In-Depth, Heavy Weather Tactics, Part I
Index
Part I
Introduction
Goals
Heaving-To
When Heaving-To Is Dangerous
Options When Heaving-To Is Not Working
Stopping Wave Strikes While Heaved-To
Part II
Survival Storms
Our Old Back-Up System
Our New Back-Up System
You Need a System
Jordan Drogue Launch System
A Professional Skipper's Take on
Heavy Weather
Comment From New Zealand on
Parachute Anchors
Part III
Jordan Drogue Retrieval System
Drogue Retrieval—The Devil is
in the Details
Drogue Retrieval—An Alternative
From Hal Roth
Yet More on Series Drogue Retrieval
Lee Shores
Equipment and Rigging to Survive a Lee
Shore
Storm Survival Secret Weapon: Your Engine
Summary and Conclusions
Introduction
Several reader questions got me (John) thinking about heavy weather generally; that and the fact that we have just changed and completely re-engineered our storm survival system on Morgan’s Cloud.
Most of the questions we get are about avoiding storms, but if you sail offshore long enough, sooner or later heavy weather will find you, so the following series of posts are about the strategies we use and the way Morgan’s Cloud is set up to cope with various possible gale and storm scenarios at sea.
We certainly don’t have all the answers, but after 25 years of setting boats up to go offshore we have learned some things that will be useful to others.
Since we firmly believe that no one piece of gear or technique is a silver bullet for all heavy weather conditions, this is a series of posts each dealing with one heavy weather situation that we might face while sailing offshore and our strategy and the gear we carry to deal with it.
While writing this series, the chance to discuss heavy weather strategies with experienced voyagers like Lin Pardey, Hal Roth, and Evans Starzinger was an unexpected benefit and a real privilege.
For me, the take away from these interactions is that there are
a lot of right ways to do things at sea. The point being that it is not
really important whether you do things our way, or Hal’s way, or Evan’s
way, or Lin's way. Rather, the key to safety offshore in heavy weather
is that you look at the available information, critically evaluate it in
the light of your capabilities and boat, and then come up with and test your way.
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Goals
Before discussing the actual nuts and bolts of our gale and storm survival gear and strategy on Morgan’s Cloud, I’m going to write a bit about the goals we keep in mind when we are putting together gear and thinking about strategy for dealing with heavy weather at sea.
Keep the Keel Side Down
If you read accounts of sailboat losses at sea due to heavy weather, the series of events that eventually leads to abandonment almost invariably starts with a knockdown, rollover or pitchpoling. It’s also amazing how often the survivors say that everything seemed to be going fine until suddenly and without warning the mast was underwater.
No Requirement to Steer
A boat steered by a good helmsperson can survive amazingly violent conditions with little gear or forethought other than strong storm sails. However, I’m no Bernard Moitessier*. For me, the Zen of steering lasts about an hour on a good day. Add some breaking waves, howling winds, and cold temperatures and my Zen time goes to less than five minutes. Phyllis came to sailing as an adult and, although a surprisingly good helmsperson, she must concentrate and work harder when steering than someone who has sailed from childhood. Realistically I don’t believe that the two of us could steer Morgan’s Cloud for more than 6 to 8 hours in a gale (and less in a storm) without exhausting ourselves and eventually making a bad mistake.
No Requirement for Automated Steering
Although we have a massive autopilot that can and does steer well in near-gale and even gale force conditions when running off, we are not willing to risk an ambush from Mr. Murphy by relying on it in these conditions.
No Sail Changes and No Moving Heavy Gear Around
I’ve paid my dues wrestling to hank on a storm jib on a pitching wave-swept foredeck or standing on a winch and threading the slides of a storm trysail into a track gate above a furled mainsail as the wildly thrashing bunt of the sail tries to take my head off. Been there, done that, and don’t need to play that game anymore. In addition, my middle aged back does not take kindly to dragging sodden bags of rope or sea anchors around, which, particularly when wet, have all the maneuverability of a dead body. Such sweaty exertion also tends to make me puke, not to speak of the fact that it is dangerous.
Relatively Comfortable
Heavy weather at sea is nasty enough without employing survival techniques that, while perhaps safe, result in unnecessarily violent motion.
In the next post we will look at heaving-to, the first in our various lines of defense against heavy weather, and the modifications we have made to Morgan’s Cloud to make it easy to do.
*Moitessier survived truly horrendous conditions in the Southern Ocean
by hand steering for many hours and even days. Anyone who goes to sea or
is thinking of it should read The Long Way by Moitessier, a classic
of ocean sailing.
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Heaving-To
On Morgan’s Cloud heaving-to has been for years, and still is, our first and favourite strategy when the weather gets nasty. It satisfies all of our goals discussed in this post and has the particular benefit of being surprisingly comfortable. In fact we have even enjoyed a sit down dinner at the salon table when heaved–to in a full gale.
We also believe that in most conditions a sailboat properly heaved-to is much less vulnerable to being knocked down or rolled than one running off, at least if the running boat is not using a good drogue system.
In recent years heaving-to has fallen out of fashion. I think this is because of, what I believe to be, the misconception that modern fin keel boats won’t heave-to well. In most cases the actual problem is the limited ability that modern sloops have to appropriately adjust their sail area to lie heaved-to comfortably, rather than a hull form issue.
On Morgan’s Cloud we have found that as the wind increases, we need to slowly reduce the ratio of sail area in the fore triangle to that of the mainsail. When heaved-to in 25 to 30 knots, we need about a third of the roller furling staysail rolled out and backed to keep the boat from tacking through the wind. But once the wind is over 30 knots, this much staysail will cause the boat to lie too far off the wind and forereach ahead. In fact once the wind gets over gale force (34 knots) Morgan’s Cloud lies most comfortably with three reefs in the main and both headsails rolled up completely—the windage of the rolled sails is enough to stop her from tacking.
Our heaving-to system on Morgan’s Cloud makes use of the following gear:
Cutter Rig
Morgan's Cloud is a cutter and so we use the backed staysail when heaved-to, which brings the center of effort much further aft than would be the case if we used the jib. I think that sticking a small storm jib way out on the bow, a long way from the keel and the center of lateral resistance, makes it very difficult to heave-to well. So even if a voyaging boat is rigged as a sloop I think she should have the ability to quickly and easily rig an internal headstay and running backstays to allow a storm staysail to be set.
Staysail on a Roller Furler
Our staysail is on a roller furler, which allows us to easily adjust the fore triangle sail area in the small increments that we have found necessary to achieve a stable heaved-to attitude. I know there are those that will question the wisdom of relying on a roller furling working sail in gale force conditions; however, the loads on our partially rolled staysail are very low because the area we show goes down as the wind speed goes up, till finally we fully roll it up when the wind reaches gale force. (We do carry a storm jib in case the staysail gets damaged but have never had to use it on this boat.)
Easily Adjustable Staysail Sheet Leads
It is vital to be able to adequately flatten the staysail as its area is adjusted. To this end one of the first changes we made to the boat was replacing the original staysail sheet lead tracks and their difficult to adjust pin stop cars with Harken roller bearing cars that are easily adjusted under load using 4:1 tackles. We also lengthened the tracks to make sure that we can get the correct sheet angle, even when the sail is rolled almost all the way in.
Three Reefs in the Mainsail
We have a very deep third reef in the mainsail that reduces the area from its original 600 square feet to about 250 square feet. This coupled with a powerful and easy to use reefing system and roller furling headsails means that we can go from full working sail to heaved-to in minutes with no sail changes. (We do have a storm trysail bagged on its own track ready to go at all times, but have never had to use it on this boat, even when heaved-to in winds in excess of 40 knots.) The subject of three reefs brings me to one of my pet peeves: reefing systems that require the crew to re-reeve the first reef pennant as the third reef pennant after the second reef is taken in, or some such variation.This means that when it is already blowing hard, a crew member has to balance on the boom end to reeve the third pennant. Even with a messenger line this is dangerous. If you have three reefs, and I believe you should, then all three pennants should be reeved at all times.
Wide and Easy to Use Mainsheet Traveler
We have quite often been in sea and wind conditions where Morgan’s Cloud lies closer to the wind and more comfortably with the boom right on the center line or even a little to weather. This is easy for us to do since we have a massive dual-car low-friction Harken roller bearing traveler system that spans the whole aft cabin roof. Like the staysail, the cars are fitted with 4:1 adjuster tackles. I think many voyagers make the mistake of thinking that such “high tech” deck gear is for racers only. While this stuff is expensive, it pays huge dividends in making a short-handed boat easier to handle in fair weather and foul.
So once we have used all of the above gear to get Morgan’s Cloud perfectly balanced for the conditions—neither forereaching too fast nor threatening to tack—we retire below and maintain a watch on radar from the warm and dry chart table with a quick peek out every 15 minutes and a security call with our position and status as “limited in our ability to maneuver” broadcast on channel 16 every half hour; beats heck out of epic hero stuff like steering for hours in a spray-swept cockpit.
Different boats will require modifications and strategies that are different from ours, but by using these concepts as a starting point and with some thought I’m convinced that most boats can be made to heave-to well.
In the next post we will look at what we do
when the conditions are such that no matter how we adjust things, Morgan’s
Cloud continues to forereach out of the zone of wave strike protection
caused by the slick she leaves to windward when properly heaved-to.
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When Heaving-To Is Dangerous
The key to heaving-to safely is keeping the boat directly downwind of the slick created to windward by her own drift to leeward. I can’t overemphasize how important this is. If a heaved-to boat forereaches fast enough to get out from behind the slick, heaving-to can actually become more dangerous than continuing to sail because it is the slick that causes waves to break before they reach the boat.
Some years ago Phyllis and I had this point forcefully brought home to us in a high pressure gale south of Bermuda. The winds were well in excess of 40 knots and significant wave heights some 20 feet (confirmed by weather fax). As usual, we heaved-to and retired below to wait it out. All went well for a few hours until we were hit hard on the weather side by a breaking wave. Keep in mind that a significant wave height of 20 feet means that there are theoretically waves of 40 feet out there. I don’t know how big the one that hit us was, but suffice to say Morgan’s Cloud heeled to about 40- to 50 degrees and was pushed violently sideways. I suspect that a smaller boat may have been knocked down past vertical. Also, MC is massively constructed of aluminum; in a boat less overbuilt I would have feared structural damage, particularly to the lee side. (It is interesting that in such events it is usually the lee side of a boat that is damaged when it is slammed down against the water, not the weather side from the wave strike.)
I'm happy to say that I did not take this photograph at sea, but rather from the shore after tropical storm Noel.
I spent the next half hour in the cockpit observing the boat’s behaviour. It soon became apparent that the substantial variability of the wind speed after the cold front passage, with lulls in the mid-twenties to gusts around 50 knots, was the culprit. The boat would fall off the wind during the lulls and then sail out of her slick with the next gust. Add the wrong wave at the wrong moment and bang. (Generally, high pressure driven gales—when it keeps blowing hard, or even blows harder, after the cold front passage, as the following high moves in—have more variable winds than low pressure gales due to vertical instability in the air mass.)
To make things safe we needed to slow the boat down and stop the bow falling off to leeward. However, the staysail was already rolled right in and the triple reefed mainsail centered, so we had done all we could with the rig to keep her bow up to the wind. (Learn about our heave-to method here.)
In the next
post we will look at the options we considered and the quick and easy solution
we deployed to solve the problem.
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Options When Heaving-To Is Not Working
In the previous post in this series I wrote about an experience we had on Morgan’s Cloud when being heaved-to turned out to be dangerous. In this post I’m going to cover the options we considered to stop the breaking wave strikes we were experiencing.
Running Off
I did briefly consider running off towing the Galerider drogue
that we have carried for years. However, the significant wave height was
running 20-feet (confirmed by weatherfax) with some bigger breaking waves
around (like the one that hit us). We had stopped sailing earlier because
even our massive autopilot was no longer able to handle the loads and,
while the autopilot might have handled steering while dragging the drogue,
I had recently heard from two friends that had had Galeriders pull out
of a wave face resulting in their boats rapidly accelerating; a very dangerous
occurrence that, in the conditions we were experiencing, could have led
to a bad broach or even a roll over, particularly if the boat was being
steered by the autopilot. All in all, this option failed all five of our goals.
Lying to a Sea Anchor
At the time, we carried a 24-foot diameter PARA-TECH sea anchor that we had bought in case we were dismasted or some other damage made it impossible to heave-to. I considered using it but was loath to do so because the deployment process required setting it on 600-feet of 7/8-inch line as well as a trip line with three fenders on it; way more complicated and fraught with opportunities to get hurt than I was comfortable with in the very rough conditions. I was also skeptical about our ability to retrieve this massive sea anchor and its associated gear, which would weigh several hundred pounds when wet, at the end of the blow. I know you are supposed to just pick up the trip line and pull it in, but the thought of trying to haul the boat upwind to, or motor up to, the trip buoys and snag them with a boat hook in the left-over sea after the blow, was an evolution so full of opportunities for disaster that it gave me the horrors.
(We had bought the sea anchor with an awareness of the retrieval problem and were willing to accept that since we felt that it was the best technology at the time. Assuming that it had done its job in a true survival storm, the loss of several thousand dollars worth of gear if we had to cut it away would be an acceptable price to pay. However, in this case, although the wave strike had been violent, we did not feel that the conditions were actually threatening our survival.)
So with the deployment challenges, together with reports that said that lying to a sea anchor in big breaking seas can result in violent yawing and pitching, this option failed two of our goals, at least.
The Pardey Bridle
At the time, we were set up to use the
sea anchor discussed above with the “Pardey Bridle”, a method for deploying
a sea anchor while remaining heaved-to with sail up, pioneered by Lin and
Larry Pardey. I think this technique would have removed the wave strike
danger without the yawing and attendant violent motion problem of the sea
anchor alone. Also, if I had fully understood their method, I would have
bought a much smaller sea anchor than that recommended by the manufacturer
and perhaps lighter gear, making deployment and retrieval easier. Having
said that, I would guess that Lin and Larry’s boat weighs less than half
what Morgan’s Cloud does, making the loads a great deal smaller
and deployment much easier for them.
Although we did not try it then, because of the deployment and retrieval problem, I think the “Pardey Bridle” technique discussed in Lin and Larry’s Storm Tactics book and video makes a great deal of sense. I would also strongly recommend that anyone who goes, or is planning to go, to sea in sailboats read the section of their book on the dangers of running off in heavy weather. I had long been uncomfortable with running off, but it was Lin and Larry’s book that really clarified and confirmed my thinking on the matter.
Next post we will look at what
we did to solve the forereaching and resultant wave strike problem and
how this technique has become an integral part of our heavy weather strategy
on Morgan’s Cloud.
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Stopping Wave Strikes While Heaved-To
As we discussed in this post, heaving-to is only
safe as long as the boat does not forereach out from behind her own slick.
It is the slick that causes waves to break before they reach the boat.
In this post we looked at some alternatives to stop the wave strikes we
were experiencing while heaved-to in a gale but that we rejected because
they did not meet our goals for
a heavy weather strategy.
In this post we will look at what we eventually did, how it worked and
how it has become an integral part of our heavy weather strategy—I know,
some of you thought I would never get to the payoff.
Having watched Morgan’s Cloud's behaviour for a while after the wave strike, I realized that all we needed to do to solve the problem was to slow her down just a bit and keep her bow just a bit up to windward. Large measures like our huge sea anchor really weren’t called for. However, the staysail was already rolled right in and the triple reefed mainsail centered, so we had done all we could with the rig to keep her bow up to the wind. (Learn about our heave-to method here.)
What we needed to do was to add some drag and give the bow a bit of a tug to weather to keep it from falling off the wind. While still heaved-to, I shackled 250 feet of 7/8” nylon line to our Galerider drogue and then struggled forward dragging the substantial weight of gear behind me. After passing the bitter end through our well-rounded bow fairlead, I cleated it off and then slid the Galerider down the windward side of the hull some 10’ aft of the bow (I did not want the drogue blowing off to leeward where the boat could reach over it) and into the water. This was surprisingly easy to do with the wind holding the drogue against the hull. Once the drogue was immersed, the boat slowly forereached away from it while I paid out the line. There was none of the high loads or fast run out of the line that you get with a drogue deployment over the stern when running off.
As soon as all the line paid out, the result was immediate and miraculous. The boat slowed to a virtual standstill from the 1 to 2 knots she had been making and the bow no longer fell off to leeward when a gust hit after a lull. We lay heaved-to like this for 18 hours very comfortably with no further wave strikes.
The great thing about this drogue technique is that, unlike with sea anchors, the loads were very low. The rode was quite often slack and I would estimate the highest load as lower than what you would get on an anchor rode in a 15 knot breeze. In fact, the gear could have been much lighter than I actually used, or what would be required for a sea anchor on a boat our size. (Morgan’s Cloud displaces 26 tons.)
In the morning I was occasionally able to see the drogue in a wave face to windward. Despite it only being set on 250 feet of line, the Galerider showed no signs of pulling out of a wave face or being tumbled. Again, I think the secret here is that the low loads on the drogue allowed it to sink well into the water thereby reducing this danger. Originally I said that if I did it again I would use 500 feet of line, but having thought about it some more, and in light of the above, I think I would be happy with 300 feet.
When the wind started to ease, we easily recovered the drogue, using the anchor windlass. Even though it was still blowing near gale, I would estimate that the load on the windlass was less than that when pulling up our anchor and chain on a calm day, because the boat was still heaved-to and we were not trying to sail away from the drogue.
It is important to understand that although the goal and result of this use of the Galerider are the same as Lin and Larry Pardey’s technique of setting a sea anchor on a bridle while heaved-to, the positioning and deployment of the drag device is very different. In our case the drogue ended up to windward and slightly aft of the boat with the rode making an angle of about 130 degrees to the bow and there was only one line to rig, instead of two.
Please read the following; it’s important.
There are a couple of cautions with this technique:
- It specifically violates the Galerider’s instructions in which the manufacturer says that it should never be deployed from the bow of a boat.
- If the boat should tack through the eye of the wind with the Galerider deployed in this way, I think there is a chance that the boat could sail over the rode and perhaps the drogue. In a gale at sea, this could definitely ruin your whole day. Morgan’s Cloud showed no signs of tacking. In fact, I would be hard put to see how she could have tacked since the drag of the drogue was stopping her getting up enough speed to get her bow through the eye of the wind, nor was the drogue exerting enough pull to drag her bow through the wind—sort of a self limiting system. But if you have any fears that your boat might tack while set up like this, I would strongly suggest you use Lin and Larry’s technique instead. Finally, if you limp into a harbour I’m anchored in with hundreds of feet of line and a Galerider wrapped around your rudder and prop, I will not be taking the blame for it or diving in the water to cut it off!
Since that day in early 2000 we have not had occasion to use this technique again, but it is really comforting to have it in our back pocket. By using the Galerider in this way, I’m confident that we can stay heaved-to safely in sustained strong gale or even storm force winds.
But what happens if it blows even harder and the waves get truly
mountainous and breaking? What would we do then if heaving-to, even with
the drogue, stops working? That will be the subject of the next post in
the series.
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