I expect he’s gotten a bit stiff in his dotage…the 'tritus, y’know.
That’s right, same wind different sea state.
If the ship travels from fast water to slow water at first the doppler log speed will tick up a few tenths or more from the inertia of the faster ship till it slows back down to close to the original speed. It’s like getting off one of those moving walkways at the airport.
Also on the inside passage on the Aleutian freighter I recall at night hearing the pitch of the engine change as we transitioned through water moving at different speeds. These pitch changes would coincide with the sound of the bow striking floating logs.
There is one in the Straits of Gibraltar, where the cold Atlantic is pouring into and under the warm Mediterranean (which is lower because of evaporation). Then you add the tide. When the wind is contrary to the tide, it kicks up a standing wave. In my 35-foot yawl it scared the shit out of me. I thought I was going to run up onto a sand bar. But there was nothing in the charts or Straits guide about it. Passed through fine.
This is different than a tidal bore, which exists in a few famous spots, like the Bay of Fundy. There the water suddenly jumps 10 feet, and stays. I saw a small one in the Sea of Cortez, where the tide came up the Colorado River bed. I walked out into the water. The wave was about a foot high, and just suddenly raised the depth a foot.
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