Heaving to in a Storm

bluevelvet said:
so put up triple reefed main and she sat very well but the odd big wave caught us out and at these times felt as if we were underwater rather than on it. ................. anyone tried them from the bow whilst hove to with a snubber line to adjust angle of the bow?
Click to expand...

Exactly my experience, and off the Azores too. I have a similar underwater configuration. The joy of heaving to with the 3rd reef is that when it's time to sail again all you have to do is unlash the wheel, bear away, and that's it.

I did meet a French singlehander just back from Antarctica in a very light boat. He'd used a Jordan off the bow with good results.
 
KellysEye said:
Retrieving a para anchor is easy wait until the bad weather stops and pick up the small fender that is attached to the crown of the parachute. I don't know what the system is to pick up drogues but there must be one, does anybody here know?
Click to expand...

For the Jordan style long line of small cones, the usual suggestion is to simply pass the whole lot around a winch and haul it in. A self-tailer won't work, but the collapsed cones will supposedly go round the drum ok along with the rope. You might need a couple of lengths of line and rolling hitches to help get started, transferring from the bridle to the winch.

I have seen a couple of articles recommend simply cutting it away, regarding it as having done its job if it saves you once. Not very keen on that idea for several reasons.

Nobody recommends a tripping or retrieval line due to the risk of tangling.

Pete
 
prv said:
For the Jordan style long line of small cones, the usual suggestion is to simply pass the whole lot around a winch and haul it in. A self-tailer won't work, but the collapsed cones will supposedly go round the drum ok along with the rope. You might need a couple of lengths of line and rolling hitches to help get started, transferring from the bridle to the winch.

I have seen a couple of articles recommend simply cutting it away, regarding it as having done its job if it saves you once. Not very keen on that idea for several reasons.

Nobody recommends a tripping or retrieval line due to the risk of tangling.

Pete
Click to expand...

All true - I used one in anger once, mainly because unless steered the boat was all over the place under bare poles and a bit too fast for safety under a small jib. Anyhow the thing worked great until the wind-in phase ..which brought home all to quickly the pathetic speed a winch in low gear retrieves a line ...followed by a quick calc which concluded that one and a half hours of winching lay ahead :dejection:.

The received wisdom is to use the windlass in those circumstances but unsurprisingly nobody fancied the foredeck, or should I say two people as someone would need to tail the line, and tail quite hard given that most windlasses are smoother and smaller than the primary winches. If close to home the only reason not to cut the thing is that it costs about £800 to replace!
 
Vegable said:
The very interesting link to the Drag Device Database website on the "Drogue, Parachutes and other devices" topic has set me thinking.
The worst winds I've ever been out in are 6s gusting to 7 so I've no real experience to fall back on. On the website it clearly favours lying bow-to to the waves and wind, and that lying a-hull and beam-on to the seas is dangerous. And one of the suggested recomendations if you don't have drogues etc is to heave-to.
However, when I heave-to (to do a minor repair, have a meal, take a rest etc.,etc) I'm very near to being beam-on to the seas. Am I heaving-to incorrectly, or is it that in stronger winds the boat's bow heads more upwind?
Mike
Click to expand...

My brother was in a lightweight Nicholson 33 (half tonner?) Scattered Magic. They survived well by towing all their bunk cushions as the warps made no difference at all. When the storm was over they carried on with the race in ignorance of what had happened - due to flat batteries and therefore no radio - until a lifeboat told them what had happened.

They were not rolled at all in the storm. The Nick is a very light boat (for its day) and had loose pig iron underneath the cabin sole which was not crewed down. Before they left my brother had insisted that the floor was screwed down. Glad I wasn't there.
 
macd said:
A hove to yacht leaves a trail of flatter water in its wake, often called a slick. This is responsible for much of the calming effect. The slick also tends to trip-up steep waves, encouraging them to break before reaching the boat.
Click to expand...

Useful to flush some oil down the heads, to improve the slick.

I well remember being hove too, north of Minorca, in 50+ kts, in a HR45. Had in mast reefing main & manage for about12 hrs with just a touch of main. Un nerving watching white rollers coming out of the dark, but no water onboard. Did drift about 25 miles though.
 
dom said:
The received wisdom is to use the windlass in those circumstances but unsurprisingly nobody fancied the foredeck, or should I say two people as someone would need to tail the line, and tail quite hard given that most windlasses are smoother and smaller than the primary winches. If close to home the only reason not to cut the thing is that it costs about £800 to replace!
Click to expand...
Well, those situations aren't that common. I'm not sure there is that much dogma.
Anyway,I have no experience using a jordon (though now own one) but have spent a fair bit of time well off shore single handed. One thought experiment untried is to have a tensioned continuous loop of dyneema between the windlass and a block back at the cockpit with a couple of blocks up front as fairleads to stop riding turns. Then with a windlass remote you have the ability to pull either from the front or the back of the boat about 20 feet odd ( on my 33'er)
In general it could get you out of a world of pain & might come in handy raising a JSD.

Don't suppose anyone's tried it though....
 
GHA said:
Well, those situations aren't that common. I'm not sure there is that much dogma.
Anyway,I have no experience using a jordon (though now own one) but have spent a fair bit of time well off shore single handed. One thought experiment untried is to have a tensioned continuous loop of dyneema between the windlass and a block back at the cockpit with a couple of blocks up front as fairleads to stop riding turns. Then with a windlass remote you have the ability to pull either from the front or the back of the boat about 20 feet odd ( on my 33'er)
Click to expand...

You're right ...insufficient numbers to call it received wisdom. Seriously though, the risk of riding turns on such a system, ropes bouncing off the windlass and general jams seem almost inevitable when the pressure is comtinually coming on and off. Also the foredeck can feel seriously dangerous and I'm not sure the windlass wouldn't overheat under such a constant load.

Basically the the series drogue is a great piece of kit, but retrieving the thing would be easier on one of those Deadliest Catch boats :D
 
dom said:
Seriously though, the risk of riding turns on such a system, ropes bouncing off the windlass and general jams seem almost inevitable when the pressure is comtinually coming on and off.
Basically the the series drogue is a great piece of kit, but retrieving the thing would be easier on one of those Deadliest Catch boats :D
Click to expand...
Well, maybe not relevant to making an offshore boat safer but my background is theatre/film rigging and a system like that you can crank up with dyneema so there is basically no stretch within the loads expected and if the leads are right then riding turns just won't happen.
But... expecting something like that to work offshore if you don't know it inside out might not be the best idea..:)
 
macd said:
A hove to yacht leaves a trail of flatter water in its wake, often called a slick. This is responsible for much of the calming effect. The slick also tends to trip-up steep waves, encouraging them to break before reaching the boat.
Click to expand...

Until you have done it and seen it, you will find it hard to believe. The effect is really is magical. Huge breaking waves seem to become very tame and pass harmlessly by hardly rocking the boat.

If you are forereaching too fast, then you probably have too much main up or not enough back winded staysail/jib area in relation. May be that third reef point is not deep enough?
 
michaelchapman said:
Until you have done it and seen it, you will find it hard to believe. The effect is really is magical. Huge breaking waves seem to become very tame and pass harmlessly by hardly rocking the boat.

If you are forereaching too fast, then you probably have too much main up or not enough back winded staysail/jib area in relation. May be that third reef point is not deep enough?
Click to expand...
My experience exactly!
 
I hove to in Biscay in an estimated f9 after 12 hours actively sailing under small stay sail on inner forestay and deep triple reefed main. Hoveto under that rig,played with the sheets and wheel till I found myself fore reaching at half to one knot in the right direction .lay like that resting for 6hours. Magic!
Boat is Nab/Rasmus 35, so small rig to start with.
 
>I think you mean at right angles to the wind (or parallel to the waves).

I meant the boat's beam facing the wind and waves.

When Jane and I wanted to go long distance sailing we wanted to do three things. The RYA's sea survival and medical courses, plus go to a lecture at the CA about heavy weather sailing. The two things that struck me most at the lecture were how a boat behaves with drogues and a parachute anchor, and which type of boat should use each one, and that a boat can roll if the beam is facing the wind and the waves are the height of the beam. I suspect it may also roll if the waves are higher and breaking. The speaker had done two circumvigations so I wasn't going to disagree with him. All of those we did in 2004. We always followed the wave height/beam issue and suggest others do to. If you don't follow that let us know how you got on, if you can :-)
 
Lin and Larry Pardey are great advocates of heaving to. Read their "Storm Tactics". So is Skip Novak. A case of listening to the experts...
 
ghostlymoron said:
Yes, you never find out what tactics weren't successful.
Click to expand...

A revived thread, how routine this is becoming.

There are lots of examples of methods that don't work e.g. stories of pitchpoling (running before the wind) , stories of being pooped and broaching (trailing warps), stories of ripping out strong points (leaving it too late to deploy). You can start learning what does not work by reading things like Heavy Weather Sailing, the various Fastnet stories and voyaging narratives. There are reams of stories on heavy weather procedures that do not work.
 
Heaving to as a response to heavy forward winds originated in boats with much lower freeboards than most of today's production yachts. The balance between hull resistance forward and sail drive today is heavily adverse, so a scrap of main (if manageable) would be required to head up a vessel offering significant hull resistance forward of the mast. This is the situation with my Bavaria, which has a powerful rig but a large freeboard. Modern fin keels play a major part too in reducing controleability in heave-to manoeuvers, and rapidly lose grip.

Heaving to is not impossible, but gyrations and the need to keep on the helm, rather than lashing it and retiring below for a game of chess, are much more likely. A peaceful ride it is not.

Running off has stood the test of time when facing winds too strong to permit forward passage making. Losing ground is not welcome of course but not stressing the vessel unduly nor the crew takes precedence in my book. A snatch of foresail to maintain steerage is all it takes: running with any main is asking for trouble. Skippers may try to run parallel with the waves but soon abandon that - violent motion and the swamping threat put paid to that notion.

Romancers forget that older style yachts in heave-to took a lot of water over the decks - how could they otherwise; the famed windward slick was always over-rated. These notions remain with the classic calming solution of spreading a barrel of oil upwind - can you imagine what came aboard from that?

PWG
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top