Jordan Series Drogue or Heave to?

[jalmberg]

We have a JSD, but I doubt we will ever use it.

We practiced heaving to several times in strong winds, but the first time we had to do it for real was a few weeks ago, off Cape Hatteras. 45 knots sustained wind and 10 foot seas. Hove to with reefed mizzen alone, no other sails. Worked beautifully, but we have a long keel, Colin Archer type boat. The kind of boat that was designed to heave to, in other words.

A previous owner of our boat just emailed me to complain he could not get his new light weight Amel to heave to in a recent four day blow near the Azores. He was not happy and missing his old boat.

So, you have to get out there and find out what works for you.

[hpeer]

The one time I have to in earnest was a much more benign situation, I had managed to wrap my prop in a sheet and was dog tired. Off the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. Maybe 20-25 knots, seas 5-6. I needed sleep.

I was in our 33’ Brewer cutter, long fin keel, and I could not get her as much into the wind as I wanted. I carry a very small bank on staysail as a storm sail. I hanked it on my backstay, ran it up with the downhaul (boom in a gallows) and tied the toe down somehow. Worked nicely, pulled me up another 20-30 degrees.

[uncledom]

My first purchase was a JSD after MUCH research. I haven't had any problems so far, thank you, but every time I'm off shore that Drogue is ready. I think it's the safest option if it gets too hairy out there. Read the stories that are available supporting it's use. I think that it's technically the best thing for the boat. It stops it from running down a breaking wave and the boat moves forward through the water as she is meant to. Just my 2 cents.

[a64pilot]

Waves are energy moving through the water, not water moving.
Until they break, a breaking wave is moving water.
If I’m in breaking waves, I want the bow into the waves, so as you say the boat will move through the water as designed.

Only things I feel sure of is that laying ahull is not a tactic I would feel comfortable with, and that running without something to control speed is likely to lead to a broach, I’d assume on a dark night where you can’t literally see past the dodger.

Try this for grins, on a dark moonless night try hand steering when motoring with just the compass, put a cover on the plotter. Do this for a half hour or so, then uncover the plotter and look at your track.
I bet it looks like a drunk wallowing all over the place, and this is in relatively smooth water, think you can hold a compass heading in storm weather without something to steer to? I can’t, I’m sure of it.

[FranklinGray]

Seems there is some confusion with some readers....

There are two types of drogues:

1) the type you sail with like the Galerider. It is there to slow the boat down and help prevent broaching. Most believe a better version than warps but same concept.

2) the type that works like a sea-anchor but stern to. The series drogue, invented by Don Jordan usually called JSD (Jordan Series Drogue), is not designed to be sailed but the boat to be 'parked' until the storm is over. You do not use steering or your sails. Lash the helm to center, pull up your windvane and get some rest but recommend you keep a watch for ships. The drift speed on these is supposed to be about 2 knots (give or take a half a knot), same as a sea anchor and heaving too. All 3 (if heave-to is done correctly) will have the boat drift in the same direction at about the same speed.


As for heaving-to, many like to use this for winds way above the 40 knot limit some here state with good success. Sometimes a boat needs a little help to get the heave-to right, such as a drifter or sea-anchor off the bow.

I agree that what one picks if they have options is mostly dependent on what they are doing. If reaching and it gets nasty, then just heave-to. If running, then drop the sails and deploy the JSD if you got one. Lack of light usually makes us not want to make major direction changes and the winds always seem to hit me at night.

I would though, if I knew it was going to get real bad, use the JSD and hope no ships come my way because you will never get the JSD onboard in time to get out of the way of a ship. As far as I know, no boat has ever been capsized or damaged while sitting on a JSD. Some chafe and lose there JSD and then capsize though.

[a64pilot]

Here I thought the JSD was a slowing device, and the parachute essentially a stopping device. I thought the JSD was very similar to a gale rider, biggest difference is in the gale rider all your eggs are in one basket, whereas the JSD spreads the eggs out in many baskets.
Neither can completely stop of course there has to be a little movement to keep the chutes open.

[Hasbeen]

If you are lucky, & most are in this question, you will get to build up to a serious storm with many moderate storms to trial your ideas.


I cruised a fairly light very easily driven deep fin keel with a large keel hung large rudder yacht for many years. I had many encounters with storms, & built my ideas with each encounter.


The ultimate for me was the edge of a cyclone in the Solomon sea, between New Island & The Solomon islands. I had 50+ knots for 28 hours.


There is no way the yacht would have survived stern into that sea, unless surfing down the waves. Traveling slowly she would have sustained damage to the cockpit/aft cabin bulkhead. I doubt the rudder would have survived if the boat had been tethered bow to a sea anchor. I found an angle for the rudder that kept the boat beam on to the sea, & lay ahull.


Some waves, although not that many, broke right over the boat, but once I decided the low cabin was not going to be ripped off, the ride was not as bad as going to windward in the trades. The boat held an angle of heal from the wind on the mast, & did not roll very much. She did kind of surf sideways a couple of times, that was a bit frightening, & the cockpit was more or less full for about 20 hours.


The boat forereached at a little under 2 knots at about 40 degrees to her heading.


I would not want to do it again, but it was not as bad as I expected, so I was only frightened, not terrified.


This was not the big southern ocean, so probably not as bad as some have experienced, but I was pleased I did not have a highcabbin or large windows.

[a64pilot]

I still don’t understand how a 22,000 lb boat, tied to an 18’ sea anchor is going to be driven backwards with any appreciable speed? With 22,000 lbs on one end and an 18’ sea anchor on the other, we pretty much define irresistible force and immovable object don’t you think? Any real significant movement of an 18’ parachute will have forces so high that no line or attachment point is going to survive.
How fast do you have to backslide to damage a rudder? More than 5 kts?

Chute would have to come out of the water I would think.

[wingssail]

I chose heave to and particularly NOT a sea anchor.

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I still don’t understand how a 22,000 lb boat, tied to an 18’ sea anchor is going to be driven backwards with any appreciable speed?

Here is how: The sea anchor and the boat do not move in synch, the line goes slack between waves, then the boat can move astern on the next wave which results in strain on the rudder and BIG shock when the boat fetches up against the sea anchor. This is why many people have said they were happy when the sea anchor finally broke away.

We've sailed a lighter weight fin keel spade rudder boat for of 55,000 ocean miles over the last 20+ years. We never carried a sea anchor or a drogue (expense and lack of space and actually I was never convinced either was a great idea). And we never felt that we wished we had one.

We have heaved-to twice. We hove-to the first time basically as an experiment during heavy weather north of New Zealand to see if it was an option for us at that time (two days, 50+kts, significant waves). We'd been sailing upwind with small jib and three reefs but the boat was going too fast and the pounding as we came off the waves was un-endurable for us. We found that heaving-to was a very viable option if we wanted to use it but we chose to keep sailing, fore reaching under main alone, with the motor idling in gear to keep some speed on for steerage, and keep the heave-to option as a last resort. The wind vane was steering. This kept us progressing toward our destination and worked for 24 hours, then the wind freed and the conditions moderated and we resumed sailing.

A second time we hove-to was in the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and Luzon (50+ kts, huge waves). The boat had been sailing very slowly upwind with main alone and got too close to the wind and then stopped and knocked backwards by a big wave, at which point the wind vane was broken and unusable. So we hove-to until morning when we could start hand steering. It worked fine. (Our autopilot is not strong enough for those conditions)

So our strategy is this:

1. Stay out of storms. It is not hard if you are choosy about where and when you sail. (we've never been anywhere near hurricane strength winds, we've neve been in any conditions when we couldn't move about on deck to handle sails or when we couldn't continue sailing.)

2. Reduce sail and keep sailing if you can, upwind is much better (because it is slower) than downwind.

3. Heave-to if you need to. If our boat can do it, probably any boat can.

4. Rig warps with anything you can put on them if you feel you need to go downwind under bare poles.

5. Spend less time obsessing about how to survive a hurricane and more about how to avoid one and how to sail when the conditions are bad.

[hpeer]

A64,
In breaking waves, wave fronts are pushing you in the direction of the wave. So a wave going from N to S is pushing you S. Holding your bow into the wave is about like bashing instead of running off.

I have an old school cc with a tapered transome, it rides up over the wave fronts, then you slide down. I don’t know how a modern sugar scoop aft cockpit would handle this, some say OK, others say you get wet a lot.

My understanding is you want run down wind progressively shedding sail so you don’t exceed hull speed. But not so slow as to let yourself be progressively pooped. This is the situation on the down side of a storm, no wind yet big waves.
1. Run down wind
2. Deploy speed limiting device (e.g. Galerider) ADd sail if you slow below say 3 knots
3. If speed keeps building then resort to a more aggressive drogue (e.g. JSD). Or add a second drogue.
4. If still not enough, batten down, drink, pray.

All of this presumes you have sufficient sea room.

The problem with parachute in bow is the force can separate the line or pull the bow off. In any case it is supposed to be damn uncomfortable.

HPeer, I.E. ( Internet Expert)

Seriously, this is just my understanding.

There is a situation where you may wish to deploy a drogue from the bow explained in Attainable Adventures/Morgan’s Cloud web site. It is intended to help a boat heave to. If things further deteriorate then you can move the drouge to the stern.

I use a SO device which is 100% effective in avoiding such weather. (SO = Significant Other)

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Indeed. ESPECIALLY if you have some crap hung out over your stern like solar panels, davits, etc. (which you should rip off if you want your boat to be truly ready for storm conditions), is inherently unstable.

This (above) is the most important comment on this thread. Most, indeed the vast majority of, boats these days have huge arches on the back with dingy's solar panels, and lots of other stuff. This is weight aloft, weight in the stern and windage, none of which helps your boat sail and is a strong disadvantage in heavy weather. Add to it two 85 lb anchors on the bow, 300' of 3/8 chain, in a locker in the bow, decks covered with jerry cans, and kayaks and paddle boards on the railing, boxes of gear lashed to the cabin top, it's no wonder that most of these boats are motored everywhere they go; they can hardly sail.


Put one of these boats in a bad storm and they will be telling tales (if they survive) about how they nearly died, how the captain was forward trying to re-secure the junk which had gotten loose, and how they'll never go to sea again. On the other hand, a well maintained and properly set-up for going to sea yacht, with clear decks, less weight in the ends and minimum windage, will keep sailing and get you home in better shape. The crews of those yachts will be telling tales of how they made it through with no problem.

We need to think more about how to be sea-worthy and sailable and less on how to pack everything under the sun onto our yachts.

[a64pilot]

I have done a lot of reading on the drag database of accounts of people riding one out behind a Parachute, I have yet to read an account of the line going slack and snatching, and being glad when it broke away.
I have read of accounts of the Boat yawing back and forth, and how adding rode increased or lessened this yawing, but that not going so slack that the boat is thrown backwards.

I agree with the windage aft, and that is me, although the fuel jugs can and would most likely break away with little damage, all that is holding them on is a bungee cord.
The panels and dinghy aren’t so easily lost, and their windage is one reason I don’t want to be arse into the wind, Dodger and Bimini can withstand a lot of wind as can the panels if it’s from a forward quarter, not so much from the aft quarter.

I think Boat design has a whole lot to do with how you engage a storm if you will, I for example would not want to be coming off the top of a wave in 80 kt winds in a Catamaran with the bow 30 degrees high, both I think very likely numbers, but in my old design full keel, it is how I would want to be coming off a wave. I won’t fly and can bury my bow deep and not be bothered with water, she can take an enormous amount of water over the bow and shed it off.
The Cat I would think should run off, Me, I’m not so sure.

[hpeer]

I struggle with this. Our boat is pretty simple compared to many we still have too much stuff on the arch. 630 watts of solar, wind generator, outboard. Porta-Boat on the life lines. Everyone thing else can be taken off: lines and fenders mostly.

I’ve come to accept that we are a SRV. (Sailing RV). But it is our home, so we tread a line line. I’m where I want to find stuff to remove rather than stuff to add.

[hpeer]

Dodger and Bimini are expendable. If I KNEW a bad storm was coming I might take them down before hand. When I took the big boat North with overly ambitious plans (not fulfilled) I took the bimini off before leaving.

(LOL...thank dog I caught the spell check error.....”took the BIKINI off..”

[a64pilot]

Bimini I agree with take it off and it ought not be too hard.
Dodger, I want to keep it, it’s small and can handle a lot of wind from the bow, but only a hard dodger and maybe not all of them can from astern would be my guess. But the dodger is what keeps me from standing in a fire hose.