Heaving-to myths.

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by Dulls

Heaving to

My limited experience is this.
Heaving too for cup of tea in moderate to light winds dozens of times.

Heaving to for practice for real heavy weather a couple of times per year if that.

Heaving to for real mid ocean (Tasman) 3 times.

My information is useful if you have a long keel with a cut away fore foot. I have no idea about other keel configurations. Even identical boats may heave to differently and i will explain why. You may have more protective covers in and around the cot pit than another identical boat thus changing your windage.

Preparation is important. Before you leave (A minimum list)

1)Sea Anchor in locker with 100m of nylon already attached. All you then have to do is crawl up with one part of the rope to join to bridal or what ever configuration reduces chafe.

2)Tri sail ready to go at foot of mast. I could not do this because of my mast set up. It was a bugger to crawl along the lee deck with it but i had no choice. It stayed in the bag for obvious reasons until i could put it in the track. I did have a separate track for it and that is very important. We hauled up the tri sail in the lee of the triple reefed main as it meant the boat did not become very unstable. We could only do this on the port tack as track was on starboard side of mast.

3) Make a bridle that is suited to your bow configuration to reduce chafe. Sometimes the bridle will be no good as we found as the boat did not lie the way we thought she would.

4) If your trip is more than 5 days there is a good chance that the weather window after the one you picked to start with maybe conducive to heaving too. (One o or two?)

While at Sea.

Some general points. The way your boat heaves to in a force 6 maybe different to how she behaves in a force 9. I will not talk about securing hatches etc.

1) Take sea sickness tablets. Down side it will make you thirsty and drowsy.

2) Eat like a king. Down side it will make you thirsty and drowsy.

3) Remove spray dodger or the sea will remove it. (Learnt the hard way)

4) Tune your HF radio to some loud music. The music if loud enough will make a force 9 seem like a force 8. It is not important for you to hear the wind howling through the rigging. (Other music playing devices suffice.) Great for the nerves.

5)Drop jib and go to triple reefed main or do you go straight to try sail? Only the skipper can decide.

6) Once hove to make a fray bentos and eat like a king again. Go to sleep with loud music.

7) This is very important. Have other options for surviving the gale. It is always good to know you have not reached your last option.

My experience is based on being heaved to 3 times.(Or is it hove)

First time. Triple reefed main for about 12 hours.

Second time. Triple reefed main for about 6 hours followed by tri sail for another 48. We lost the spray dodger as in it was destroyed and all the poles were crushed flat. Fortunately it did not rip out of the deck roof. Just before we heaved to(or is it hove) we took a freak wave from astern which put a lot of water in the saloon. We have deep bilges and we should have had the third board in. This could have been a problem in a shallow bilge yacht. I had a cup of tea in my hand at the time sat at nav table and not one bit of salt water got into it even though the chart myself and nav table were drenched. It took over half an hour to manually pump out the water. Lessons learnt Remove spray dodger in heavy weather. Felt horribly vulnerable in cot pit after that as well!( A false sense of vulnerability by the way)

We made the mistake of trying to sail to early. We had gotten used to the weather and sea motion by then and equated it to a moderation of the weather. We were wrong and went straight back to being hove to.

Third time Also the most complicated time. Hove to with tripple reefed main. We were then knocked down to about 90 degrees. Both of us were in our bunks as it is the safest place to be.(Netting type bunks) Mick my crew mate was hit by Jimmy Cornells world cruising routes that launched out of the far side of the saloon from port to starboard. Book was fine. It was the only thing that came lose so not bad effort in making the boat bang proof. I said to my sore crew mate we needed to put the tri sail up and then the sea anchor which we did. I had an old cargo aviation chute and decided not to use it as i would never get it back on board. We used a an old blade jib instead. The sea anchor did not go where it was expected but it did bring the bows around to provide a safer angle against the sea. We had no more problems after that. The sea anchor lay off and behind our port quarter. Not even close to any diagrams i had seen. (Was this caused by the ocean current?) who knows.
Were we in survival conditions? No. so my experience is not related to even worse sea states or wind. Nothing above force 9. The third time we reefed 60 knots were predicted in our area but fortunately we never got more than above 50 and only for a very short time. I would say the average wind speed was below 40. At no time did the sea state get confused other that the 2 rogue waves from second experience and third experience.

Some photos circa 2002 of second time heave to.

First photo. Look concearned about sea state. (Note cheap foul weather gear)
Second photo. Hard to make a cup of tea type of waves.
Third Photo. My best ship mate thinking we are right proper sailors as we have tri sail up.
Fourth photo. Fray Bentos while hove to.Am sat on floor as it seemed prudent for cooking in those seas. We lived like Kings.

Great description. For noise reduction, rather than loud music we use ear plugs. Lowering the sound is key to reduce stress, especially the higher pitches of really strong winds. Think roaring forties, furious fifties and screaming sixties all reduced to elevator music.

[Dulls]

I think we discovered the music thing by accident. I did not add that we broke both chain plates for the port and starboard uppers. Not caused by the weather but my failure to spot 2 bad welds done in Fiji. Poor chain plate design. A company called Nordle and Biddle i think in Nelson made us new chain plates to a different design. They will never fail.

Photo shows

A Back stays jury rigged to fairlead. We had the rear chain plates and mid ships chain plates rebuilt to a different design We were lucky not to lose the mast. Completely my fault. Not the weather.
B Our crushed spray dodger with attempt at restoring shape. It remained like that and was unfixable. We had the canvas repaired but it always looked like a soufflé that had failed to rise.

[Oohla]

Also see article Titled "Easy Rider" by Tom Cunliffe. Further discussion on Forereaching.

[Dulls]

Originally Posted by Oohla

Also see article Titled "Easy Rider" by Tom Cunliffe. Further discussion on Forereaching.

It is hard to stop the forereaching.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by fxykty

Regarding sliding backwards while lying to a parachute anchor, I believe that can be prevented by ‘constant tension rode’, which is accomplished with the addition of a weight so that the rode is always under tension. Not sure which manufacturer refers to this.

It’s the same concept as for a JSD, to help prevent the slack from stretch when the load is relaxed after a wave passes.

Yeah, Victor Shane has a pretty good site I think, pretty comprehensive. And here is the link to the part about para-anchors:

https://dragdevicedb.com/sea-anchors

https://dragdevicedb.com/emerging-tactics-alignment




In there he says: "The fluid behavior of the parachute notwithstanding, the long nylon rode leading to it is an excellent shock absorber in, of and by itself. And there is even more: The shock absorption of the nylon rode can be significantly boosted by the mechanical - catenary - shock absorption provided by a length of chain.

Chain, properly used along with nylon rode, can be another bargaining chip in a storm. Chain will sink during slack cycles, helping to maintain system tension. This will reduce side-to-side yaw, which will reduce exposure. If a wave breaks against the hull the load will have to be transferred to the parachute via the elastic rode and sagging chain.

The force of the breaking wave will have to straighten the curve rapidly. The hundreds of links in the chain will then shed vortices, producing turbulence and building resistance. In effect the chain will then play the part of a "flopper stopper," sinking without complaint during slack cycles, but putting up considerable resistance when a sudden force tries to lift it up rapidly. Such an arrangement will go a long way to further reduce, buffer and mitigate any and all peak dynamics loads."

[Rockinar]

Originally Posted by Journeyman

All the advice on heaving-to tends to read:

"All you have to do is tack the boat without releasing the jib sheet and voila with a few adjustments to the mainsail and rudder you are hove to for heavy weather".

That is patently NOT true.

TRUE. You're confusing heaving-to to stop for a lunch break with heaving-to for a storm.

[Journeyman]

Originally Posted by Rockinar

TRUE. You're confusing heaving-to to stop for a lunch break with heaving-to for a storm.

Even in 20 knots true, with the 110% genoa reefed to 80%, the point load on the cap shroud from the sheet being draped across, felt like a disaster in the making if it continued for any length of time. Again, all the expert articles in the popular yachting press make no mention of the ugliness of this situation.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Journeyman

Even in 20 knots true, with the 110% genoa reefed to 80%, the point load on the cap shroud from the sheet being draped across, felt like a disaster in the making if it continued for any length of time. Again, all the expert articles in the popular yachting press make no mention of the ugliness of this situation.

Would the stress on a masthead sloop rigged single spreader rig from the back-winded jib sheet be more or less than that on the same shroud (upper) when it was the "upwind" part of the standing rigging when sailing uphill?

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Journeyman

Even in 20 knots true, with the 110% genoa reefed to 80%, the point load on the cap shroud from the sheet being draped across, felt like a disaster in the making if it continued for any length of time. Again, all the expert articles in the popular yachting press make no mention of the ugliness of this situation.

My friend, it is up to you whom you choose to believe.

Whilst hove to, the sheet does not chafe on the capshroud, or we would have had evidence of such chafe in fuzzy line, and it did NOT occur. In fact, with our precious boat, we routinely hove to to retrieve our tow generator's line and prop. If there had been a problem, we would have had to replace the line when we crossed the pond, and we did not have to do that.

Imo, heaving to is safe to do, as long as the boat can stay with her bows 30-50 degrees off the wind. It is up to you to practice and learn how to do it so that the bow points upwind.

Ann

[longjonsilver]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Imo, heaving to is safe to do, as long as the boat can stay with her bows 30-50 degrees off the wind. It is up to you to practice and learn how to do it so that the bow points upwind.

Well said, and that is exactly what i intend to do. Practice makes perfect...

jon

[Kaimana]

Aloha all

Once when I had my 56-foot Tropic Bird at the dock in Kawaihae, Hawaii, loading ice and bait to go fishing, a young man dropped by and "talked story" with me for about an hour. I'll call him Bob, since I don't remember his name.

(Below) Tropic Bird at the dock in Kawaihae where the story was told.



He'd just gotten off a Coast Guard cutter in Honolulu, and had a really wild story. Now, I wish I'd written down his full name, the boat name, and so on, but this is what I remember. He had no reason to lie, and this would have been a whopper to make up on the spur of the moment. It was full of accurate details, too, that rang true with me; because I'd had a Brown 37 for 6 years, and Bob was very familiar with the 40.

Bob left Cabo San Lucas in Baja California, late in the "safe" season, as the sole crew on a Brown 40 with the owner, headed for Hawaii. They got into a developing hurricane, and did everything Jim said to: ran from it in the correct quarter in the correct direction, towing a small tire drogue on a bridle from the float sterns.

The wind and waves built and built until it was suicide to go out on deck, then the boat flipped. They were warm and relatively dry inside the boat, and next did what Jim said: wait until the storm subsided a bit, then chopped a hole in the bottom of the main hull with a hatchet.

They'd done it all according to Jim's recommendations: they had the hatchet, the seat Jim talked about, so you could sit with just your head sticking out the bottom of the boat, on watch with a flare gun for any potential rescuers.

The problem was, the owner decided he'd be better off in the liferaft, so he popped it out of the underwing liferaft hatch, inflated it, and got in.

Next morning when it got light, Bob said the liferaft was gone. That was that. Bob turned on the EPIRB, and about a day later a Coast Guard plane showed up, then a few days later the cutter from Honolulu. It picked him up and transported him to Honolulu, and he flew over to the Big Island, figuring he might as well tour around Hawaii for awhile, since it was what he'd originally intended to do before the hurricane happened. That's where he met me and Tropic Bird, at the dock in Kawaihae.

This was around 1982 or '83. I asked Jim about this when I was chatting with him a few years later, but he didn't know of any 40's that had gone that way.

With Warm Aloha, Tim

[longjonsilver]

Originally Posted by Oohla

Also see article Titled "Easy Rider" by Tom Cunliffe. Further discussion on Forereaching.

link?

[fxykty]

Originally Posted by longjonsilver

link?

https://www.sailmagazine.com/.amp/di...ip-of-the-week

You need to scroll down a long way.

[Kennavin]

I’ve just finished reading Storm Tactics and it’s recommended that a modern sloop should be using a para anchor earlier than older full keel and cutters. I have purchased the 2m Lalizas Professional Drogue for my 41’ sloop which is actually a sea anchor (instructions state to connect and release from bow with a bridle). However this sea anchor is a cone and not a parachute.
I’ve been looking at the Fiorentino para anchors and after a few emails was recommended a 12’ version. However they are $700-800 (plus VAT and Customs into UK). Have a search on eBay saved but no luck. Does anyone have experience of Fiorentino and think they’re worth the money? Or can recommend another brand??
Or is my yellow Lalizas Professional more than adequate??? Many thanks

[freshalaska]

I have a Fiorentino sea anchor offshore model and have never used it but it looks to me extremely well made.