Not necessarily a me v/s nature more like my unit v/s nature, but I remember the worst storm I ever had the misfortune of being at sea in.
We (USCGC Cape Upright a 95 foot Patrol Boat) recieved a call to go out and recover a stranded trawler 300 miles off the coast of Charleston, SC. We decided to go out on one engine to conserve fuel, looking back that was a smart decision. Long story short, got on scene and rigged a stern tow and headed back toward the coast. About 4 hours into the tow we recieve a call from the group (command for our area) to let us know of a storm. We turn up the radar to see how big of a storm it is and the whole screen goes green, this storm was over 400 miles wide. It hits and man, it kicked our butt. 20-30 foot seas, the bridge on our vessel was 14 feet above the water and we could see them crashing down on us. We were in that storm for 4 days, me and another helmsman were the only ones able to stand our watch, there were 2 others able to stand the other watches. We would go six hours on duty, six in the rack (bed) trying to rest. I would literally wedge my arms and legs through the metal frame to hold myself in bed, the refridgerator broke loose and pinned the cook to the wall, the other helsman fell down the stairs and broke his leg. So between the four of us we made it back. With the seas as confused as they were we decided to just head west, I remember steering the cutter and watching the seas, when a big wave was going to hit our beam I would throttle the engines swing the stern toward the wave and basically surf the wave as it crashed over us. It took four days to get back to port, when we arrived, the Cutter was a mess, we had lost an anchor, the life lines (metal rope hooked to metal post than ran around the perimeter of the cutter) were gone, we had several holes where the posts were ripped away, we lost a fire station, and had several broken port holes and windows on the bridge. Our original destination was Winyah Bay and we came in at Charleston Harbor, about 150 miles south! We get to port, turn our tow over to a smaller vessel, and the group is playing war games with the Marines. We go to tie up and some Marine asks for my id, the cutter is a mess, I hadn't shaved in several days and the last thing I wanted to deal with was some moron playing war games. We ended up staying in port for a week while they repair the cutter. I have no idea how much damage the trawler recieved. I was never so happy to be back ashore during my entire career.
Wish A-Jay would weigh in, I know he has been in some bad storms, lol.
