Drogues or sea anchor or neither

[mikereed100]

Originally Posted by Paul Howard

I have only used a sea anchor once during a NE gale while on passage from Labrador to Iceland. It was a large (26ft diameter when inflated) former navy cargo parachute and it worked a treat. deployed for about 28hours, lost only about 11miles, retireved when the wind went down and went positive. Sailing a 39ft, catamaran, about 19,000lbs displacement. Waves broke at the parachute with about 600ft of line, including about 30ft of chain. eating and sleeping was comfortable, curiously, hundreds of seabirds landed in the slick behind us as they took advantage of the flat water.

Paul,

That's a great account and valuable information. Have you considered posting on the Drag Device Database?

Victor Shane's Drag Device Data Base | Using Parachutes, Sea Anchors and Drogues to Cope with Heavy Weather – Over 130 Documented Case Histories

There is a lot of misinformation about parachute anchors on forums, but precious little first-hand experience.

[Fi2010]

The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard purchase para-anchor setups from our company and not the JSD. Does this mean the Para-Anchor is a better choice? Of course not. It really is personal preference.

Each device has it's pros and cons. Boat design can factor into it as mentioned in the USCG report. Flat transom boats don't fair well with a deployed JSD, but canoe stern boats are fine. In some situations it's better to keep the boat moving and not deploy a para-anchor or JSD. There's a reason why there's more speed-limiting drogue suppliers than para-anchor or JSD suppliers.

[Fi2010]

Victor Shane is our competitor who chose to omit our company from his book for unknown reason. The person who took over the web version promised to be more balanced. Not seeing that happen. We still recommend the book for its testimonials. You can learn a lot from them. However, we feel some of Shane's opinions about rigging are inaccurate. We learned from the commercial fishermen whom we feel have more real world experience when it comes to rigging drag devices. All of our research has been modeled from their work.