One thing I have learnt from this thread is the number of experianced sailors who strongly believe heaving too is safer than running off under bare poles. I might have to revisit heaving too, though the couple of times I have tried in in bad weather, it didn't really fill me with any confidence, and in the bigger waves the boat always seemed to end up near enough to beam on that practically it seemed much like lying a
hull with a bit of steadying sail to stop the rolling.
I have heard talk about being able to hold the bow up to somewhere like 30-60 degree's off the wind when hove too. But my experience was more like 60-90 degrees on a fin keeler with big
roller furler forward, and just a deep reefed main set. Prehaps a trysail would have helped, but I doubt it. In bigger seas the shear size of the wave face will always overpower any sail effect especially when in the disturbed air in the troughs, on the wave crests the boat would pivot around nicely into the wind and feel overpowered, but you really want her to do that in the trough's.
I guess this is why the Pardys started using a small
sea anchor on a bridal to prevent the bow from falling off in bigger seas. This seems like a very good way to ride out a blow, but it does rely on a fair bit of highly loaded
gear.
For me forereaching has always been my goto when I want to make ground that way, (or don't want to loose to much ground to leeward). It gets pretty uncomfortable, and is hard on the boat and crew, but to me I feel less of a sitting duck than if I was hove too.
One blow I am thinking off was on a
delivery from Nelson to Hobart in
winter on a well set up S&S 34. We had a small mid tasman low come through south of us so we slugged it out forereaching as long as we could, under 3 reefed main and storm staysail. In the end as the wind rose to about 35-40 knots from the westsouthwest this just got too brutal, launching of the tops of the crests, and landing with a solid crash. We were overpowered on the crests anyway, so I dropped the storm staysail thinking to heave to under just the main but she just wouldn't hold her
head up properly no matter what I did with the sheet or tiller. The seas, though big did not seem dangerous, so we stayed like this for 8 hours or so until the wind backed to south and started easing. This kind of put me off heaving too. In retrospect I would have been better off to have dropped the main and continued forereaching under the just the storm staysail. Had it got any worse or if the seas had started breaking I would have run off but I didn't want to loose any hard won westing.
I suspect the rules change a fair bit with bigger
boats,
sails stay up in clear air longer, and the extra stability means you can carry more sail, for longer, so maybe heaving too works in a much higher wind range hence Skip Novaks endorsement.
Unlike a lot of people (it seems) I have no real issue running off under bare poles (or as I normally do with a tiny scrap of headsail strapped in tight) as long as the boat seems to be
steering well. I've done it many times without any issues or broaching problems. It's always seemed comfortable and safe, and it makes it very easy to deploy a drogue if it gets worse. But I may have to go back and give heaving too another try.
I guess "heave to vs run off?" is in the same league as "what
anchor is best?". One thing I try not to do is get too dogmatic about any storm tactic. The most experianced sailor I know survived a very serious storm deep south lying ahull. He had tried running off, heaving too, warps. In the end she lay safely beam on effectively hove to by just the windage of her masts. Not textbook but in this instance it worked for him when nothing else would.
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