Heaving To (How does it work ?)

[GHA]

Very useful tool to have in the box for anything, make a cuppa, reef, do some nav, need a p@@? just heave too.. or like a couple days ago when enough was enough & bed was a better option....

 

[Supertramp]

One way to think of heaving to is that you're finding a way to sail very slowly to windward while making a lot of leeway. The traditional method with backed jib, loosened mainsheet and tiller to leeward works well with long keeled boats but modern yachts might need a different configuration, generally discovered by trial and error.
I used to own a heavy steel gaffer with a full length keel. Under deeply reefed main, backed staysail and furled jib, she would heave to very happily in a full gale, making about a knot and a half square across the wind with no loss of ground to leeward.
On the other hand, a smaller fin-keeled yacht I had for a while needed a reefed main set for a close reach and no jib. But she was a bit twitchy and unstable like that and her track was well to leeward.
I gather that a long keel is much better than a fin keel at providing lateral resistance while the boat is stationary - a fin gives a much better ratio of resistance to drag while sailing but it relies on its foil shape and the water flow to do it's best work. Hence the different behaviours.

Well explained.

Sometimes it's not just about heaving to but slowing down to meet a tidal gate time or getting through a night without having to make changes to sails. I think it's about understanding how your boat behaves and knowing the right sail configurations to use, as Slowboat says.

With a good engine and precise knowledge of your position many of the traditional reasons to heave to are gone but it is definitely useful to know how to do it on your boat, for MOB or urgent repair.

With regard to port and starboard tacks, the very few times I have hove to there was no-one within miles, for good reason!

 

[B27]

We heave to between races in dinghies sometimes.
Sheet the main just enough to keep the sail quiet, the boat will reach along slowly with no effort.
If the waves are bigger, you may need to sheet the main a little more and steer a little more actively to keep control.
In a decent dinghy fleet, there's often a dozen boats hove to, all going much the same way.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

We heave to between races in dinghies sometimes.
Sheet the main just enough to keep the sail quiet, the boat will reach along slowly with no effort.
If the waves are bigger, you may need to sheet the main a little more and steer a little more actively to keep control.
In a decent dinghy fleet, there's often a dozen boats hove to, all going much the same way.

We heave to, or sail slowly with the jib backed pre race and between races, with just the odd burst of full speed to try the line and get ‘close hauled’ numbers. And on the tri, if it’s a bit brisk, we’ll put a few rolls in the jib, (vital, it has vertical leech battens) and heave to on stbd tack and drift in to our starting position . Drop the jib over at gun -15 secs, away you go. Other cruisers take too long to accelerate to try that, but it works well for us.

 

[B27]

Well explained.

Sometimes it's not just about heaving to but slowing down to meet a tidal gate time or getting through a night without having to make changes to sails. I think it's about understanding how your boat behaves and knowing the right sail configurations to use, as Slowboat says.

With a good engine and precise knowledge of your position many of the traditional reasons to heave to are gone but it is definitely useful to know how to do it on your boat, for MOB or urgent repair.

With regard to port and starboard tacks, the very few times I have hove to there was no-one within miles, for good reason!

I don't think having a good engine removes the reasons for heaving to.
My boat is generally much calmer hove to than with no sails set, the sails damp the motion of the boat in the waves.

Heaving to is also a 'statement' to other boats, you're intent is to stay where you are or go slowly..
If people know what you're trying to do, they will more easily give you space to do it.

 

[Supertramp]

I don't think having a good engine removes the reasons for heaving to.
My boat is generally much calmer hove to than with no sails set, the sails damp the motion of the boat in the waves.

Heaving to is also a 'statement' to other boats, you're intent is to stay where you are or go slowly..
If people know what you're trying to do, they will more easily give you space to do it.

Only in the sense that when headed by the wind you can get to windward faster than under sail. I do that quite often.

 

[GHA]

can also be handy to pick up a fore & aft or swinging mooring, heave to upwind & do a little forward / reverse blast of the engine now & then to slowly drift onto the mooring.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Very useful tool to have in the box for anything, make a cuppa, reef, do some nav, need a p@@? just heave too.. or like a couple days ago when enough was enough & bed was a better option....

View attachment 177881

Here is me waiting for the wind down route to ease a bit. 3 hours hove too. Wind NNW boat heading was west and she just drifted SSE at 1-2kt over the ground and nothing through the water.

 

[thinwater]

Don't heave to in any kind of breeze with an overlapping headsail. It will stretch and chafe on the spreaders. Rollerfurl until it is not overlapping. Of course, in rough weather you will have already reduced jib.

 

[Lifeboater]

That sounds a lot of faffing about when a quick tack with a backed headsail is very simple.

I'd love to see how anybody does not 'drift', the plan is to stop way thought the water, the tide will always move you.

Heaving to is often done when conditions are too bad to beat to windward and the traditional method will result in you going downwind, which is exactly what you don't want to do. You might also have a lee shore to consider. If you are beating to windward and correctly reefed then all you do is furl the headsail and turn the wind vanes knob. Not exactly difficult.

The lifeboat I'm building from a sunken alloy hull does not have a keel, so if I heaved to in a normal manner I would really be going places a lot faster than a normal yacht. I'm making an easy to remove hinged A frame rig from 20 ft thick walled alloy scaffolding tubes at present. Twin backstays and forestays made from low stretch halyard lines. I've broken a Hood Sea Furl extrusion and siezed a Hood Profurl drum up with my last 2 yachts and had some kind of rigging failure on most of the yachts I've skippered or crewed on, so I chose the basic boomless Viking A frame as it's a tougher rig than any and the Vikings hull form is similar to a classic double ended lifeboats one.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Don't heave to in any kind of breeze with an overlapping headsail. It will stretch and chafe on the spreaders. Rollerfurl until it is not overlapping. Of course, in rough weather you will have already reduced jib.

We have diamonds on our mast, we always have to roll some jib, we don’t heave to very often as the jib needs to be made quite small, and the boat doesn’t balance well unless the main is reefed too. Hence we’d use heaving to at a race start, where I have the stick in my hand, not so much for other reasons. Do others have this prob if they roll part of the jib? The XOD heaves to just fine, but it has a tiny jib by design.

 

[thinwater]

We have diamonds on our mast, we always have to roll some jib, we don’t heave to very often as the jib needs to be made quite small, and the boat doesn’t balance well unless the main is reefed too. Hence we’d use heaving to at a race start, where I have the stick in my hand, not so much for other reasons. Do others have this prob if they roll part of the jib? The XOD heaves to just fine, but it has a tiny jib by design.

Traveler way down? Mainsheet out? With a full batten main it won't flog. (I have an F-24 triamran.)

My PDQ cat wouldn't heave to for beans, but my F-24 behaves well.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Traveler way down? Mainsheet out? With a full batten main it won't flog. (I have an F-24 triamran.)

My PDQ cat wouldn't heave to for beans, but my F-24 behaves well.

You don’t have diamond shrouds. They stick 2ft forward of the mast, you can’t back the jib without damage unless it’s part furled, which with the full main does not balance well. If it’s blowing, and we’ve got a reef in the main too, it’s as good as anyone could reasonably expect.

 

[thinwater]

You don’t have diamond shrouds. They stick 2ft forward of the mast, you can’t back the jib without damage unless it’s part furled, which with the full main does not balance well. If it’s blowing, and we’ve got a reef in the main too, it’s as good as anyone could reasonably expect.

Wrong PDQ. The 32s are rigged with diamond wires. The 36s are rigged with a more conventional spreader set-up. You are right though, it is about balance.

The boat in the avitar is not mine. It is using the self-tacker, I use a large genoa. But it must be partly furled, so same problem. Curiously, reefing didn't help much. I think it is also related to the underbody.

But I didn't spend much time investigating, because heaving to is a very limited multi-hull heavy weather strategy, cat or tri. Forereaching is much safer. Or running.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Well, quite. I wouldn’t try it as a survival tactic on a multi. It’s use is to slow you down, something multihulls need fairly often.

 

[sail sail]

You can also hove to with just your mainsail backed (using the traveller).

 

[westernman]

With a long keeled boat it really is magic.
It really does have an effect on smoothing the water.

But you will not believe me until you have experienced it.

 

[srm]

But you will not believe me until you have experienced it.

"An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory"
When working as a YM Instructor whenever someone asked what would happen if . . . . I would tell them to do it and find out, preferably then and there, but if that was potentially dangerous set up an exercise to demonstrate in a safe way.

 

[thinwater]

Well, quite. I wouldn’t try it as a survival tactic on a multi. It’s use is to slow you down, something multihulls need fairly often.

True. Picking up an MOB is an example.

 

[thinwater]

You can also hove to with just your mainsail backed (using the traveller).

Again, this depends on the boat. My PDQ would do that, my F-24 will snap into irons and stay there. Almost as good as heaving too, as long as you lock the tiller. The F-24 with main only is really stable in irons. To get it out, if backing does not work (and often it does not), lift the CB. Then it falls right out. To sail with main-only, lift the CB half.