In-Depth, Heavy Weather Tactics, Part III
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
Jordan Drogue Retrieval System
In the last post I wrote about our deployment system for our new Jordan Series Drogue on Morgan’s Cloud. In this post I’m going to look at how we are going to get the damned thing back aboard after the storm.
You would think that the first place to look for a solution to this challenge would be the manufacturer or designer of the drogue system. Well, afraid not. While the information provided with the Jordan Drogue is generally far better and more realistic than that provided by their competitors, even Jordan has punted on this important issue. He does provide one example, but it is for a 26 foot boat.
To try and determine what retrieval would be like, we did the following experiment with Morgan’s Cloud: While motoring at 1200 rpm—not much over idle and our best guess at the forward speed of the boat in say 30 knots of wind at the end of a storm—we tried to grind in the drogue using one of our powerful three-speed Lewmar 65 sheet winches. We learned the following:
- I could not budge the handle in the first two speeds.
- In the third and most powerful speed, the load felt equivalent to grinding in the last few inches of our jib when going to windward in 20 knots of true wind. Something that I can just manage, and not too often thank you.
- After grinding in about 10 feet I was pretty much done in, with 30 feet (9 meters) to go before the first cones would come out of the water thereby reducing the load, and 350 feet (106 meters) to go before completion.
- Despite being strong and 10 years my junior, Phyllis had trouble moving the handle at all.
We were fresh, well rested and in a flat calm bay. I would expect that after a blow and on a pitching deck our performance would be halved from that observed above. See this post.
Our conclusion is that any solution that requires manually grinding the drogue in on a winch is totally impractical for us. In addition, at 56 years old, 6’ 2” and 190lb with a reasonable level of fitness, I’m probably at the median for fitness and strength for cruising men and so I think this will be a common problem. As Phyllis found, women will typically have even more trouble since the amount of force that you can exert on a winch handle is substantially influenced by your weight.
Morgan’s Cloud weighs 52,000 lb (23,500 kg). My guess would be that, unless the crew is made up of Americas Cup grinders, the above conclusion would apply to any boat that weighs more than 20,000 lb (9000 kg) and maybe less than that. Keep in mind that as the boat gets smaller, so do the winches, thereby scaling the problem.
One option would be to wait for very calm weather and then retrieve the drogue with the boat stopped, but on Morgan’s Cloud we want to get sailing as soon as we can to get out of the way of the next blow. Also, there are few things more uncomfortable than wallowing around with too little sail up in the slop left over from a big blow.
To solve this problem we looked at and rejected two solutions:
- Fit at least one electric winch: Really expensive and would probably require upgrading our whole electrical system since electric winches work a lot better on 24 volts and we are 12 volt. Also, I don’t like electric sheet winches: they separate you from the loads on your boat and enable you to break things in truly spectacular ways.
- Lead the drogue to our powerful anchor windlass: Not very practical because of lead considerations and the amount of times a nipper line will be required before the drogue gets to the winch drum. Also, this moves the whole operation onto a pitching exposed foredeck rather than a nice secure cockpit. (Keep in mind that we want to do this when it is still blowing pretty hard.)
What we did do was to buy a 24 volt Milwaukee
right angle drill motor and a special
bit that fits in a standard winch socket to go in the chuck. This
whole rig cost us less than 10% of the cost of an electric winch and
it has plenty of other uses on our boat. Yes I know, I was skeptical
too, but this thing is miraculous: Using it we were easily able to grind
the whole drogue in under load in less than half an hour. Since its effective
length is about 60% more than a 10” winch handle, the torque load is
quite easy on the operator too.
There are a few things to know:
- You need several batteries so you won’t have to stop the retrieval to charge. In our case, three batteries do the job of retrieving our Jordan Drogue.
- In the early stages when the loads are high, it pays to stop for a minute or so every three minutes to let the drill cool. If the battery overheats, a safety will trip on that battery and only charging will reset it.
- The drill is not water proof. One good slop of salt water will probably ruin it.
The drill motor is only part of the total solution. How do you get the
heavily loaded drogue line to the winch? What about chafe as it comes over
the stern. Will the cones snag on things? We ran into all these challenges
in our experiments. I will write about our solutions to them in the next
post.
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Drogue Retrieval—The Devil is in the Details
In the last post in this series we talked about the difficulties in retrieving a Jordan Series Drogue and a way to make it practical using a drill motor and winch bit. However, that is only part of the solution. Like so many things in offshore sailing, the devil is in the details.
But before I get into that, a word of caution from a very experienced source:
I'm scared of the way you have tested the series drogue, particularly motoring ahead with the drogue out behind you and then trying to winch it in. I feel there is a potential life threatening load on the winch and blocks and if anything lets go, someone could be killed.
This quote came in an e-mail from Hal Roth. For those of you who don’t know of Hal, he is the author of 13 (soon to be 14) well respected books on offshore voyaging drawing from several hundred thousand miles of experience, including two single handed races around the world. This guy, together with his wife Margaret, has truly “been there and done that”.
However, based on nearly 100,000 miles of sailing Morgan’s Cloud, I was confident of her gear’s ability to take the loads—after all they were no higher than we typically see on our genoa or spinnaker sheets. However, Hal’s point is valid: the loads we are talking about here are potentially life threatening, so be careful. If you try the techniques we are discussing, think about every step and make sure that you don’t position yourself in the bight of a line or where a piece of gear that fails will hit you—this is just another good reason to practice retrieval before you have to do it when tired and seasick.
Now back to the details. When testing retrieval, the first challenge we were faced with was to get the heavily loaded series drogue line onto the winch. To make this easier, before deploying we tied a retrieval line (blue) to the point where the bridles and drogue line connect. We took this line to our largest sheet winch and ground it in until the bridles came tight, preventing further travel. We then used a nipper line (red), that we dead-ended at a massive chain plate, tied with a double rolling hitch (a single slipped) to the drogue line to take the load. Next, we moved the blue line down the drogue line for another haul. It took three iterations to get the drogue on the winch (it would be fewer on an aft cockpit boat).
By the way, a rolling hitch is probably the most useful of the four or so knots that we regularly use on Morgan’s Cloud. I like the second version in the linked Wikipedia description best. If you can’t tie a rolling hitch, or another equally effective constrictor knot, then we recommend that you learn. This knot can get you out of deep yoghurt. A double rolling hitch is simply two rolling hitches tied one after another with about a foot between them. In my experience, the rope will break before a double rolling hitch slips.
Other things we discovered during our testing:
- We need exactly four turns on the winch; less and the line will slip, more and the drogue cones will not strip off the winch.
- A second person must aggressively tail the winch to stop the cones fouling.
- The cones will hang up on any fitting in their path. That is the reason for the black sail tie on the aft cleat.
You
need a really large and well rounded fairlead with some way to capture
the line to stop it jumping out. Our fairleads were custom built to our
design some years ago as part of our rudder loss strategy and have fastpins
that capture the line. They worked great during our test with no hang
ups.
We are not suggesting that our system exactly as I have outlined it will work for everyone, or even anyone. Rather it highlights some of the challenges of drogue retrieval and can be a starting point for experimentation. Just remember that you need to solve these problems before you go to sea, not in big left over seas after a three day caning.
In the next
post we will look at an alternative retrieval system proposed by Hal Roth.
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Drogue Retrieval—An Alternative From Hal Roth
The last two posts in the series, in which we wrote about our solution for the retrieval of our Jordan Series Drogue, drew an interesting e-mail from Hal Roth, who did not like our solution because of the loads involved.
He was kind enough to share an excerpt from his upcoming book, to be published by International Marine in May, detailing the problems our mutual friends Willem and Corri Stein had retrieving a Jordan Drogue in the Southern Ocean (the event that inspired our own testing) and outlining his own retrieval idea. With Hal’s kind permission we are reproducing it below:
At the end of the day, the Steins, tired from steering and the violent motion, deployed their Jordan series drogue which had 150 small cones sewn along a one-inch polyester line 400 feet long with a 22-pound block of lead at the end. As soon as the drogue was out, Terra Nova's speed dropped to two knots, and she kept her stern nicely into the seas. Life became tolerable and allowed the crew to sleep.
"The next day the wind abated a bit, but the strain on the drogue was still too much to even think about getting it back on board," said Willem. There was a new problem. Due to the heavy pitching of the boat in the seaway, the bridle lines tangled around the water blade of the Aries wind vane gear. The Steins hoisted a storm jib which put more force on the drogue lines and kept them free of the water blade.
When the wind eased, the Steins tried to haul the drogue on board, but the task seemed impossible. "Even getting it around one of the sheet winches was such a dangerous exercise that I gave up after I nearly got one of my hands amputated," said Willem. The Steins might have been able to use their engine to back down a little on the drogue while they pulled it in, but the engine was out of order because water had run into the fuel tank during the knockdown a few days earlier.
Willem and Corri waited two more days for the sea to calm down. Finally in desperation they cut the lines to the drogue. I've sailed with Willem and Corri in Newfoundland and know they are tough, dedicated, experienced small-boat sailors. It must have been a hard decision to cut away the drogue which they had made with so much effort.
After thinking about this problem, I wonder if the following might be a solution? Run a 1/2-inch diameter recovery line from the anchor windlass at the bow outside the lifelines and back to the stern. Loosen one of the bridle lines (hitch on a short line and take it to a winch to pull some slack in the bridle line so you can disconnect the shackle from the chainplate) and attach the recovery line. Then let go the other bridle line. Now with the stern no longer fastened to the drogue, the boat should swing around 180° and drift downwind from the drogue, bridle, and recovery line. You will have to pay attention to the lead of these lines at the bow, but it should be possible to pull them straight in with the powerful windlass, whether it's operated by hand, an electric motor, or hydraulic power. I've never attempted this with a series drogue, but I think it or some variation is worth a trial
Anything to save fingers! Note that this scheme moves the recovery effort away from complications of a line around a spade rudder or the water components of a wind vane steering device. Additionally, the recovery effort at the bow eliminates problems of winching in the line in the cockpit with complications from the stern pulpit and other cockpit or transom gear.
In spite of these reports, other users of drogues write of simply pulling in the line by hand with no apparent difficulties. Obviously the recovery of drogues needs more investigation.
We think Hal’s idea makes a lot of sense although we would probably stick with our own plan, at least initially, since it keeps the operation in the security of the cockpit and does not require a turn into the wind and seas. Also, note that Hal's diagram specifies "light weather" not something we would necessarily want to wait for.
Another thought is that if we did try Hal’s method, particularly while
it was still blowing, we would hoist our triple reefed mainsail or storm
trysail before making the turn. This would allow the boat to lie heaved-to
and keep her steady while we retrieved the drogue over the bow. This would
be much like our technique for stopping
wave strikes when heaved-to.
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Yet More on Series Drogue Retrieval
We just received this e-mail from our friend Evans Starzinger, who, together with his partner, Beth Leonard, have just completed their second circumnavigation. This one west to east and south of the great capes on their Samoa 47 Hawk.
Someone sent me a link to your latest 'drogue retrieval' discussion and I thought I should mention something you might want to add into your thinking: That is the load on the [Jordan Series Drogue] rode is not at all static or steady. It's in fact very highly cyclic, being highly loaded when the bow is pointing down the face of a wave and lowly loaded when the bow is pointing up the back of a wave. This has two implications for retrieval:
- It's actually quite possible to 'manually' retrieve the rode by spinning the winch quickly for 3 or 4 turns during the low load portion of the cycle and resting during the high load portion of the cycle. Just as a second confirming opinion, Tony Gooch happened to be on Hawk yesterday. He used a series drogue several times during his southern [circumnavigation] solo record run. He had this exact same cyclic experience and in fact did not use a winch handle during the retrieval. He had 4 wraps on the winch, just held the line so it would not slip during the high load part of the cycle and pulled as fast as possible hand over hand during the low load portion. He tended to get going when the wind dropped to 30 to 35kts.T
- The cyclic loading is quite hard on electric drives. We were messing around with Steve Dashew’s series drogue and retrieving with a quite big/powerful electric winch in calm conditions but a big swell running. We quite quickly overheated the winch, because of the high loads while the swell was rising under the boat. The electric motors take time to spin up and down so it's not really practical/possible to run them only during the low load portion of the cycle.
My answer to Evans:
I take your point on the cycle loading. In our tests we were trying to simulate a worst case, which I think we did.
Our concern was based on the experience of our friends Willem and Corri Stein, who, even after waiting for two days for the weather to calm down, were unable to retrieve their Jordan Drogue and finally had to cut it away. They are really strong sailors too.
Also interesting about overheating the winch on Windhorse. Here I think the drill motor has an advantage since it is very quick to spin up and shut down. I can see being able to run it full out in the lulls, maybe even in the second (middle) speed on our three speed winch, and then stopping when the load comes on.
I still like the drill motor concept since, even if the load is much lower than in our test, it is going to be much less exhausting than cranking in the whole works by hand. My thinking is that anything that conserves the crew's energy offshore in heavy weather is a good thing—probably comes from being a woose!
And Evans’s further comments:
I think a strong battery drill is one of the most important and versatile tools on board, so the 24vt drill sounds like a great addition in any case, and having a winch drive socket for it only makes sense. Hopefully you will simply never have reason to discover if you need it to retrieve the drogue.
Your boat is quite a bit heavier than ours and carries more momentum, so probably accelerates and decelerates less in the wave cycles, so gets less 'benefit' from the low load portion of the cycle.
This is some really good input from a very experienced sailor and second-hand from a solo non-stop circumnavigator. The interesting thing is that Tony Gooch’s experience was completely different than that of Williem and Corri Stein related in this post. Does that make one of them wrong? Absolutely not; it just shows that there is no one right solution and that different boats and different circumstances can require very different solutions to what might appear to be the same challenge. We feel that it makes sense to be prepared for a worst case scenario, particularly when that preparation just means the acquisition of a relatively inexpensive electric drill, three batteries, and a winch bit; all of which will have many other uses.
It is also important to keep in mind that as the boat gets larger the series drogue must be longer. For example, ours is half as much again longer than that recommended for a boat the size and weight of Gooch’s or Evans'. Not only will this yield more load but there is more to grind in.
Cruising boats have got larger
in recent years but are often still crewed by one or two people who are
often in their late middle age. These trends demand a fresh look at tried
and proven techniques that are effective on smaller boats for younger and/or
tougher crews but that might be a stretch too far for aging wimps like
yours truly.
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Lee Shores
Lee shore. These two words have struck terror into the hearts of sailors for centuries. And justifiably too, since it is generally not the sea that kills sailors but the hard bits around the edges.
Several times in this series I have mentioned getting caught out some 20 years ago in an unforecast fast-developing low pressure storm (bomb) with Cape Hatteras under our lee. To make matters worse, at the time the storm hit we were still within the Gulf Stream, so the northeast wind against the north-going current produced very steep breaking seas. With the sands of the Cape less than 50 miles away, running off or heaving-to were not options. We had to claw off. We also needed to get east as quickly as possible to get clear of the Stream.
First we set a hanked-on storm staysail on an internal stay that I had just recently installed with massive reinforcing of the deck in the way of the tack, including a tie bar from the underside to the stem to take the load of the stay.
Our double-reefed mainsail was still way too much sail area for the winds that were blowing well over 45 knots and gusting much higher. However, to keep the boat’s head up we needed sail area aft of the mast. This meant we had to strike the main and set the storm trysail. This was a two hour struggle for three young and relatively strong men, mainly because the boat was not fitted with a separate storm trysail track meaning that we had to thread the trysail slides into a gate above the furled main while standing on the mast winches to get high enough. Added to the fun was the wildly flogging sail trying to take our heads off. While this was going on, the helmsperson kept the boat close to the wind using the engine, storm staysail and careful steering.
Rigged in this way and carefully steering by hand, with the helmsperson being relieved every 30 minutes, we were able to maintain a course just north of east (assisted by the Stream current), easily clear Hatteras and get clear of the Stream.
This was on the old Morgan’s Cloud, a Fastnet 45, with six strong, relatively young and experienced crew aboard. But what would happen to Phyllis and a 20 year older me double handed on our present Morgan’s Cloud—a McCurdy and Rhodes 56 that is just about twice the weight of the old boat—in the same situation? Would we have been able to rig the trysail? Would we have been able to steer in storm conditions for two days? I suspect not and being swept onto Diamond Shoals in those conditions would not be survivable.
In
the next post in this series I will write about the way we have used my
still vivid memories of that storm to make decisions about rigging and
equipping the present Morgan’s Cloud to help Phyllis and I survive a lee
shore.
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Equipment and Rigging to Survive
a Lee Shore
In the last post I wrote about the one and only time I have been caught on a lee shore in storm conditions. In this post I will cover the way we have equipped and rigged the present Morgan’s Cloud, using my still vivid memories of that storm, to give Phyllis and I, sailing double-handed, every chance of clawing off a lee shore.
First, we have three deep reefs in the mainsail together with a powerful and easy to use reefing system that allows us to rapidly tuck in all three reefs without any need to re-rig pennants. The triple reefed main is 200 sq ft, just a third of the mainsail’s full area, an amount that works well up to a little over 40 knots when sailing and in much higher winds when heaved-to.
Although, due to the above listed mainsail modifications, we have never used it on this boat, we have a massively strong storm trysail of 150 sq ft for use in higher winds than the main can stand to, or if the main is damaged—a common event in storm conditions.
But, as we covered in the last post, just having a storm trysail is not enough. If it is not properly rigged a short-handed crew will have a huge and possibly unsuccessful struggle to set it in storm conditions.
Before every offshore passage we load the trysail onto its own separate track, that runs almost to the deck, and then stow it bagged, with the sheets on, ready to go at the foot of the mast. We also have our mast fitted with a dedicated storm trysail halyard since a common reason for not being able to use the main is a broken or lost main halyard. To set the trysail all we need to do is hook on the halyard, run the sheets and hoist. We can even run it up inside or outside the mainsail (depending on the tack), which will keep the flogging down to a dull roar, and then drop the main after the trysail is set.
When evaluating your own boat’s storm trysail track, or fitting a new one, be aware that many or perhaps most, such tracks are totally inadequate for the task. This was graphically demonstrated to me as I watched a technician at a reputable mast manufacturer screw on a very light pressed-stainless track with light gauge machine screws and no backer plate to a new mast. The technician, when looking up and seeing what must have been a poorly disguised look of horror on my face, said apologetically, “Yeah, I know, we only put these on to satisfy the regulations”.
We had our own brush with an inadequate storm trysail track installation when, despite our specification that called for an installation that could withstand storm force conditions, GMT attached the track with screws threaded into less than ¼” of carbon, one of the many reasons we rejected that mast.
Our new Hall Spars carbon mast has a substantial Antal track fastened with machine screws through the mast and into a substantial aluminum backer plate. The Antal aluminum slides, webbed on at 12” intervals to reduce point loading, are also much stronger than those often used on trysails and have the added advantage of being fitted with easy sliding self-lubricating plastic inserts.
Finally, at least once a year we set the sail at the mooring
to make sure we have the process clear in our minds.
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Storm Survival Secret Weapon: Your Engine
In Lee Shores I wrote about the storm I got caught in 20 years ago with Cape Hatteras under our lee. One of the key ingredients to our recipe for successfully weathering the storm was our engine. For example, without the engine ticking over the helmsperson would never have been able to keep the boat close to the wind and slowly jogging ahead while I and two other crew struggled to set the trysail (see this post for ways to reduce the struggle of setting a trysail).
Imagine what it would have been like getting that sail set without the engine: The boat beam on to the waves, rolling wildly and being regularly swept by the Gulf Steam-induced breaking waves; never mind the risk of a broach or even a roll over. Running off was out since it would have used a significant part of our already dangerously slim offing from Diamond Shoals.
We used the engine several more times during the storm to help the helmsperson keep the boat close to the wind and making forward progress, albeit very slow, during the squalls that brought winds well over 55 knots.
Now let’s think about the even more important role of the engine if Phyllis and I, double handed, got caught on a lee shore: Being short handed, we would not be able to hand steer for two days, like we did fully crewed 20 years ago, and therefore the autopilot would need to steer most of the time.
But autopilots don’t steer well when the boat is slowly jogging into big seas and gusty winds. However, add the engine ticking over, and the effect on autopilot ability is miraculous, since the engine keeps a steady forward speed even as the wind varies dramatically as the boat passes from the trough to crest of waves. Now we would be able to cower under the dodger while making adjustments to the autopilot, a far less exhausting and therefore safer alternative to hours standing at the exposed wheel.
In that storm years ago, the Gulf Steam current was pushing us away from the lee shore and to windward, but suppose the opposite had been true? As anyone who regularly motor-sails will tell you, even a relatively small push from the engine has an amazingly positive effect on progress to windward—on Morgan’s Cloud we call this a “diesel induced lift”.
Another advantage to running the engine is that we would be able to adjust the boat’s sail amount to be comfortable in the highest prevailing wind speed in squalls knowing that the engine will provide steerage way and keep the boat’s head up in the lulls. And finally, with all this reliance on the autopilot we would need the engine to keep the batteries up.
But just having an engine is not enough (you knew I was going to say that didn’t you?). Here is what we have done on Morgan’s Cloud to make as sure, as we ever can with a mechanical device, that we will have a reliable engine to help out offshore when the chips are down:
- When we installed our present engine, some years ago, one of our selection criteria was that it have a deep oil sump providing a wide latitude in acceptable heel angle while running (35 degrees on our Cummins 6B). Even if your engine does not have this unusually high operating heel angle, you can manage this potential problem by knowing what the acceptable angle is, having an inclinometer mounted in the cockpit, keeping the sail amount moderate and luffing up, using the autopilot control, when the angle threatens to get too high.
- We are scrupulous about keeping our fuel tanks clean since one of the most common ways that an engine can be disabled offshore in heavy weather is by sediment stirred up by the motion clogging the filters. In fact we even have a fuel polishing system (upper right in the photo) using a small electric fuel pump to pump fuel through a separate filter before returning it to the tank. We run this system frequently, preferably when we are offshore and rolling around a bit, and particularly after a fuel fill or layup.
- We have a dry, but water jacketed, exhaust system that substantially
reduces the chances of water finding its way into the engine in a following
sea. Even if you don’t have a system like ours, and I’m not suggesting
that you go to the trouble of fitting one just for this reason, you should
think about whether the loop in your wet system is high enough, fix it
if it is not, and give serious consideration to fitting a valve just
before the exhaust outlet that can be turned off in heavy following seas.
Even with our dry system we have a valve for that purpose.
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Summary and Conclusions
The best things about this series for me have been the amount I have learned, by discussing strategy and gear with other sailors and reading other authors, and the way the process of writing it has clarified my own thinking. Here is a summary of my conclusions and how they relate to our strategy on Morgan’s Cloud:
No Epics Please, We’re Wimps
Any strategy that demands feats of endurance, such as steering for hours on end, is a really bad strategy for a short handed crew, and particularly for a late middle aged—like me but, of course, not like Phyllis—short handed crew. Even if such a strategy works, it is likely to leave the crew with no reserves of stamina to cope if something goes wrong.
Upside-Down Can Ruin Your Whole Day
Almost all heavy weather losses start with a knock down or roll over. You can come through some major SNAFUs in heavy weather, even a dismasting or a rudder loss, and still save your boat and your life, as long as the boat does not get rolled. Get rolled and there are almost always injuries, often serious. The next thing is abandonment and/or possible fatalities. On Morgan’s Cloud we focus first, last and all the time on staying upright.
Being Able to Heave-To is a Must
In this series I wrote a lot about running off with a Jordan Series Drogue, but I don’t want that to mask the fact that heaving-to, with or without a drogue, is our preferred tactic, the Jordan Drogue is just a backup. I’m not dogmatic about many aspects of heavy weather strategy, but one thing I do believe implicitly is that if you can’t heave your boat to, don’t go to sea and certainly not short handed.
It’s a Lot More About Gear and Handling than the Boat
Any boat, no matter how seaworthy and stable, will be knocked down or even rolled by a big enough wave, if caught in the wrong attitude. Yes, of course, buy a good seaworthy boat, but if you don’t have the right heavy weather gear and strategy, don’t expect the boat to protect you unassisted.
The Devil is in The Details
You need to really think about the details. It is amazing how often the sequence of events that leads to a disaster at sea starts with a small detail: perhaps a missing piece of chafe gear that results in the loss of a drogue that leads to a knock down that injures the crew…
You Have To Practice
If you have storm gear on your boat that you have never practiced with you are only about half way to a viable solution. You have got to try it. First at the dock, then in moderate winds, then offshore in a blow.
What Works on a 35’ Boat May Not Work on a 50’ Boat
Cruising boats have got a lot bigger in the last 20 years. Phyllis and I never assume that what has worked on a 35’ boat that weighs 15,000 lbs will work on Morgan’s Cloud at 56’ and 52,000 lbs. Both boats might be crewed by a couple with identical strength and experience but the loads on our boat will be as much as five times higher. What they can do by hand may easily be beyond us, even with the help of a massive three-speed winch. On the bright side, the motion on our boat will be less violent and she is intrinsically less likely to be rolled.
Running Off Without the Right Gear is Dangerous
Many boats that get knocked down or rolled were running off and in most cases the crews thought they had things well under control right up to the moment disaster struck. To stay safe you need to either heave-to, or deploy the right drogue, the minute things feel unstable or the waves start to break—when in doubt, stop or slow down.
Lying A-hull is Damned Dangerous
It is truly frightening how small a wave can roll a boat lying beam on to the sea without sail up.
Do This Stuff Right and Then Try to Stop Worrying
To close this series on a positive note: In about 100,000 miles of offshore sailing over 35 years, much of it in some of the world’s less hospitable places, I have experienced full gale or higher conditions at sea—I’m talking sustained winds, not a few gusts, a squall, or a quick frontal passage—less than two dozen times. And I have never felt that my survival was truly at risk, although it could have been on at least a quarter of those occasions if we had not been properly prepared.
So, for me, one of the biggest reasons for doing a really good job on heavy weather preparation is that it keeps my Wimp Within from worrying himself sick.
Thank You:
- To all the authors of the many heavy weather strategy and tactics texts I have read over the years.
- To the several very experienced offshore voyagers that gave input to this series including Colin Speedie, Evans Starzinger, Lin Pardey, Hal Roth, Bob Tetrault, Lane and Kay Finley, and Steve Dashew.
- To Phyllis, my partner in sailing and life, fellow wimp, editor and muse.
- To you, our readers who have followed the series.
Without the encouragement of steadily increasing readership I would not
have had the energy to write the many posts the series ended up being
comprised of.
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