Another encounter just encountered.

This has just happened a few hours ago according to Vineyard Gazette Online reported by Mike Seccombe:

Several people were injured and others suffered property losses when a high-speed ferry returning weekend tourists from Martha’s Vineyard to New York was disabled by a freak wave.

Passengers on the Seastreak evening service were sprayed with shards of glass when the wave detached a heavy metal box containing life jackets from the bow of the vessel and drove it into a front window.

The boat put into New London, Conn., where it was met by ambulances. Two passengers were treated for minor cuts and elected to continue the journey by another boat. One man required two stitches for a facial cut and later was driven to the city.

Several bicycles which had been stored on the bow also were damaged, and other passengers reported damage to electronic equipment, mainly cell phones, when seawater flooded in through the smashed front window.

Seastreak manager Mike Glasfeld said the boat was carrying just fewer than 300 passengers on the run, which left Oak Bluffs at 4 p.m.

Although the wind was blowing over 30 miles per hour at the time, he said the boat had following seas and winds.

“It was smooth running up to that wave and it was smooth after that wave. It was just one wave that created the mayhem,” he said.

The incident happened about three hours into the journey.

. . .

This is a rare reporting that includes good details on what had happened especially the comment that:

“It was smooth running up to that wave and it was smooth after that wave. It was just one wave that created the mayhem,”

This certainly casts off any doubt about whether or not a freaque wave was encountered. One seldomly able to secure such an explicit description. Luckily there were only relatively minor damages and injuries. But nevertheless a freaque wave was the likely culprit that caused the mishap.