[Vocabulary] sea

Do they mean the same or are there any substantial differences among these expressions?

rough sea
choppy sea
heavy sea (does it exist?) like heavy and rough weather

any other suggestions?

For me, and the people I sailed with:

choppy sea - lots of small waves; inconvenient, but not dangerous
heavy sea - large waves; potentially dangerous
rough sea - worse than heavy; we would not sail.

We also had a lumpy sea - somewhere between choppy and heavy.

Thank you very much.

dilodi83 said:

Thank you very much.

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You are welcome.

Please do not take my answers as definitive. What is a choppy sea to a seasoned sailor might appear very rough to a landlubber.

The Douglas Sea Scale describes sea conditions in a nine point classification table.

Rover

Rover_KE said:

The Douglas Sea Scale describes sea conditions in a nine point classification table.

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It does indeed. In my experience, however, most of the [STRIKE]morons[/STRIKE] nice people putting out to sea have never heard of the Douglas Sea Scale,Beaufort scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, or even the BBC weather forecast.

A heavy sea is not made up of heavy water, however.

Heavy water | Define Heavy water at Dictionary.com