Series Drogues & Heaving To

[rebel heart]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

Methinks I would love an engineers input on this as it seems to me to be a bit of a wives tale brewed from both science and a bit of anecdotal old salt wisdom.

That said I would never question larrys story, and I have never used the technique choosing instead to use my series drogue to great success...

You can see it to a smaller scale even in the bay. The chopped up propwash from a power boat has the little swirlies on it and when wavelets through it they stop dead in their tracks. The wave energy still goes through but minus most/all of the surface effects.

[sabray]

never use a series drogue off the bow. Unless you want to fall slowly backwards down a wave. I probably couldnt and wouldnt try moving the attachment points of a drogue while deployed. The energy being transferred is huge.

[msponer]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

... I have never used the technique choosing instead to use my series drogue to great success...

What was the ride like with the series drogue?

I have only towed warps and a spare tire to slow down and make the boat feel more mellow and under control. I've not been in the kinds of waves where I felt there was a safety issue, at all, so this was completely just to improve our life aboard and headspace.

I brought a series drogue and parachute last time but never used either. I'm planning on just bringing a series drogue again, and either another spare tire or one of the more modern small drogues. But.. I of course have questions about the series drogue. I want to learn what the vibe is like once it's deployed. They are so hard to retrieve, I don't want to deploy it, realize I made a mistake, and spend hours immediately pulling it back in.

[foolishsailor]

Originally Posted by msponer

What was the ride like with the series drogue?

I have only towed warps and a spare tire to slow down and make the boat feel more mellow and under control. I've not been in the kinds of waves where I felt there was a safety issue, at all, so this was completely just to improve our life aboard and headspace.

I brought a series drogue and parachute last time but never used either. I'm planning on just bringing a series drogue again, and either another spare tire or one of the more modern small drogues. But.. I of course have questions about the series drogue. I want to learn what the vibe is like once it's deployed, since they are so hard to retrieve, that I really only want to deploy it when I am sure I will want the change it will bring. It would be a "bad experiment" to do it and then spend hours of effort retrieving it if I don't like how it makes the boat feel.

For us it was like night and day. We didn't use it for "life threatening" conditions as we weren't really in that level. We had f8 and f9 but they were localised lows so there was not a huge fetch or time for wave heights to get past 5m. The issue was that there was a strong long period swell that was coming perpendicular to the wind local waves. We were reaching just 30 degrees above a run these would team up periodically to knock the stern of the boat off the wave and made for a scary an uncomfortable ride.

We tossed the series drogue in and it immediately changed everything.

As for pulling them in there are many techniques and it didn't take us more than half an hour. My primary winches are large and don't have trailers on them and we found they worked without tearing the little cones. The key for us was to tie a line just past the bridal onto the main line that has the cones so that we can start winching this in instead of trying to start with one of the bridal arms. When we did that it caused the boat to slew and there was still a fair bit of wind and swell.

We still had our staysail up and prior to the drogue were making 9kn with in we were making 2.5. We repeated this several times over a period of days. Haven't had it in without head sail up.

[sabray]

Here is some good footage from a neat site. This clip is of the drogue being deployed and then the huge effort to get it back.

Gale & knockdown in the Labrador Sea - YouTube

!. One great portion from this site.
Voyages by Roger Taylor in his junk-rigged Corribee Mingming

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by TeddyDiver

If you can get your hands on Tony Marchaj's "Seaworthines the Forgotten Factor" read it..

+1, A very good book indeed.....

[Kettlewell]

...and havent they disproved the myth about a boats slick helping to prevent wave strikes?

Haven't heard or read that anywhere. When we deployed a small parachute in Force 9+, 30-foot seas, offshore conditions on 400 feet of rode it was quite dramatic the difference. We could observe, with binoculars, the breakers splitting around the parachute (off our stern, not recommended but it worked) and there was definitely a "slick" extending downwind to our boat, providing significant protection from breaking seas. The slick was not perfect protection as occasionally breakers would angle across the usual train of the waves and hit us sending green water completely over the boat, but we felt that we were getting a lot of protection.

[goboatingnow]

Ive used both drogues and long wraps in some serious survival weather in the mid Atlantic. I don't like to slow the boat down too much , just enough to stop the stern from being slewed. ( 5-8kts) I know one of the ideas with the long Jordan series drogues was to really slow down the boat, but the chances of being badly pooped are too great IMHO.

Dave

[Bash]

Originally Posted by Dpoissant

Why do the makers of Series Drogues give instructions not to deploy from the bow?
It would seem that a SeaAnchor and a Series Drogue both do the same thing and would be to the same benefit while Heaving To as a storm tactic.

Just a technicality: if you're riding a sea anchor you're not heaving to. You can heave to with a drogue deployed from astern. It's just not possible to heave to with a sea anchor deployed from the bow.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Bash

Just a technicality: if you're riding a sea anchor you're not heaving to. You can heave to with a drogue deployed from astern. It's just not possible to heave to with a sea anchor deployed from the bow.

despite the very detailed experience of just that being relayed here

[Bash]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

despite the very detailed experience of just that being relayed here

pout all you want, but "heaving to" is not the same as riding a sea anchor. Look it up in any nautical dictionary.

[sabray]

Originally Posted by Bash

pout all you want, but "heaving to" is not the same as riding a sea anchor. Look it up in any nautical dictionary.

Uhhh the pardey's do this and I believe there is video of them doing it. They heave to and bridle out a sea anchor. Seems to work on the boat of that design maybe not for everyone.

[TeddyDiver]

But they are using it as "assisted heave to", totally different setup compared to "sea anchor" and as they say some boats might need a bit help in this..

[Nicholson58]

We attended the lecture by John ans Amanda Neal at the Chicago All Sail show in January. (West Marine & water sailing">Blue Water Sailing sponsored)We picked up their book, "Storm Survival Tactics. There were a lot of gems in it regarding this topic. I knew about most of the book discussion except for "Fore-Reaching" This appeals for us. You set the main tripple reafed main or storm trisail close hauled. Lock the helm. If the bow falls to leeward teh main brings you back up. Since you are facing the storm, the storm will pass more quickly. No danger of a gibe. It works for full keel typ boats but is ill-advised for flat-bottom fin-keels unless you halp hand steer. You might fnd the book (10 clams at the show) at www.mahina.com BTW, We fond no one who had anytihing nice to say about the parachute type sean anchors off the bow. It was only thought of as the last resort and that you should be prepared for serious rudder / steering system damage if you use one. Many other storm tactics were discussd listing advantages/disadvantages.

[Kettlewell]

We fond no one who had anytihing nice to say about the parachute type sean anchors off the bow. It was only thought of as the last resort and that you should be prepared for serious rudder / steering system damage if you use one.

That is a bunch of B.S. from people who either haven't used one or who used one incorrectly. You should check out the Drag Device Data Base site for lots of real-world information on their use, and numerous stories of people who used them off the bow (properly and improperly) and survived. They aren't foolproof--nothing is--but there are also lots of wrong ways to use various sorts of drogues, heaving-to, fore-reaching, whatever technique you want.