1. Gotta love SH3 weather.
2. If you reload a game you'll get all the messages from the same day again. So far I haven't gotten any repeating messages from previous days.
3. I'm guessing that either the contact is fairly far off or that waves are breaking over the UZO or periscope and it's under water for a while. See number 1.
I just spent over 70 real time hours on my current patrol and the last 60 of them were with 15 meter per second winds. That's about a week of in-game time. See number 1.
The weather finally changed to overcast and 9 m/s winds and I'm about to intercept two different convoys in the same area, with 4 forward and 2 aft torpedos. Then about 12 days game time, mostly at high time compression, to get back home. 14,900 tons so far. Hoping to get something large in one of the convoys.
Hook