Heavy Weather Suvival

VO5 said:
AS you appear sincere in your quest for knowledge I will explain to you....

THe thread was a discussion with regard to the Jordan Series Drogue.

The Jordan Series Drogue is what most yacghtsmen hear or read about first because it has recieved a lot of publicity, and this publicity has been enhanced by an original US Coastguard report at the time when the rig was first designed and tried.

Any question please ask.
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Can you buy these Jorden drogues or do you have to make them yourself?


.
 
Keep power on the boat

I have reached a firm, if inconvenient, conclusion; to survive in really bad stuff one has to keep active control.

Look at the modern racing boats like 'Pirates Of The Caribbean,( the racing boat ) ' and Ellen Macarthur doing a constant warp 9 in the Southern Ocean, their secret is to use big crews or lots of powerful autohelms.

In days gone by people tried the 'let's make the boat bullet-proof and batten the hatches' approach and came a cropper.

In the first season we had our boat, we made the big mistake of messing with Portland Race, and ended up having a busy time slaloming between overfalls, ( Dad and I were fairly experienced with dinghies which I believe a great help ) simply because the reefing system wasn't properly set up; a Twister going round at the same time reefed down and promptly got pooped, he was later very indignant to find we 'd got through unscathed !

All this 'keeping active control' has its' limits though, all the average man & wife crew can do to offset the inevitable exhaustion is to invest in the best autopilot, easy efficient reefing systems and labour-saving nav aids they can get...
 
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Seajet said:
Look at the modern racing boats like 'Pirates Of The Caribbean,( the racing boat ) ' and Ellen Macarthur doing a constant warp 9 in the Southern Ocean, their secret is to use big crews or lots of powerful autohelms.
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In the worse weather she encountered, Ellen hand steered solidly for three days and nights(!) because the autopilot couldn't cope.

Big crews must make it all a lot easier.
 
Seajet said:
I have reached a firm, if inconvenient, conclusion; to survive in really bad stuff one has to keep active control.

Look at the modern racing boats like 'Pirates Of The Caribbean,( the racing boat ) ' and Ellen Macarthur doing a constant warp 9 in the Southern Ocean, their secret is to use big crews or lots of powerful autohelms.

In days gone by people tried the 'let's make the boat bullet-proof and batten the hatches' approach and came a cropper.

In the first season we had our boat, we made the big mistake of messing with Portland Race, and ended up having a busy time slaloming between overfalls, ( Dad and I were fairly experienced with dinghies which I believe a great help ) simply because the reefing system wasn't properly set up; a Twister going round at the same time reefed down and promptly got pooped, he was later very indignant to find we 'd got through unscathed !

All this 'keeping active control' has its' limits though, all the average man & wife crew can do to offset the inevitable exhaustion is to invest in the best autopilot, easy efficient reefing systems and labour-saving nav aids they can get...
Click to expand...

Much of the sailing these Ocean 'around the world' do is downwind, hence the ability to survive in warp 9.

Not sure your average autopilot could cope in heavy weather conditions, so manual helming inevitable.
 
Babylon said:
UK supplier: http://www.oceanbrake.com/prices.html

US supplier: http://www.jordanseriesdrogue.com/

From a cursory glance, I think you can either buy them ready-made, or make them up from the compenent parts supplied - ie the multitude of cones all need attaching to the warp, and this is labour-intensive, hence the cost-saving aspect of buying the kit.
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We bought the component parts to make up two JSDs turning the manufacturing process into a social event. We also were quite keen to teach ourselves braid on braid splicing

The rope came from Barry at Boatropes and the cones from I think Oceanbrake.

My JSD has eight splices,four hard, four soft. Initially it was taking about 25 minutes per splice but this came down to about 15 minutes a time.

Threading on the cones took about 20 hours for 100 droguelets.


I have not yet decided how to attach the JSD to the boat. I don't entirely trust my stern cleats and think I will use some sort of bespoke SS strap bolted onto the stern as suggested on the JSD website
 
VO5 said:
Yet, despite repeated attempts to set out the facts (because one feels guilty at having knowledge that can save lives but not sharing it) all one gets on these boards is nit picking and silly contradiction from people who would benefit and allowing others to benefit from real experience rather than theories put forward in books and magazines.
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People who have no experience themselves must get their information where they can find it.

I would not ignore the experiences of a person who posts here but equally reading books like "Heavy Weather Sailing" etc lead one to a different conclusion than the one you espouse. And books like the aforementioned are the distilled experience of many people in varied circumstances, whereas the posts of one individual on a news board can only be particular to that persons' circumstances.

Boo2
 
VO5 said:
In the previos post you will read a remark about the Jordan Series Drogue being difficult to retrieve.
Why ?
It is difficult to retrieve because winching on it is a pain.
It is a pain because all the funnels are in the way.
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My plan for retreiving a JSD (when I've made one) is to run a line from the winch through the block on my genoa track forward and take it back to the JSD warp aft and thus avoid winching the droguelets ("funnels") at all.

Boo2
 
shaunksb said:
Can you buy these Jorden drogues or do you have to make them yourself?
Click to expand...
There's a description of the JSD in use at the SimpleSailor website.

The specs are freely available on the web so you can make one yourself but you can also buy them from eg : http://seriesdrogue.com/cost/ as well as at the links already posted by Babylon

There is a description of the Seabrake in use at this website, the following paragraph leaps to the eye :

You can see in the photo that the lip of the drogue is above the water a bit; it needs some chain to help keep it in the water, though at these loads no practical amount of weight is going to take it down.
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This highlights a characteristic of the Seabrake in common with other single-point drogues in that they cannot be ballasted enough to stay below the surface if caught by a breaking wave. If so caught they may be thrown forward and become ineffective. This effect is described in many books like the aforementioned HWS, where even car tyres weighed down with chain and anchors are seen surfacing and overtaking the boat on the crest of breaking waves. Whether a serial drogue can be made to completely avoid this I'm inclined to doubt, but intuition tells me they are likely to suffer from it to a lesser extent.

There are lots of interesting links at the foot of that page and it repays a browse.

Boo2
 
Boo2 said:
There's a description of the JSD in use at the SimpleSailor website.

The specs are freely available on the web so you can make one yourself but you can also buy them from eg : http://seriesdrogue.com/cost/ as well as at the links already posted by Babylon

There is a description of the Seabrake in use at this website, the following paragraph leaps to the eye :



This highlights a characteristic of the Seabrake in common with other single-point drogues in that they cannot be ballasted enough to stay below the surface if caught by a breaking wave. If so caught they may be thrown forward and become ineffective. This effect is described in many books like the aforementioned HWS, where even car tyres weighed down with chain and anchors are seen surfacing and overtaking the boat on the crest of breaking waves. Whether a serial drogue can be made to completely avoid this I'm inclined to doubt, but intuition tells me they are likely to suffer from it to a lesser extent.

There are lots of interesting links at the foot of that page and it repays a browse.

Boo2
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The link you post is nonsense.
The trial of the Seabrake in Chesapeake Bay is a joke.
The manufacturers in Australia have a table on their website carefully detailing every aspect of the towing rig for graded sizes of vessels and the corresponding sizes of Seabrake they shoud deploy.

IN EVERY CASE it is recommended that when used CHAIN has to be included in the tow arrangement.

In my case I have 140 feet of rope, with a thimbled eye at each end. The forward eye is shacked to a Y brace that is rigged to the aft cleats and the forward eye to a shackle - swivel - shackle to which the chain is attached.
The chain is fastened to the Seabrake braces using another shackle.

The chain is 10 feet of proof tested chain 5 /16".

I have used it 8 times in angry seas.

It has never lifted.

I am going to remove the swivel because I have no evidence of the Seabrake ever spinning either. I was assured that it tracks straight without spinning. At first I did not believe it. Now I am convinced it is a fact and I am acting accordingly.
 
Cones available on ebay as well http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SERIES-DR...UK_Sporting_Goods_Sailing&hash=item588717d1e0

Though I emailed them last year to see how long delivery would take and they didn't get back to me, did atlantic without.

Bought Hal Roth Handling Storms at the boat show yesterday, One idea for retrieval by him was to transfer the drogue to a line from the bow onto the anchor windlass then use that for retreival. Seems possible, safely away from the rudder and windvane.

He had not heard of any negative experiences from series drogue users, All positive in Adlard Coles heavy weather sailing as well. The only bad report I've ever come across is from VO5.

Next time I go cruising it will hopefully be with a jsd and something like a galerider or seabrake. No reason not to have options and a backup.
 
Boo2 said:
People who have no experience themselves must get their information where they can find it.

I would not ignore the experiences of a person who posts here but equally reading books like "Heavy Weather Sailing" etc lead one to a different conclusion than the one you espouse. And books like the aforementioned are the distilled experience of many people in varied circumstances, whereas the posts of one individual on a news board can only be particular to that persons' circumstances.

Boo2
Click to expand...

I had a copy in my library dated circa 1995 or thereabouts.
I found it interesting reading and I remember the emotive effect of the photographs taken from the stern of a ship of a confused, lumpy, angry sea showing a wave formation with very deep troughs and precipitous crests, horrific, granted.

However (and I have not seen the latest edition) but I should hazard a guess it needs really serious updating. I found it deficient in several aspects
which surprised me. I then for some years treated is as a coffee table book and lent it to someone and never got it back.
 
Seajet said:
I have reached a firm, if inconvenient, conclusion; to survive in really bad stuff one has to keep active control.

Look at the modern racing boats like 'Pirates Of The Caribbean,( the racing boat ) ' and Ellen Macarthur doing a constant warp 9 in the Southern Ocean, their secret is to use big crews or lots of powerful autohelms.

In days gone by people tried the 'let's make the boat bullet-proof and batten the hatches' approach and came a cropper.

In the first season we had our boat, we made the big mistake of messing with Portland Race, and ended up having a busy time slaloming between overfalls, ( Dad and I were fairly experienced with dinghies which I believe a great help ) simply because the reefing system wasn't properly set up; a Twister going round at the same time reefed down and promptly got pooped, he was later very indignant to find we 'd got through unscathed !

All this 'keeping active control' has its' limits though, all the average man & wife crew can do to offset the inevitable exhaustion is to invest in the best autopilot, easy efficient reefing systems and labour-saving nav aids they can get...
Click to expand...

Yes I agree. But there are scenarios in which the autopilot cannot cope.
Also not every passage is manned by a full crew.

As I deploy from the stern and run with a Seabrake I have devised a contraption using snubbers at the quadrant end to keep the rudder midships with the ability to turn just a few degrees to port and starboard if pressed.

I have found in all eight experiences of really heavy weather in which I deployed my Seabrake that this method worked perfectly. The boat would settle in the troughs and track straight.

Locking the rudder rigidly is not an idea that I like.

However, the ability of a deployed Seabrake to keep the stern down makes this arrangement the best option other than holding out in the cockpit steering in very rough seas and fierce winds and clinging there for dear life.

It saves one's energy and saves me from getting dog tired as the alternative would do. Also SWMBO feels secure having got used to the practice and experiencing its benefits. So another benefit is the question of crew morale.
 
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This page caused me to cock an eyebrow quizically:
http://www.seabrake.com/pages/faq.html

4. How far below the surface does Seabrake travel?
Just below the surface, 3-5 ft at operational speed of 3 to 7 knots

[no mention of chain then]


8. Will it affect fuel economy?
No, as the vessel will be travelling slower at a constant speed and direction.

[Either I have misunderstood, or they are saying that slowing down the boat, while the engine is workign equally hard will not affect how far the boat goes in a given time (i.e. amount of fuel)?]

7. What is the ideal speed to tow it?
In very rough conditions boat speed should not exceed 7 knots.

[how do you stop boat speed exceeding 7 knots? Tow something maybe?]

10. Will it affect a vessels normal steering?
Yes, it will improve a vessels steering and make it more responsive.

[I haven't tried it, but I can't see how that could work.]

I'm sorry, but once anyone strays from the truth to make their case, I'll ignore the whole argument.
 
michaelchapman said:
From the books I have read, the general opinion seems to be that once things get so bad that heaving to is not possible, that when running off towing drogues it is no longer possible to control the boat, or you are continuously getting pooped by very large waves over the stern, that the only thing left is to lie a hull.

It is not easy to capsize your average yacht when lying a hull - even with huge waves much bigger than the beam of the yacht (which is when a capsize becomes theoretically possible). Try capsizing your a toy boat in the bath. Even though its AVS is much worse than your yacht it still takes some doing!
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The Pardeys recommend sea anchors but with a line attached allowing them to sit at an angle to the waves. This helps protect the rudder and creates the slick effect at the same time. Another technique not mentionned is pumping oil out through the toilet.

Luckily I have not had survival conditions; the max being F8 with 60knt gusts. That was enough to overpower a triple reefed main and to physically tear open the metal hanks on the storm jib. I wouldn't want more.
 
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>All this 'keeping active control' has its' limits though, all the average man & wife crew can do to offset the inevitable exhaustion is to invest in the best autopilot, easy efficient reefing systems and labour-saving nav aids they can get.

Jane and I have been in 50 knot winds (the 70 knots was a different boat) and I don't agree. As said above autopilts don't work in heavy weather which is why we have a wind vane. Exhaustion is not inevitable if the husband and wife are experienced, particlarly with gales. We sailed in two before buying our liveaboard boat. So heavy weather is really a been there done that situation which we don't worry about now and there is no reason not to sleep.

Navigation isn't really an issue either. Most heavy weather happens in oceans where there is plenty of room and inshore sailors rightly tend not to go out.

I'm not sure what you mean about easy reefing systems. Furling foresails are fine but furling mains a no go, we had one jam in strong winds and we know others who have too. Our mizzen sail can be reefed from the cockpit but the the main is reefed at the mast. This is not a problem because we reef early before the bad weather arrives.

A comment on slowing boats down. You need to keep whatever you are towing at least two waves behind the wave you are on, preferably three. A parachute anchor is the same and we carry 100 metres of two inch warp. Our bow setup is one one and a half inch chain, encased in water hose, with rope tails for the cleats, as recommended by our local RNLI. The plastic coated chain stops chafe on the fairleads.
 
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