Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
One things that swimmers like to talk about is how extreme the conditions they have to face in the open water.
The water temperature might feel really cold, but the thermometer never lies. The distance might feel very long, but the true straight-line GPS distance never lies.
The size of the waves might feel large, but the true height is occasionally exaggerated – or at least misunderstood – by swimmers.
Additionally, swimmers often remember the worse conditions they face during a swim as opposed to the average wave height or the bulk of the time when the waves were not so bad. Those periods when and where they face the largest waves or the greatest lateral or oncoming turbulence are nearly always unforgettable during an open water swims.
How should swimmers measure or describe wave heights during their swims? Is the correct wave height reported as the same size as the surf along the coast? So if there are 3-foot waves along the coast, does this mean the swimmer faced 3-foot swells outside the surf zone? What about in a lake where the waves may be larger than the breaks along the shore? Should swimmers measure and describe wave heights the same as surfers?
Whether in an ocean or in a lake, during a short swim or a marathon swim, it is always difficult to properly measure wave heights – and know that your estimates are approximately the same as those estimates used by others throughout the Americas, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Ocean, North America, South America and Europe.
But if open water swimmers DID measure the heights of waves like surfers do, then everyone else who is not present at the swim would have a better idea of the conditions and how big the waves are. Currently, many open water swimmers refer to the Beaufort Wind Force Scale, but if a swimmer is in the English Channel and another is in the Molokai Channel are they using the same relative descriptions for wave heights? If a swimmer does the Midmar Mile in South Africa or the Great Swim in Windermere and the conditions are windy and wavy, are these descriptions the same for comparable wave heights in the Cole Classic in Australia or the Waikiki Roughwater Swim in Hawaii?
Probably not…but rough water conditions are always a good topic of discussion after a swim.
Like fishermen describing their catch, the bigger it is the better.
The list below identifies the wave face heights from the base to the lip. These are standard non-Hawaiian wave heights. Hawaiians measure the heights of waves from the back of the wave, so their heights are typically smaller or about half that of the front face. Therefore, a wave with a 9-foot face might be called a 3-4 foot wave in Hawaii.
1 – 2 foot wave or ankle to knee high
1 – 3 foot wave or ankle to waist high
2 – 3 foot wave or knee to waist high
2 – 3+ foot wave or knee to chest high
2 – 4 foot wave or knee to shoulder high
3 – 4 foot wave or waist to chest high
3 – 4 foot wave or waist to shoulder high
3 – 5 foot wave or waist to head high
4 – 5 foot wave or shoulder to head high
4 – 6 foot wave or shoulder high to 1 foot overhead
4 – 7 foot wave or shoulder high to 2 feet overhead
5 – 7 foot wave or head high to 2 feet overhead
5 – 8 foot wave or head high to 3 feet overhead
6 – 8 foot wave or head high+ to 3 feet overhead
6 – 10 foot wave or head high+ to double overhead
8 – 10 foot wave or 3 feet overhead to double overhead
Anything at or above a 12-foot wave out in the ocean are pretty huge swells or giant rollers where the swimmer is generally being lifted significantly higher than the escort boat as the swimmer rides the crest of the swells. We generally doubt that swimmers are left in the water during lake swims if the wave height is 12 feet.
In our experiences and aquatic adventures around the world, we have rarely seen ocean swells as large as those in the Kaiwi Channel between Molokai and Oahu or in the Kaieiewaho Channel between Oahu and Kauai or between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Farallon Islands in northern California where the swimmers often was lifted on the crest of the swells higher than the mast of the escort boat in the trough between the swells.
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