In-Depth, Heavy Weather Tactics, Part II
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
Survival Storms
In the last five posts in this series I have been writing about the techniques that have worked well for us on Morgan’s Cloud in gales and strong gales at sea. That is up to Beaufort Force 9 (41 to 47 knots). Next I’m going to write about our thinking on how to handle a storm of Force 10 or above that would threaten our very survival.
I'm happy to say that I did not take this photograph at sea, but rather from the shore after tropical storm Noel.
But before I get to that, I want to make clear that the waves generated by gales and strong gales, particularly if they are apposed to even a low velocity ocean current, can, if she is not properly equipped and handled, roll the average cruising boat completely over and injure or even kill her crew. I say this because I have noticed that many sailors exaggerate the wind speeds of gales that they have experienced and therefore give the impression that a Force 8 gale (34 to 40 knots) is no big deal. Usually they quote the top gust they registered, which is pretty meaningless, particularly since wind instruments are notoriously inaccurate once the wind gets over 30 knots. What matters when gauging the severity of heavy weather at sea is how strong the sustained wind is and how long it has been blowing for. (For more on this see Liars, Damn Liars and Sailors.)
Before I get into writing about survival storms, I have an admission to make: despite about 100,000 miles of offshore sailing experience over nearly 40 years, I have never been in one. On a few occasions I have experienced winds in excess of 50 knots, and on one memorable occasion, what I think was 70 knots or maybe a little more, but these blows did not last long enough to produce truly huge breaking waves. In each case I was on strong well-equipped boats with experienced crews and my survival was not at risk unless we did something stupid.
Having said that, let’s all remember that a sustained wind of just 30 knots blowing against the Gulf Stream can turn into a survival storm if you handle it badly. Some years ago I got caught out in the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras in an unforecast rapidly intensifying low (bomb). The winds were blowing against the Stream at a steady 40 knots with gusts in squalls of 50 knots or so (verified from ship reports). The waves were huge, steep and starting to break. We rode it out by slowly jogging to windward with storm jib and trysail set. It was not a survival storm for us because I had a very strong and experienced crew of six aboard who were able to carefully steer over every wave for two days. But for a couple without an adequate strategy to manage these conditions without having to steer, it would have been a very dangerous situation. The point is that what constitutes a survival storm is as much about you and your boat as the weather.
Up to now in the series, I have been writing from experience. Now I’m getting into conjecture. But it is important conjecture. Despite the advances in modern weather forecasting, and taking into account the more frequent and intense violent weather we are seeing in recent years, there is a real chance that, if Phyllis and I go on sailing offshore, particularly in the high latitudes, we will get caught in a multi-day storm with sustained winds in excess of 50 knots that will be a survival storm for us. If that happens I want to make damned sure that we have a plan and the best possible gear to execute it.
So what about just staying heaved-to, perhaps with the drogue off the bow, as we have written about in the last three posts in the series? Would that be safe with the sustained winds over 50 knots and 30 to 40 foot breaking seas with the possibility of a 60-footer around? I don’t know for sure, but I think it might be.
And I’m not alone in that surmise: Some months ago I had an interesting email exchange with Lin Pardey. She and Larry firmly believe that heaving-to, with a sea anchor if necessary, is the ultimate heavy weather strategy. She also quoted an interview she did with the late Sir Peter Blake who seemed to believe the same, and backed it up with a story of going through a true survival storm that overwhelmed another boat nearby, while heaved-to. Lin, Larry, and Sir Peter, between them, have wrung more salt water out of their socks than I have sailed over, as the old saying goes, and probably they are right. But, what if they’re not? What if the mast breaks and we can’t set any sail? What if…?
Bottom
line, I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy, and I want an alternative.
Next post, we will talk about non-heaving-to storm survival systems: our
old one, the new one we replaced it with, and why.
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Our Old Back-up System
As discussed earlier in this series, our primary gale and storm survival strategy is heaving-to, with or without the addition of a drogue off the bow, as discussed in this post. However, we have always carried a second system in case our rigging was damaged making heaving-to impossible. We also believe, as discussed in this post, that there may be conditions in which heaving-to, even with a drogue, just does not work.
Up until this year, we carried a 24-foot diameter PARA-TECH sea anchor and all the gear to set it as our backup system. However, despite thinking that it was the best option at the time we bought it, we have never been entirely happy with this solution, as I discussed in this post. In summary, we got rid of our sea anchor for the following reasons:
- The deployment of so much heavy gear off the bow in storm conditions would be both difficult and dangerous.
- I believe that the pitching and yawing in true storm conditions would be truly horrendous. Most modern sailboats, particularly with the forward windage of roller furling headsails like Morgan’s Cloud has, yaw a lot at anchor when it is blowing hard; imagine the same behavior in 30 to 40 foot seas! There are ways to ameliorate this, such as riding sails, but this is still more gear to rig and to break in survival conditions.
- The yawing problem can be solved by using a Pardey Bridle but I have real reservations about rigging such a system on a boat the size of Morgan’s Cloud.
- I think that it is unlikely that Phyllis and I would be able to retrieve the sea anchor and its associated gear, particularly after being beaten up and exhausted by several days of lying to it in storm conditions. On this subject I got an email last week from a friend who is a commercial fisherman running three draggers off the US east coast. He says “I have never needed to purchase a sea anchor. Towing a bottom trawl in the Gulf of Maine has routinely provided sea anchors of all types and shapes. Judging from what I have seen people often discard the sea anchor rather than deal with its recovery.”
- The PARA-TECH manual, like that provided with the Galerider, demands that you deploy the drag device on a long rode so that it is immersed two to three waves away from the wave the boat is on and that the device is in the same relative point on its wave as the boat is on hers. Give me a break! Waves in storm conditions are confused and of varying heights and periods. They do not conform to the pretty diagrams in these manuals and even if they did, how, pray tell, are you to see in storm conditions with blowing spray where the thing is several waves to windward?
- A 24-foot sea anchor, the size
recommended for Morgan’s Cloud, is going to be essentially impossible
to drag through the water. Being attached to something in storm conditions
at sea that has almost no give will generate forces that are truly
frightening to think about. The PARA-TECH manual calls for at least
600’ of nylon rope to ameliorate this problem. However, recent research
shows that nylon rope that is being heavily cycle loaded, particularly
when wet, is much more subject to failure than we all once thought.
The problem lies with self heating due to friction between the fibers
that can eventually lead to the rope failing through melting. I suspect
that this may be the reason that many sea anchors are lost due to rode
breakage, rather than the chafe that has usually been blamed. Recently
I spoke with a woman who had deployed a sea anchor on a trip to Bermuda.
It worked well, but the nylon rope broke during recovery after the
gale. This would suggest to me that it may have been weakened by the
problem noted above.
So, while I’m not suggesting that sea anchors never work well or discounting
the fact that they have saved many lives and boats, I think there is now
a better storm survival backup system, at least for us on Morgan’s
Cloud,
and that is the subject for the next post.
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Our New Back-up System
On Morgan’s Cloud our heavy weather system has always included two options: our standard strategy of heaving-to, with or without a drogue over the bow, and, although we have never had to use it, a backup system. In the last post I wrote about our decision to replace the old backup system and in this post I’m going to write about the new backup system we selected and why.
I have always had reservations about running off, with or without a drag device, because of the ever present risk of a broach that can lead to a knock down or even a roll over. While drag devices claim to reduce this risk, I have been concerned about a drogue like the Galerider tumbling or pulling out of a wave face with the resultant rapid acceleration of the boat. After all, this only needs to happen once in a multi-day survival storm to trigger a disaster. In addition, in most cases, running off involves steering which violates one of our most important goals for a heavy weather survival system.
The Jordan
Series Drogue solves the steering issue and, most importantly, it can’t
pull out of a wave face since its long length and multiple cones guarantee
that most of it will always be in the water. These benefits and Donald
Jordan’s well reasoned analysis of
his design, which agrees well with our observations at sea, together with
the impressive 15 year track record of his system, convinced us to buy
a Jordan Series Drogue from Ace
Sailmakers. We bought one with 166 cones on 350' of rode, made up of
110' of 1" nylon double braid—upsized from Ace Sailmaker's recommendation
of 7/8"— tapered to 115' of 3/4" and then to 125' of 1/2" for
the last 75 cones.
I would recommend that all voyaging sailors read Jordan’s design notes, whether you buy one of his drogues or not. The key things that I learned from him are:
- It’s not the wave strike from a breaking crest that gets you, but the sudden stop at the bottom of the trough. This is well substantiated by analysis of wave damage to yachts. Also, I think it is much of the reason that heaving-to works so well.
- What you see of wave behavior at sea during a storm is an optical illusion that can lead you to draw the wrong conclusions about where the real dangers lie.
- Jordan is a qualified engineer that has applied real science to the problem of heavy weather survival. In light of the preceding point, this is really important.
- Nowhere in his solution is there the kind of weaknesses in logic that you see in the promotion of many competing storm survival systems. (We have written about some of these weaknesses in other posts in this series.)
- He has no commercial interest in the system.
- There is actually very little danger of being damaged by a wave breaking onto the stern (being pooped) while running off. I would agree, in that in all my years of sailing I have never been on a boat that was truly pooped. Yes I have seen the cockpit filled with water on several occasions, but in most cases the boat had just slewed on a wave face and the water washed in from the lee side or quarter.
- That the gear you have and how you use it is much more important to your survival than what type of boat you have.
For those of you who would like more detail to substantiate Jordan's findings I would highly recommend reading the US Coastguard Report on his research and findings.
One glaring weakness
in information about the Jordan Series Drogue is the lack of a viable
short-handed retrieval system, particularly for larger boats where
the loads are very high. This was brought home to us by the experience
of two friends of ours, very experienced and strong sailors, who were
forced to cut a Jordan Drogue away in the Southern Ocean. In the next
post in this series we will look at the modifications we have made
to Morgan’s Cloud to make deployment easier and safer and retrieval
practical.
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You Need a System
Many of us (I have been guilty of this myself) buy storm survival gear, throw it in a corner of the lazarette, and head off to sea congratulating ourselves on our foresight and seamanship…not a good idea.
Fast forward to a building storm at sea. You are seasick, exhausted, and the boat has just experienced a partial knockdown, scaring the living daylights out of you. You need that drogue deployed and you need it now, before the next big wave makes the partial knockdown look like a gentle pat on the back. Oh yes, it is black dark too. (Why is it that this crap always happens in the dark?)
The drogue is in a corner of the lazarette under all the junk that you threw on top of it in the hurry to get to sea. To get it out and get the warp to set it on, you are going to have to move all this stuff in the dark. Worse still, the hatch will be open to the sea while you do it—seriously dangerous in this kind of weather.
OK, with superhuman fear-driven strength, you get the drogue out, together with several hundred feet of heavy line, and slam the hatch shut with only a few thousand gallons of water getting into the boat. Not enough to sink you, you hope.
Now, assuming the wind or a wave don’t tear the whole works out of your hands and wash it away, you just have to figure out on which side of that vital and oh so fragile self-steering gear to rig the bridle legs and what to cleat them to. Oh yes, that several hundred feet of line is now a hopeless tangle. What about chafe? Oh no, the chafe gear is in the lazarette. It’s got even darker and, if you’re anything like me, you have to take a break to puke.
The point of all this is that when you buy storm survival gear and lug it to the boat, you are about one third of the way to a storm survival system. The second third is putting together and trying out a deployment system that ideally will be set up and ready to go before you even leave the wharf. And then, don’t forget, you have to have a way to get the damned thing back aboard after the storm—the last third.
In the next post we will look at our
deployment system on Morgan’s Cloud for our newly-acquired Jordan
Series Drogue.
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Jordan Drogue Launch System
OK, enough blather about why we selected the Jordan Series Drogue and why you need a complete system for dealing with a drogue or sea anchor; on to the nuts and bolts of our deployment system.
Attachment Points
When setting up to use our new Jordan Series Drogue, the first issue we examined was attachment points for the bridle. Although we have massive stern cleats and fairleads that would theoretically be able to stand up to Jordan’s projected maximum load of 30,000 lb (13,600 kg) for Morgan’s Cloud, we opted to fabricate and build two dedicated chainplates for the following reasons:
- Any rope that passes over a fairlead is potentially vulnerable to chafe no matter how well rounded that fairlead is. (It is amazing how often we have read accounts of heavy weather deployment of sea anchors and drogues that end with a broken warp due to chafe.)
- We don’t want to be messing around with chafe gear and be trying to “refresh the nip” by adjusting bridles under heavy load in storm conditions.
- We want to be able to set up our Jordan Drogue system before we go to sea and leave it that way without having to remove it to free a cleat for something else.
- We want to get the bridle legs as far out on the corners of the boat as possible, which should make her yaw less. Also, this positioning has the added benefit of keeping the bridle legs away from the self steering gear.
Before we leave the subject of chafe and loads, it is worth noting that most of the examples on Jordan’s web site discuss quite small boats. In our opinion, the owners of boats displacing 30,000 lb (13,600 kg) and up (MC displaces 52,000 lb (23,500 kg) fully loaded) need to spend a lot more time and effort in this area. For example, when we test deployed our Jordan Drogue on a flat calm day while motoring at just 1200 rpm, the load was in excess of 3000 lb (1360 kg) (estimated in relationship to known loads on our primary winches). Think about that and then envision Morgan’s Cloud on the top of a 50’ (15 m) breaking wave and starting down the front—now there is a terrifying picture. It is not at all inconceivable to us that, as the drogue takes the strain of stopping the boat from surfing, the load would go to ten times that of our test.
After some calculation, we ended up having two stainless steel chainplates 27” (68 cm) long by 2.75” (7 cm) wide fabricated from ½” (130 mm) stock. We fastened the chainplates to our toe rails with seven 7/16” stainless steel bolts. We can only get away with this positioning, even though these toe rails are massive and welded to the hull, because there is a substantial existing chainplate (originally designed to take the load of the spinnaker sheets) in the way of three of the bolts. For most boats, to get adequate strength it will be necessary to bolt through the hull and a substantial backer plate. In the case of fiberglass boats it may be necessary to build up the laminate thickness in the way of the plate.
Set Up
Before going to sea, we will shackle the bridle legs to the chainplates with two ¾” Crosby 209a alloy galvanized shackles with a safe working load of 14,000 lb (6350 kg) and a deform point of twice that, and then wire the shackles closed. Interestingly, the weakest point (every system has one) in all of this is the hole in the chainplate, which will fail at about 26,000 lb (11,800 kg). Since it is unlikely that more than 70% of the peak load will come on one bridle leg, this is well within acceptable limits.
We will then carefully lead the bridles clear of the self steering gear, back to the aft deck and flake (never coil) them, together with the series drogue, into a sail bag with the bitter end and 12’ of chain, to act as a sinker, going in last. We will tie the chain end to the mouth of the bag so it does not get lost and keep things tidy by using plastic wire ties to lash the bridle to the stern rails. Finally, we will lash the bag down securely on the aft deck.
Deployment
To deploy, we just have to cut the wire ties, flip the port bridle outside the self steering gear, open the bag and chuck the chain over the side via the same route as the bridles come inboard—a far cry from this scenario.
While different boats will require different deployment systems we think they should all be:
- Completely chafe free.
- Strong enough to withstand Donald Jordan’s design loads. As can be seen by the steps we had to go through, on larger boats this is not a trivial challenge.
- Completely pre-rigged before going to sea.
- Preferably deployable without opening a locker hatch and so opening the boat to the sea. Difficult or impossible on some boats, I know.
- Easily deployed by a seasick, scared and tired sailor in the black dark. (We even have the steps written down, complete with pictures, in the boat’s manual, since I know that in such conditions I’m capable of making some deeply stupid blunders.)
Those of you with sharp
eyes will note that there is an extra line in the photograph. All will
be revealed in our next post on retrieval.
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A Professional Skipper's Take on Heavy Weather
[We received an e-mail a few weeks ago from our friend Bob Tetrault who has been following our heavy weather series. Bob went to Maine Maritime, has a master’s ticket, and has fished the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank in all kinds of weather. He currently owns three boats that fish the Gulf of Maine. His e-mail is primarily about his experiences dragging up abandoned sea anchors but it is also full of other interesting nuggets of information and is a fascinating look at how the professionals deal with heavy weather.
Bob, unusually for a fisherman, owns a sailboat; a beautifully maintained Pearson 55 called, appropriately enough, Sea Return.]
The sea anchor we carry on Sea Return was purchased new, a 24' Paratech. It has never been out of the bag. When I was fishing and towing [sea anchors] up they were usually military parachutes without much warp which leads me to believe they were cheap and cut free rather than retrieved.
Even now it’s not unusual to see a posting on a bulletin board at our ice plant advertising a sea anchor for sale. They are usually in good shape just snarled and a little dirty from being towed from the bottom. The last one I saw was a Paratech style with no warp, just the swivel.
When fishing well offshore and caught in a bomb or weather that was much more than predicted, we would haul our gear (net) while we still could, remove the otter boards, and put the net back off the stern. We would then cover the engine room vents with custom made tarpaulins and put the checker boards in the stern ramp so they couldn't wash out, leave the deck lights on and turn in. One crew member would always be on watch. If we started taking green water over the stern he would start up and work ahead slowly and the wash would keep the seas from breaking in on us.
[Same theory as the slick created by a boat properly heaved-to.]
Once I had to rig a pennant from the bow and winch the warps to the bow [so as] to lay bow-to, which was really about fifty degrees [to the wind] with the wheel house windage working against the significant drag of the fishing net. [Generally] we didn't [like] to do this because bringing the two warps to a point on the bow had the potential for the net to snarl but it was certainly safer [than being stern-to]. The resultant slick did the job. We would move very little, maybe a knot in >50 knots of wind. We don't carry anemometers so everything was an estimate but be assured foam was blowing off the wave tops.
[This would be in effect the same as the Pardey bridle or our own use of a Galerider.]
The biggest problem on an offshore dragger is the paravane booms. You must keep them out of the water and keep from rolling down too far or they would want to nest in the rigging on the opposite roll. They are usually lashed down to the rail but the lever is minimal compared to force of wave and gravity and the attachment point would part away.
I never once felt my crew and I were in danger while laying-to as I describe. The power of the sea commands a lot of respect; it can be awesome as you know.
As an aside, sometimes we would collect a deck full of puffins. They would gather at the stern under the deck lights presumably because it was calmer and some fish scraps would wash off the deck. Anyway the seas would wash them one at a time up over the checkers until we had dozens crouched down in the corners under the bulwarks. Getting them back in the water was always a big chore because they couldn't stand and got pretty excited when man was present so we would wash them one at a time out the scuppers with the deck hose.
All this reminds me that I need to discover what works best for Sea Return. You really need bad weather to experiment and I always find some excuse not to test my plan.
Comment From New Zealand On Parachute Anchors
Our heavy weather series continues to attract interesting comments and suggested alternatives from experienced ocean voyagers. This one comes from Lane and Kay Finley who have a lot of ocean experience and make films about sailing, which are mostly sold in NZ and Australia. They also have a great web site with lots of good information.
During the filming we launched a parachute anchor according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. It was a rather breezy day, but not storm conditions. Even in these mild conditions, the strain and stress that was generated to our boat’s substantial deck fittings was huge. We came away wondering what vessel could stand up to a real storm when tied to one of these anchors.
We decided we would not carry one onboard as we would rather take our chances running with warps, as this has worked well for us in several situations in the past. However, to bring it [the sea anchor] aboard, we merely cast it loose and then motored around to the top of it and picked up the trip line, which was floated on a buoy. It came onboard with no trouble.
There are two interesting points in the above:
- It confirms our concerns about the stresses imposed by sea anchors.
- Casting off the main warp prior to picking up the trip line will reduce the chances of a tangle or getting a line around the rudder or propeller and makes a lot of sense.
Lane and Kay go on to say:
Just a note on warps and drogues: We have an 18mm (3/4”) garden hose onboard that is 25 meters long. When we begin sliding down the front of 10 meter seas we take the coiled up hose with the two ends threaded together, pass a 200 meter nylon rode through the coil and throw it off the stern with one end of the line on the starboard primary winch and the other end on the port primary winch. Because the garden hose has no flat surfaces (like a tire) it lies just under the surface of the water, does not have to be weighted and will not pop out and skip. It slows the boat down to around four knots and gives us complete control. There is no worry about chafing because, well it’s a garden hose.
When we want to bring it in, or adjust the length, we just wind in on the primary winches and because the line is in a loop, there is a two to one purchase in our favour. When we get to the next port, we use it to wash the boat down and fill our water tanks. Don’t laugh— it’s the best drogue we have ever found! We used it in the Queen’s Day Storm in 1994, 85 knots and 16 metre seas. [One of the worst storms to hit a fleet of sailboats in history.] It worked a treat...
Who would have thought, a garden hose! Just shows that being innovative
and keeping the goal in mind, rather than fixating on gear, can solve a
lot of problems offshore.
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