Snowpetrel thanks for the chart.
Since my own sailing in heavy wx has been with force 9 sustained we've never even struck all sail and ran with bare poles. Closest to that was running with unreefed staysail only so that's about 12% of full sail area. Some were multi day gales but had periods with winds dropping into the 30's. Loads of force 8 into force 9, a few sustained force9 but no force 10 storms thank goodness.
All the heavy wx experience has been on multi day passages within 200 nm of the
west coast (between AK and MX) there's frequently seemingly been a ocean floor component steepening up the period and frequently we experience mixed seas that go on for days defying all the logic of sustained winds giving seas from a
single direction. The mature wave trains crossing the pacific from the west or northwest carrying on from a eastern n pacific storm 500 nm away or from a western system 2k+nm away , well they mix with closer or immediate storm system waves and net nasty or at least challenging mixed sea conditions. What I'm getting at is we have never experienced the long wave trains w/o another confounding component.
We have aways run with (what I learn here is the Dumas method of ) 15deg or sometimes a bit more off the gale
wind direction. That works for us. Aboard our 30T boat we do carry a range of warp trailing capacity. We have never trailed a thing. Most of what we carry are for other purpose aboard like spare running
rigging, kedge line etc. Everything from several old 150'-200' lengths of former running
rigging to the new stuff including 200' 10mm static climbing
rope, 400' 5/8" VLS polyester braid, 600' 1/2" polyester 3 strand, 600' 7/8" polytron (our stern shore tie that would have to be used dragging an
anchor since it floats...).
Having chatted with 3 different former owners of our boat who all 3 have sailed her through a full on f10 storm (2 in the
north pacific and one sailed through a f11 violent
winter storm in the North Atlantic that sank multiple other ships and yachts) as well as gales, we all have had the same experience on this boat which is that it is best to run with the storm not encumbered by warps or drogues if crew or AP are up to it.
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