Sailing in Big Seas

Poey50 said:
"But what we can say with reasonable certainty is that in a Force 8 gale, a wave will come along between two and six times a day that is big enough to capsize pretty much any yacht, for sure, [under 80 feet in length and if beam on] and:

it breaks,
and if we don’t have the right anti-capsize gear deployed properly."
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I bought the anti-capsize gear ready for last season. Heavier than you’d expect but not at all power hungry.
 
Danny_Labrador said:
As mentioned above, I helped a guy take a Contest from Patras t Gibraltar in November some years back. We encounter two major storms, (one south tip of Italy) the other south of Sicily), with massive confused seas.

He carried on across the Atlantic through the Panama Canal and finally sold the yacht in Australia.

After the voyage I met him and he told me that the seas that we had experienced in the Mediterranean where the worst that he had experienced during the whole trip.

Shallow seas and land masses creating very poor wind conditions.
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I’m obviously being over-pedantic this morning but I would call the Med a lot of things but not shallow - even south of Sicily it’s 50m deep and upwards pretty quickly off shore
 
ross84 said:
Loss of rudder at sea seems to be a common reason for abandonment?
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I have recently had the steering gear rebuilt from top to bottom by a specialist. Very educational. But the bit that seems more difficult to assess is the rudder itself, if as seems to be usual, it consists of grp skins bonded to a stainless steel web with a foam core. Rudders do seem to fail more often than they ought to.
 
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capnsensible said:
For a bumpy sea challenge, try keeping an SSN at periscope depth oop north in winter storms. It will involve some flowery language from your Captain and the occasional identified flying object. Which may take human form....
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Try flying a MAD pattern at 500' over a submerged SSN who knows you're there and knows where the weather is!
 
Poey50 said:
Another interesting fact from the Morgan's Cloud series of articles on heavy weather sailing (all excellent) is that average wave height is usually calculated from the mean of the top 30% of waves. But that there will be variability such that waves twice that size will also come along but at much less frequency. (This is without factoring in the rarer rogue waves.)

"But what we can say with reasonable certainty is that in a Force 8 gale, a wave will come along between two and six times a day that is big enough to capsize pretty much any yacht, for sure, [under 80 feet in length and if beam on] and:
it breaks,
and if we don’t have the right anti-capsize gear deployed properly."
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I am an enthusiastic subscriber to "Morgan's Cloud" . That's a very good point. I added the emphasis. I suppose "don't be caught beam on to the seas" is intuitive; it's something we learn in starting to sail in dinghies and it sticks with us, if we have sailed dinghies in waves.

The now discredited theory of "lying a-hull" (with no sail set, leaving the boat to adopt any position) did seem to lead to rather more knockdowns. I've only had one crockery-smashing event (I was sitting on the windward settee putting my boots on and suddenly I was on top of my wife, who was tucked into a leecloth in the lee bunk, having collected the saloon table on the way. She wasn't hurt, nor was she impressed. Some years later I took the engine out, and found the parallel rulers.
 
glynd said:
One of the hidden benefits to the Hydrovane is that if you happen to lose your rudder, you have a spare.

A number of people seem to benefit from this every year!
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Do you have hard evidence? I suspect that the number is relatively low.
If one were to have a damaged rudder, the chances are that the hydrovane may not actually work. If a sea were to bend the shaft so that the rudder was bent at an angle & jammed in one position off centre & could not be used: That would be a, not inconceivable, situation with all the AWB's with unsupported rudders in use. The Hydrovane would be totally unable to steer the boat.
If the steering gear broke ( ie broken cable) then the Hydrovane may be of limited use for a short while. One would expect a blue water yacht to be equipped with gear to make repairs en route.
 
Kukri said:
I am an enthusiastic subscriber to "Morgan's Cloud" . That's a very good point. I added the emphasis. I suppose "don't be caught beam on to the seas" is intuitive; it's something we learn in starting to sail in dinghies and it sticks with us, if we have sailed dinghies in waves.
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That's true but Morgan's Cloud adds another good point (plus personal cautionary tale) about heaving-to in these conditions. Unless absolutely confident that the heave-to position can be established quickly ( in which the boat crabs directly downwind leaving a flattened sea surface to windward) then the side of the hull is exposed risking a roll.
 
Daydream believer said:
Do you have hard evidence? I suspect that the number is relatively low.
If one were to have a damaged rudder, the chances are that the hydrovane may not actually work. If a sea were to bend the shaft so that the rudder was bent at an angle & jammed in one position off centre & could not be used: That would be a, not inconceivable, situation with all the AWB's with unsupported rudders in use. The Hydrovane would be totally unable to steer the boat.
If the steering gear broke ( ie broken cable) then the Hydrovane may be of limited use for a short while. One would expect a blue water yacht to be equipped with gear to make repairs en route.
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Ours steers surprisingly easily under motor with the spare tiller whilst the autopilot will deal with broken steering cables or ones which have slipped off the pulleys (it’s happened) before we fix or replace them. But I found no evidence of anybody in anger or test who had ever steered a boat using Hydrovane alone so I’d also love to see the evidence.
 
Another thing is the ability, or lack of it, to heave-to under fully reefed mains, storm jibs, trys'ls, and other special combinations of sails used in heavy weather.
I've not fully been through the permutations on my boat anyway, I haven't tried further than triple-reefed main plus jib (when she heaves-to as calmly as a shire horse).
It's quite a mission just to go out learn your boat's actual behaviour in these conditions.
 
Poey50 said:
That's true but Morgan's Cloud adds another good point (plus personal cautionary tale) about heaving-to in these conditions. Unless absolutely confident that the heave-to position can be established quickly ( in which the boat crabs directly downwind leaving a flattened sea surface to windward) then the side of the hull is exposed risking a roll.
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Yes, I recall reading that. At risk of boring for Britain, during a longish voyage with a yachtsman of an earlier generation as skipper, I noticed that he always hove to, not by putting the boat about and leaving the headsail sheet to weather, but by hooking a handy billy into the clew of the staysail and hauling it to withdward. The hove to position was thus established immediately. He then adjusted the helm about half down so that the boat fore reached gently, so that she made a square drift of about one knot. This left a slick to windward and reduced the risk of her being set back on her rudder. The slick worked; I don't recall seeing a sea break heavily to windward of us.
 
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Kukri said:
I suppose "don't be caught beam on to the seas" is intuitive; it's something we learn in starting to sail in dinghies and it sticks with us, if we have sailed dinghies in waves.
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Agreed, but beyond that I think the optimal tactics depend very much on the boat. One my prefer to lie para anchored into the wind, or hove-too/beating-close-too on say an old Swan which handles like a pig at speed downwind. Whereas modern fast offshore vessels tend to go by the mantra to never ever let a wave catch up with you.

FWIW we once tried a para drogue on an X-55 in a biggish blow 35-50kts as the boat was submarining a little the bigger blighters. So-constrained she was absolutely hideous. We couldn't even retrieve the para and had to cut it away. I did wonder if the Jordans SD would have enabled the optimal drag, but we sort of found a solution using a dinghy anchor on the and of a long warp. Warp was kinked to destruction in the end!

Point being; it's prob best to know one's individual envelopes in advance of being offshore, tired, and short handed.
 
Some thorts...
Having followed the Golden Globe thingo and a few other recent circumnavs it would appear that JSDs have an unfortunate habit of destroying windvane systems.....
My aux rudder was lost when it 'barndoored' as we fell off a big wet bit once.... I assume it was trying to apply rather a lot of helm at the time... didn't see it happen - didn't know it had happened until things settled down.... I do know that I saw 17knots on the GPS when it happened... that was the horizontal component of our speed... dunno what the vertical was ... if it was my actual rudder that had barndoored would it have failed? Dunno.....

I would not want to go to sea on a boat without an inner forestay and appropriately sized hank on storm jibs.

My boat came with a 150 sqft one which I discovered... one dark night in Bass Strait ... to be far to big.. Sailmaker in Oz said was a 'pre Fastnet size'... should be a lot smaller... made me a 100 sq footer....
Crossing the Tasman found that a bit big.... spoke to sailmaker in Wellington...'around Cook Strait we would have 50 sqft on your boat'.... which is what I now have... works good... 39ft, 8000kg boat.

I have never hove to in anger, never streamed a drogue, but have lain a hull on three occasions ( once in mid Sopac... twice off the Argentine coast )... not so much on account of the weather... that did play a part... but simply so all crew ( 2 of us ) could get a decent rest.
Whether that works or not may have a lot to do with sea state/location... deep sea/established conditions probably better than coastal/newly arrived weather.
 
glynd said:
.. beats a lash up with sole boards
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Funny you say that, I have been designing ( in my head) a spare rudder, (8' long, very heavy hardwood construction) which can be dismantled into sections and stowed somewhere, then plugged together and hung in a hurry.
I am thinking of coming back to Europe from the Connecticutt area ( too far North according to the pundits) via Bermuda in 2021, just where my boat took a battering in 1959 with her first owners, and where a friend (who posts on here) got serious gear breakage coming back from S.Carolina.
 
Frank Holden said:
Some thorts...
Having followed the Golden Globe thingo and a few other recent circumnavs it would appear that JSDs have an unfortunate habit of destroying windvane systems.....
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Also discussed at length on Morgans cloud. Should be fairly easily fixed, maybe even as simple as a few small fishing floats to keep the bridle on the surface . unfortunately going high latitude in our small boats you will be part of a small club providing the only real world testing. Like susie goodall where connection details were changed after her bridle parted. Can't be many (any?) who have done the likes of the southern Ocean with a jsd who would go again without one. Dyneema becoming the popular choice for the rode.
 
Kukri said:
Yes, I recall reading that. At risk of boring for Britain, during a longish voyage with a yachtsman of an earlier generation as skipper, I noticed that he always hove to, not by putting the boat about and leaving the headsail sheet to weather, but by hooking a handy billy into the clew of the staysail and hauling it to withdward. The hove to position was thus established immediately. He then adjusted the helm about half down so that the boat fore reached gently, so that she made a square drift of about one knot. This left a slick to windward and reduced the risk of her being set back on her rudder. The slick worked; I don't recall seeing a sea break heavily to windward of us.
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A tantalising snippet, she was obviously cutter rigged? I will try that some time, you would be hove-to without altering course, you would be ready to dump the stays'l back where it was, and you might get away with leaving the working stays'l sheet alone so it was ready. My stays'l would need serious winching to get it across though. Food for thought.
 
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