incident was caught on home video and shown on a local television news program. The reporter said the “bow snapped off” and it went down quickly. The Coast Guard dispatched a helicopter and rescue boats from Ludington and Muskegon. Fortunately, the two people aboard were rescued by a passing boater shortly after they abandoned ship. Two days later the Lake Express ferry encountered debris from the wreck floating in the lake while on its run from Milwaukee to Muskegon. What a sad end to a beautiful vessel.



Speaking of the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard Festival kicks off in Grand Haven this weekend. Tomorrow at 1 p.m., the cutters Mackinaw and Biscayne Bay will arrive and be open for tours throughout the week. Times for the tours are posted on the festival’s Web site.



Here in Holland early in the week, the King Company used the Verplank dock to load marine construction material onto a large hopper barge. Grande Mariner was in again on Friday, docked at Boatwerks for the day. Then Saturday, the Manitowoc arrived early in the morning and unloaded stone at Verplank’s dock. We expect another stone delivery there later this week.

I found this on another site.

It is the story as told by the two people on the boat. Didn't lose the bow as first thought.

Pizzazz shipwreck.

tennja...great find. That was a scary and interesting read. That is one of the main reasons I do not carry any of those elcheapo life vests in my boat. I always have enough vests for each person on board.

4 consecutive rogue waves?

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing before? Interesting that they were described as "10-feet tall"; that would be just sort of a medium-large swell in the Pacific. A ship that big should have easily handled it.

OK, just read the original post where it was described as having recently repaired bow damage.

Sounds like it was not repaired correctly.

Here is the link to the whole story
http://www.michiganshipwrecks.org/pizzazz.htm

About once a Summer you hear warnings about these:



While a tsunami will never strike Illinois, the Lake Michigan coast, including Chicago, is subject to the danger presented by a seiche, a sudden, large type of wave that can cause loss of life and property damage.

Unlike a tsunami, which is caused by submarine earthquakes shifting the ocean floor, coastal landslides, or a meteor striking the ocean, a seiche (pronounced saysh) is caused by air pressure and wind. When storm fronts move rapidly from across a large body of water such as Lake Michigan, air pressure changes and strong downbursts of wind can form one large wave or a series of large waves. The wave or waves will travel across the lake until the seiche reaches shore, where it can be reflected and travel to the opposite shore. The height of the waves depends on the strength of the wind and air pressure contrasts that form the seiche. The largest seiche on record to strike the Illinois coast of Lake Michigan reached a maximum height of 10 feet, caused lakeshore damage, and drowned eight people. The illustration explains the 1954 seiche (view a larger image).

During spring and summer, small seiches with a height of a few inches to 1 foot regularly strike the Illinois shore of Lake Michigan. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association issues warnings to Lake Michigan mariners and lakeshore residents when weather conditions favor seiche development.


There was no warning for the record-high seiche that struck the Chicago lakeshore at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, June 26, 1954. The seiche approached from the southeast and struck the entire Illinois coast with a wave about 2–4 feet high. Swelling as it approached the North Avenue groin, also called the North Avenue pier, the wave reached a maximum height of 10 feet. Fishermen on the North Avenue pier and piers to the north at the entrance to Montrose Harbor were swept into the lake. Many were rescued, but eight drowned. The photograph at bottom right, taken in 2000, shows the groin at North Avenue beach (view a larger image). The arrow indicates the direction from which the seiche approached.

The seiche was caused by a severe squall line that crossed southern Lake Michigan a few hours earlier, passing from northwest to southeast. The storm generated wind speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and sent a seiche toward Michigan City, Indiana. A 5.5- to 6-foot wave reached shore there at 8:10 a.m. and was reflected back across southern Lake Michigan, heading northwest toward Chicago. Unlike a tsunami, which can travel across the open ocean at hundreds of miles per hour, a seiche moves much more slowly. It took 80 minutes for the seiche to travel 40 miles from Michigan City to the Chicago lakeshore at North Avenue. That translates into a speed of roughly 30 mph.


Updated 01/18/2007 CAB

More from Wiki:

Seiches around the world
Seiches have been observed on both lakes and seas. The key requirement is that the body of water be partially constrained to allow formation of standing waves. Regularity of geometry is not required, even harbors with exceedingly irregular shapes are routinely observed to oscillate with very stable frequencies.


[edit] Lake seiches
Small rhythmic seiches are almost always present on larger lakes. On the North American Great Lakes, seiche is often called slosh. It is always present, but is usually unnoticeable, except during periods of unusual calm. Harbours, bays, and estuaries are often prone to small seiches with amplitudes of a few centimeters and periods of a few minutes. Seiches can also form in semi-enclosed seas; the North Sea often experiences a lengthwise seiche with a period of about 36 hours.


Differences in water level caused by a seiche on Lake Erie, recorded between Buffalo, New York (red) and Toledo, Ohio (blue) on November 14, 2003The National Weather Service issues low water advisories for portions of the Great Lakes when seiches of 2 feet or greater are likely to occur.[5] Lake Erie is particularly prone to wind-caused seiches because of its shallowness and elongation. These can lead to extreme seiches of up to 5 m (16 feet) between the ends of the lake. The effect is similar to a storm surge like that caused by hurricanes along ocean coasts, but the seiche effect can cause oscillation back and forth across the lake for some time. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel piled up water along the northwestern Lake Ontario shoreline near Toronto, causing extensive flooding, and established a seiche that subsequently caused flooding along the south shore.

Lake seiches can occur very quickly: on July 13, 1995, a big seiche on Lake Superior caused the water level to fall and then rise again by three feet (one meter) within fifteen minutes, leaving some boats hanging from the docks on their mooring lines when the water retreated.[6] On Lake Michigan, eight fishermen were swept away and drowned when a 10-foot seiche hit the Chicago waterfront on June 26, 1954.[7]

Lakes in seismically active areas, such as Lake Tahoe in California/Nevada, are significantly at risk from seiches. Geological evidence indicates that the shores of Lake Tahoe may have been hit by seiches and tsunamis as much as 10 m (33 feet) high in prehistoric times, and local researchers have called for the risk to be factored into emergency plans for the region.[8]

Earthquake-generated seiches can be observed thousands of miles away from the epicentre of a quake. Swimming pools are especially prone to seiches caused by earthquakes, as the ground tremors often match the resonant frequencies of small bodies of water. The 1994 Northridge earthquake in California caused swimming pools to overflow across southern California. The massive Good Friday Earthquake that hit Alaska in 1964 caused seiches in swimming pools as far away as Puerto Rico. The earthquake that hit Lisbon, Portugal in 1755 caused seiches in canals 2,000 miles (3,000 km) away in Scotland and Sweden. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake caused seiches in standing water bodies in many Indian states as well as in Bangladesh, Nepal and northern Thailand[9]. Seiches were again observed in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal in India as well as in many locations in Bangladesh during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake [10]. The 1950 Chayu-Upper Assam earthquake is known to have generated seiches as far as Norway and southern England. Other earthquakes in the Indian sub-continent known to have generated seiches include the 1803 Kumaon-Barahat, 1819 Allah Bund, 1842 Central Bengal, 1905 Kangra, 1930 Dhubri, 1934 Nepal-

I'm with Wet Dogg. We only carry good ski vests on our boat. They are also in the open while underway. I strap them to my bimini poles and let them hang in the boat. Easy to see and easy to get at.