While the ocean didn't accommodate my "human" need for meaning, a different sense emerged from the wave patterns that conveyed the presence of winds, shoals, coastlines and distant storms.
During the day on September 4, the storm passed roughly 10 mi (15 km) south of the French Frigate Shoals, bringing strong winds gusting up to 110 mph (175 km/h).
Diamond Shoal Light recorded a sustained wind of 85.0 kn with a gust of 106.7 kn and a minimum pressure of 962.1 mb on the evening of 18/19 August 1991.
In a small, second-floor office next door to Tommy Doyle's Irish Pub and Restaurant, Parker pores over a map and explains how the virtues that make Horseshoe Shoal an attractive location to erect wind turbines are, at the same time, characteristics that are highly prized -- left just as they are -- by other commercial and recreational interests.
A shoal in the Delaware Bay experienced sustained winds of 54 mph (87 km/h) with gusts to 71 mph (114 km/h).
The entrance to the harbour was from the west, offering protection from both the wind and the coast's shoals.
The advantages of the site seemed plain: Relentless, hard-driving winds, shallow shoals several miles offshore on which to anchor large turbines, and, perhaps most importantly, a left-leaning population inclined to support what was already viewed at the time as an overdue migration away from dirtier sources of electricity.
In 2012, Statoil completed its first commercial offshore wind farm, an 88-turbine project called Sheringham Shoal, off the eastern coast of England.
However, a recent study by Russell et al. (2014) has observed seals entering two different wind farms in Germany (alpha ventus) and England (Sheringham Shoal), concentrating around the turbine structures and showing reduced horizontal speed, indicating foraging behavior.
Just after sunset and two months into the prestigious Volvo World Cup (a nine-month, around-the-world yacht competition), the Danish-backed team Vestas Wind crashed into reef at the Cargados Carajos Shoals going 19 knots per hour.
