How Do You Anchor In Deep Ocean?

[roberthowell]

did not see sea anchor listed will slow you to a crawl

[RaymondR]

There are a couple of deep water core sampling vessels, one of which is the "Joides Resolution" operated by the Woods Hole Oceaneering Institute, which anchor in the mid oceans in order to take core samples. These stay on station using a combination of sonar buoys and satellite navigation for position location and thrusters to correct for drift from the derived location. This is also the technique used by dynamically positioned oil drilling vessels.

[alctel]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Effective radar guard zones ENORMOUSLY enhance watchkeeping offshore.

Any interest in writing a post about setting up efficient radar guard zones?

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by h20man

Mr Andrew Evans (the author of the aforementioned book) also has been very generous and has a FREE PDF version that one can download from the Single Handed Sailing Society (another great web site, not about one armed sailors, rather a captain with no crew....:

Singlehanded Sailing: Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics by Andrew Evans.

Andrew Evans is a member of CF and posts under the forum name Foolish Muse. His book is good reading, full of insights into singlehanded sailing, including his own experience (800 times, 3500 hours singlehanded) and the experiences of other singlehanded sailors.

It is well worth the small price ($14 Paperback edition). It is available on amazon in two editions, paperback or kindle.

Get the latest edition (Sept 2014) as it contains new additional content over the earlier PDF version that was distributed for free online. The 2014 edition is also available as a kindle version ($13).

While you may still be able to find the free (earlier) version online, I encourage anyone to spend a little to compensate Andrew for writing such a good and helpful book.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N9ICA12...ng=UTF8&btkr=1

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by alctel

Any interest in writing a post about setting up efficient radar guard zones?

Sure. There's not much too it -- pretty common sense.

Your goal is to get warning when something is out there -- early enough to evaluate the target (generally, find it visually) and take action, but without covering such a wide area that you get a lot of false alarms.

My radar (Navico 4G) can set up to 4 guard zones, but 2 have always been enough for me. I set up a circular one generally 1 mile in diameter, and with a sector-shaped one maybe 2 miles out. You adjust the depth of them so they're not too deep but not too shallow, and the width of the sector-shaped one can also be adjusted.

The key to guard zones really helping you is avoiding false alarms without cutting the sensitivity so much that you start to miss things. My previous radar (old Raymarine Pathfinder) was pretty good in some respects, but was poor for this because it had poor discrimination and produced a lot of false alarms.

The new 4G radar has some weaknesses (principally poor bearing discrimination -- I've written about that), but has superb signal processing and is amazingly free of false alarms so really good for guard zones.

So the radar becomes something like an extra crewman who never blinks, and screams if something gets within a mile of your, or a couple miles ahead (or you get within). The radar in essence does what human beings simply cannot -- stare out at the empty ocean without blinking, 24/7.

It picks up virtually everything you could detect with your eyes in daylight, even crab pots (in reasonable sea conditions). At night of course or in fog it's much better than your eyes. In rain, it doesn't work as well, and obviously when the sea gets up, its effectiveness goes down.

Of course in any case it is no substitute for a visual watch, but it enormously enhances the visual watch. We try to do a complete horizon scan every 15 minutes, but what happens in the other 14 minutes?

This is no good in crowded inshore waters, but the problem doesn't exist there -- in crowded inshore waters someone needs to be staring out practically without blinking, and it's not that hard to do when there is in fact a lot of traffic around.

Hope this is helpful.

[Steadman Uhlich]

Originally Posted by jackdale

Anyone contemplating single handing should read:

FindACase™ | GRANHOLM v. THE VESSEL TFL EXPRESS

JACKDALE,
Thanks for posting this link. I enjoyed reading it and found it informative about the process of investigating and trying the collision case.
______

I found this section from the case particularly interesting and pertinent to this thread's main thrust about single handing risk:

"

The charge against plaintiff of improper lookout does not depend solely upon his decision to go below.Accepting as I do his testimony that the impact occurred less than thirty minutes after Granholm went below, his failure to observe the lights of the oncoming EXPRESS is inexplicable and inexcusable.

Defendants' expert witness Hardy testified, and I accept, that on a clear night the navigation lights of the EXPRESS should have been visible up to fourteen miles away. We may reduce that distance to ten miles; even then, at the EXPRESS's speed of eighteen knots her lights would have been visible to Granholm for 33 minutes prior to collision, assuming the CAMERA was making no headway at all. The EXPRESS's light should have been visible to Granholm before he went below. And Granholm was obligated in the circumstances to occasionally scan around the horizon, including astern, an obligation he recognized by doing so before going below. Cf. Stevens v. United States Lines Co., 187 F.2d 670, 674-75 (1st Cir. 1951)."

_________

RADAR?

Something else I noticed in that case was the admission by the captain of the merchant vessel that even though they had two RADAR units aboard the ship, only one was turned on, and it was only in standby mode. That is, it was NOT scanning for ships and therefore not showing anything on its monitor (so no sailboat RADAR reflector would be seen). Just because the merchant vessel is equipped with RADAR does not mean it is being used actively and monitored by the crew.

According to the captain's testimony, this was standard operating procedure or policy of that vessel. The justification was that the RADAR set has a finite operating life and to preserve its functioning for when it is really needed during poor visibility or heavy traffic, it is turned on to just be in STANDBY mode, without any display of surface objects (boats), when the vessel is operating on the open ocean.

Why is that significant?
To me it indicates that a sailor cannot assume that the merchant vessels will have a RADAR set ON (scanning) and a crew member monitoring the RADAR when the vessel is on the open ocean outside of heavy traffic areas and during clear visibility.

That places more importance on the sailor having other means (e.g. AIS transceiver) of letting the big ships know the sailor is there and a more defensive "watch" to avoid collisions from the large vessels that may not see the sailboat's tiny lights.

Or, as DOCKHEAD has written about above, using your own RADAR to establish some guard zone to alert the sailboat crew to the presence of a ship within dangerous proximity.

As the court case illustrates, a merchant vessel traveling at 18 knots does not allow much time for the sailor to respond as that large vessel can be on top of the sailor in 30 minutes or less.

[buzzstar]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

A very interesting and informative case on several different levels, and not just from the point of view of single handing.

Note that although the yacht was run down by the ship from behind, and the yacht was under sail, the yacht was still 50% liable for the accident.

This really drives home the point that being a stand-on vessel is nothing like having right of way. The yacht was responsible for keeping watch and taking its own avoiding action, and failing to do so made it just as responsible as the give-way vessel for the accident.


On a practical level -- if either vessel had had AIS and/or radar guard zones in operation, the accident would not have happened. The ship was also not keeping a constant 24/7 staring out at the horizon watch. I asserted in a previous post that no one does in the open ocean. To avoid this kind of accident, you really need effective electronic assistance.

I cannot disagree except on one small point: In the second line of the last paragraph, change "would" to "might" or perhaps to ""should."

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

This really drives home the point that being a stand-on vessel is nothing like having right of way. The yacht was responsible for keeping watch and taking its own avoiding action, and failing to do so made it just as responsible as the give-way vessel for the accident.

The only place I have ever seen the term "right of way" is in US Inland Rules and of course the curriculum of every junior sailing school.

[Sofie B]

Originally Posted by John_Trusty

I'm surprised that no one has brought up the bible of solo sailing yet: Singlehanded Sailing: Thoughts, Tips, Techniques & Tactics by Andrew Evans, posts as and sails Foolish Muse. This will answer all your questions, and ones that you never would have thought of. It's also an enjoyable read.

So, kindle ?
Maybe read it before one sets sail solo eh? Jus' sayin'

[alctel]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Sure. There's not much too it -- pretty common sense.

Your goal is to get warning when something is out there -- early enough to evaluate the target (generally, find it visually) and take action, but without covering such a wide area that you get a lot of false alarms.

My radar (Navico 4G) can set up to 4 guard zones, but 2 have always been enough for me. I set up a circular one generally 1 mile in diameter, and with a sector-shaped one maybe 2 miles out. You adjust the depth of them so they're not too deep but not too shallow, and the width of the sector-shaped one can also be adjusted.

The key to guard zones really helping you is avoiding false alarms without cutting the sensitivity so much that you start to miss things. My previous radar (old Raymarine Pathfinder) was pretty good in some respects, but was poor for this because it had poor discrimination and produced a lot of false alarms.

The new 4G radar has some weaknesses (principally poor bearing discrimination -- I've written about that), but has superb signal processing and is amazingly free of false alarms so really good for guard zones.

So the radar becomes something like an extra crewman who never blinks, and screams if something gets within a mile of your, or a couple miles ahead (or you get within). The radar in essence does what human beings simply cannot -- stare out at the empty ocean without blinking, 24/7.

It picks up virtually everything you could detect with your eyes in daylight, even crab pots (in reasonable sea conditions). At night of course or in fog it's much better than your eyes. In rain, it doesn't work as well, and obviously when the sea gets up, its effectiveness goes down.

Of course in any case it is no substitute for a visual watch, but it enormously enhances the visual watch. We try to do a complete horizon scan every 15 minutes, but what happens in the other 14 minutes?

This is no good in crowded inshore waters, but the problem doesn't exist there -- in crowded inshore waters someone needs to be staring out practically without blinking, and it's not that hard to do when there is in fact a lot of traffic around.

Hope this is helpful.

Thanks - I have the Navico 3G. The part I find tricky is getting rid of the false alarms when I practice with it - though a lot of the boats I am trying to pick up are small runabout types, which give off a lot less radar signal than a tanker I expect!

[tdominic_97]

A Sky hook would solve all your problems when mid ocean.

[Jim Cate]

My radar (Navico 4G) can set up to 4 guard zones, but 2 have always been enough for me. I set up a circular one generally 1 mile in diameter, and with a sector-shaped one maybe 2 miles out. You adjust the depth of them so they're not too deep but not too shallow, and the width of the sector-shaped one can also be adjusted.

G'Day DH,

None of the radars that i have had seem to work well in guard mode. The issues of sensitivity vs false alarms have been insuperable for me. It is good to know that some of the more modern ones are better.

But I'm a little surprised at your reliance on a one mile alarm. In your many posts about collision avoidance you often stress the need for early action, and that once one is close to a speeding ship one's options range from limited to none at all. One mile, positing a twenty knot closing speed (not too unreasonable) gives only three minutes to wake up, look at the radar and then the real world and then to take avoiding action... kinda cutting it close IMO.

So, I wonder how you came to that practice?

Jim

PS AIS relieves a lot of worry about interactions with ships. Out off soundings I worry more about fishing vessels.. but at least they don't tend to move very fast!

[Foolish]

Hi guys, thanks for mentioning my book. There is a slightly newer edition of the free version of my book available at:
http://sfbaysss.org/resource/doc/Sin...rdEdition2.pdf
The older edition of the free version is stuck in an old corner of the SFBaySSS website that no one can find, so it will sit there forever. But I hope you'll refer to the newer edition when you can.
And yes there is the published edition (with 40,000 extra words) that has been mentioned several times in this thread.

The choice you use to "anchor" when singlehanding depends a lot on your location and situation. There is a big difference between sailing in the English Channel where ships pass every 3 minutes, and sailing from the U.S. to Hawaii where you will only see two or three ships over the entire voyage.

In the former you need to pull out of the shipping lanes and stop your boat near dead by heaving to. More likely that you just keep sailing until you get across the channel to your destination, or you use the 20 minute nap method mentioned elsewhere. But your location in relation to the well established shipping lanes will be the deciding factor.

When you are in the open Pacific ocean, the odds of hitting another ship are extremely low, so most people don't even worry about it at all. And they just set their autopilot to keep sailing at full speed. AIS and Radar with warning alarms are useful, but will mostly just keep waking you up with ships that are passing miles away. Once I'm offshore, I just sleep until I wake up; sometimes its in 20 minutes and sometimes its in 3 hours or when a wave splashes over the boat and drenches me in my bunk. I don't have an AIS or Radar or anything other than a radar reflector.

The other factor is the weather. My good friend Jeanne Socrates is currently the oldest woman to have circumnavigated, and is leaving in a week to become the oldest person to do it (at age 74). She is docked at my club right now. She often heaves to when the weather gets rough or if she just wants to rest. She also uses a Jordan series drogue when she's in the southern ocean and wants to slow her boat down. My research indicates that using a sea anchor to stop you completely is not a good idea. Rather you want to use a Jordan series drogue to slow you down but keep enough way on to maintain steerage.

Jeanne is also a keen user of AIS. She is known to yell at ships over the radio telling them they are on track to run her down, even if they are still 10 miles away. She doesn't stop until she can see a definite course change on her AIS.

Regarding the legal issue of keeping watch, really this is only discussed by non-singlehanders. Those of us who do overnight singlehanded voyages understand the risks and we understand the rules, but we just do it anyway. It's not something we fret about. I've never heard of a ship suing a sailboat for the scratch in their hull.

A particular issue that you have not brought up is what I call "the 3am effect." This is the groggy state you are in, unable to make any decisions or judgements, in the middle of the night. It was under this state that Jessica Watson ran into a ship off Australia. You can read about the 3am effect condition in the published edition of my book. Or you can find the Australian Safety Board report on Jessica's collission here: Investigation: 268-MO-2009-008 - Collision between Silver Yang and Ella’s Pink Lady off Point Lookout, Queensland, 9 September 2009

By the way, I'm now well over 1,000 singlehanded days of sailing, including more than 300 races. Wear your harness!

[nicholastanguma]

Originally Posted by Foolish

Hi guys, thanks for mentioning my book. There is a slightly newer edition of the free version of my book available at:
http://sfbaysss.org/resource/doc/Sin...rdEdition2.pdf
The older edition of the free version is stuck in an old corner of the SFBaySSS website that no one can find, so it will sit there forever. But I hope you'll refer to the newer edition when you can.
And yes there is the published edition (with 40,000 extra words) that has been mentioned several times in this thread.

The choice you use to "anchor" when singlehanding depends a lot on your location and situation. There is a big difference between sailing in the English Channel where ships pass every 3 minutes, and sailing from the U.S. to Hawaii where you will only see two or three ships over the entire voyage.

In the former you need to pull out of the shipping lanes and stop your boat near dead by heaving to. More likely that you just keep sailing until you get across the channel to your destination, or you use the 20 minute nap method mentioned elsewhere. But your location in relation to the well established shipping lanes will be the deciding factor.

When you are in the open Pacific ocean, the odds of hitting another ship are extremely low, so most people don't even worry about it at all. And they just set their autopilot to keep sailing at full speed. AIS and Radar with warning alarms are useful, but will mostly just keep waking you up with ships that are passing miles away. Once I'm offshore, I just sleep until I wake up; sometimes its in 20 minutes and sometimes its in 3 hours or when a wave splashes over the boat and drenches me in my bunk. I don't have an AIS or Radar or anything other than a radar reflector.

The other factor is the weather. My good friend Jeanne Socrates is currently the oldest woman to have circumnavigated, and is leaving in a week to become the oldest person to do it (at age 74). She is docked at my club right now. She often heaves to when the weather gets rough or if she just wants to rest. She also uses a Jordan series drogue when she's in the southern ocean and wants to slow her boat down. My research indicates that using a sea anchor to stop you completely is not a good idea. Rather you want to use a Jordan series drogue to slow you down but keep enough way on to maintain steerage.

Jeanne is also a keen user of AIS. She is known to yell at ships over the radio telling them they are on track to run her down, even if they are still 10 miles away. She doesn't stop until she can see a definite course change on her AIS.

Regarding the legal issue of keeping watch, really this is only discussed by non-singlehanders. Those of us who do overnight singlehanded voyages understand the risks and we understand the rules, but we just do it anyway. It's not something we fret about. I've never heard of a ship suing a sailboat for the scratch in their hull.

A particular issue that you have not brought up is what I call "the 3am effect." This is the groggy state you are in, unable to make any decisions or judgements, in the middle of the night. It was under this state that Jessica Watson ran into a ship off Australia. You can read about the 3am effect condition in the published edition of my book. Or you can find the Australian Safety Board report on Jessica's collission here: Investigation: 268-MO-2009-008 - Collision between Silver Yang and Ella’s Pink Lady off Point Lookout, Queensland, 9 September 2009

By the way, I'm now well over 1,000 singlehanded days of sailing, including more than 300 races. Wear your harness!

Andrew, the great singlehander himself! Thanks for your lengthy reply, it was extremely useful. I'm greatly enjoying your book: somehow I feel simultaneously more stupid and less stupid as I read. Cheers, mate!

[roverhi]

The only time I've come close to being rundown, and it was damn close, was off Santa Barbara. We were sailing a direct course for Newport Beach at less than 3 Knots crossing the shipping lane for ships leaving LA Harbor for points west. Running very bright running lights, those old high wattage Aqua Singles rated for boats up to 60' or so. Wife was on watch and I was down below sleeping after being up for 72 hours sailing down from SF. She saw the ship coming but didn't realize how fast it was steaming directly at our beam. When she finally got concerned enough to wake me it was almost too late. I came on deck and saw this huge mother about to t-bone us. Put the helm over and did a 180, sheeted in the jib and was surfing down the bow wave of the ship. Probably missed being rammed by less than 50'. We had a flat plate radar reflector in the rigging and the brightest running lights you could buy at the time yet that freighter didn't see us. They couldn't have had their radar on or they weren't looking at it or been keeping any kind of a visual watch.

Don't assume a ship will make an effort to look out in front of them. Even with AIS and radar, wouldn't assume that you are safe. You are most likely putting your life in the hands of some 3rd world sailor whose biggest claim to fame is he is a steady worker with a paint brush. Thats not to say that all, a majority, or very few ships don't maintain a good watch. Have been in other situations where the ship took evasive maneuvers to avoid me even though I thought they were not a danger.