Galerider Drogue Off The Bow

Question: I heard that you had good success heaving-to on Morgan’s Cloud using a Galerider drogue off the bow. What were the details?

Answer: Here are the details I compiled for the Drag Device Data Base:

Vessel

Morgan’s Cloud, a McCurdy & Rhodes custom 56 cutter
LOA 56′   LWL 42′   Beam 15′   Disp 56,000lbs   Draft 6.5′
General description: A moderate displacement long fin keel cutter with fine ends and moderate overhangs. Rudder is skeg hung. I have owned Morgan’s Cloud for 12 years and sailed about 80,000 miles in her, much of it in the high latitudes including three trips to Greenland and three trans-Atlantics. Like all of Jim McCurdy’s boats, she is exceptionally sea worthy with an easy and soft motion. She heaves-to well, and this is our standard heavy weather tactic.

Situation

Phyllis and I were on a passage from Bermuda to the Caribbean in January of 2000. We left Bermuda on January 12th. In the early hours of 15th January we were overtaken by a cold front driven by an exceptionally powerful high pressure system of some 1040 MB. The front itself was quite benign but as the high moved in the pressure gradient got steeper quickly and by 0800 it was blowing full gale with the seas building.

We ran all day before the gale with winds steadily over 32 knots, peaking at 46 knots. By 1600 the seas had built to the point that the autopilot was having trouble steering and so we decided to heave-to, which we duly did under triple reefed main at 23°16′N, 64°34′W.

At about 2300 we were hit hard on the weather beam by a breaking wave that heeled the boat to 30 to 40 degrees. At this point the significant wave height was about 20′ (verified by weather fax chart from Boston) with some waves higher. In addition the wave train was becoming confused and breaking.

We had not been hit that hard ever before and I believe it was caused by the extreme variability of the wind in this high pressure-driven gale. Vertical instability in a high causes much more gusting than in a low and in our case the wind was varying from 25 to 46 knots.

The lulls would allow the boat’s bow to fall off and then in the next puff she would reach off at as much as 2 knots before the action of the rudder lashed hard down would bring her back up to about 60 degrees off the wind—her normal heave-to attitude. It was during this reaching off cycle that she was vulnerable to breaking seas.

I did not wish to run off since I felt that even with a drogue, this would have required hand steering in the confused seas, which would have quickly tired Phyllis and I.

Solution

After watching what was happening for about 15 minutes I deployed our 42″ Galerider on 250′ of 7/8” nylon double braid line from the weather bow, while still heaved-to. This was quite easy to do despite the fact that it was blowing hard enough to make it difficult to stand on deck. I slid the Galerider down the weather bow with the wind holding it against the hull. Once in the water I paid out the full 250′ and cleated off. The line was led through a fully enclosed and very well rounded closed fair lead about 2′ back from the tip of the bow.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Our fore-reaching slowed from between .75 and 2 knots to between .3 and .75 knots and I suspect much of that was false reading due to the motion of the bow. The bow stayed at 50 to 60 degrees from the true wind with no tendency to fall off further. The drogue line made an angle of about 130 degrees from the bow of the boat so that the Galerider was in the water behind and to windward of the boat. In the morning I was even able to see it from time to time in the front of the larger waves. It showed no tendency to break out of the wave, or to tumble in a breaking wave.

We stayed heaved-to like this until the following afternoon, when the wind moderated, and received no further wave strikes.

The interesting thing was that the Galerider deployment line was not that heavily loaded and was frequently a bit slack. The highest load came when she was hit by a big gust after a long lull, but even then I would estimate the load as no more than that on an anchor rode in a strong breeze. She showed no tendency to tack through the eye of the wind, despite having no sail up in the fore triangle. Both the jib topsail and staysail are on roller furlers and so provide quite a lot of windage forward.

Recovery was easy, using our electric windlass, and was done while still heaved-to, when the wind was still blowing near gale.

Summary

This was not by any stretch a survival storm for a boat our size, but was certainly a full gale with mature and perhaps dangerous seas. The same blow caused havoc in much of the northeast Caribbean, driving a freighter on to the beach at St. Maartin and reversing the trade winds as far south as St. Lucia.

Deployment of the Galerider in this way was easy, the motion comfortable and recovery equally easy. It significantly extended the safe range for heaving-to.

In future I think I might extend the rode to 500′ since this would make sure it was not on the same wave as the boat and reduce any chance of it being tumbled at the wrong moment (not that this happened).