Sailing in Big Seas

RupertW said:
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
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Hiya. Yeah for sure there are a couple of holes around in the Med. But it's not very big and 'relatively' shallow. One of those holes is to the east of Pantellera. But mostly in brisk westerly winds you got a massive amount of water being squidged through the gap south of Sicily towards Malta. Them thar seas get very big and breaky.

Regarding Hydrovane. When we need to motor in light winds, I use an electric tiller pilot to drive the Hydrovane rudder to steer the boat and leave the main rudder locked off.

Works a treat. :encouragement:
 
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Ohlin Karcher said:
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.
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The plan in our Sadler 32 is a conservative one as befits someone with no prior experience of those conditions. Once the wind reaches a steady force 7 (and assuming sea room) the JSD will be deployed and the foil on our Windpilot will be lifted clear. No skill or Moitessier-like deep affinity for the ocean required.
 
Poey50 said:
The plan in our Sadler 32 is a conservative one as befits someone with no prior experience of those conditions. Once the wind reaches a steady force 7 (and assuming sea room) the JSD will be deployed and the foil on our Windpilot will be lifted clear. No skill or Moitessier-like deep affinity for the ocean required.
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I suspect you will up the Force level as you encounter it in open seas - in a very average AWB we would have to have steady true winds well above 40 knots and probably higher before going to storm level. F7 is very normal and relatively comfortable downwind and is part of a good days run. Sea state and sail balance is a much bigger deal for me so far - and I admit I haven’t yet used our prepared and ready drogue which I see as a probable one use item as a drop from a 9 to a useable 7 will make it almost impossible to wind back in. Drop to a force 3 and it would be fine.
 
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC said:
Yes, but only 300 mm max and being servo pendulum, it affects ita performance by a lot, apparently.
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I quoted 400 mm because that is what the manufacturers stated. They suggest that it is NOT detrimental to the unit. But clearly you know better.
I would be quite happy to move my Aeries over 400mm on a boat that did not have a wide stern because the oar would still be in the water at reasonable heal & can be balanced to work to one side more than the other to counteract a degree of off centre installation. I often set it like that to keep the oar out of the water to keep weight off the vane
But this thread is about big seas not wind vanes, so perhaps that discussion should be continued elsewhere
 
RupertW said:
I suspect you will up the Force level as you encounter it in open seas - in a very average AWB we would have to have steady true winds well above 40 knots and probably higher before going to storm level. F7 is very normal and relatively comfortable downwind and is part of a good days run. .
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What size boat?
 
Ohlin Karcher said:
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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‘’Bill’’ Tilman, CCA Blue Water Medal 1956, doing as he had been taught by ‘’Bobby’’ Somerset CCA Blue Water Medal 1933‘’. So the ‘pedigree’ of this way of doing it is both ancient and respectable.

Use a handy billy hooked onto the weather shrouds. Sail makes a better shape, no chafe and not much effort. Boat was this one:

 
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Poey50 said:
What size boat?
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To illustrate running in F7 in a bigger boat, this is the English Channel a few miles East of the Nab Tower, in a Nic 55. Looks like we had a fair tide, making about 5.5 knots and steering easily. My old long keel 37 footer would have been more squirrelly.

https://youtu.be/seaN6gdOOQg
 
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Kukri said:
‘’Bill’’ Tilman, CCA Blue Water Medal 1956, doing as he had been taught by ‘’Bobby’’ Somerset CCA Blue Water Medal 1933‘’. So the ‘pedigree’ of this way of doing it is both ancient and respectable.

Use a handy billy hooked onto the weather shrouds. Sail makes a better shape, no chafe and not much effort. Boat was this one:

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Thank you Kukri, I am somewhat awed I must say.. heaving-to by backing the stays'l on my own gaff cutter is now going to be a regular practice. Perhaps with a name.. 'Hanging the Herring' ?
 
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In December's Practical Boat Owner (#646), which dropped through our letter-box today, there is an article 'Weathering a Severe Gale' written by an ocean racer, Pip Hare. She was caught in a Force 10 in Biscay in a 39 foot cruiser-racer. In the end, with the crew incapacitated with sea-sickness, she took all sails down and 'set the auto helm'. The boat and crew took a severe battering but the mast stayed up and they survived. There was no mention of any other storm tactics either at the time or, even more surprisingly, in 'lessons learned'.
 
Are we told what the auto helm was set to do?

It sounds like lying a-hull, which was once very much the usual thing to do but which is less favoured now because (a) it’s expletive deleted uncomfortable and (b) the boat tends to lie beam on to the seas and eventually - eventually - the ‘right’ sea will come along and she will get knocked down and perhaps rolled.

The argument against running under bare poles is that a time may come when the boat starts surfing down the backs of waves and she may dig the bow in and pitch pole.

I think today’s preferred methods are to lie hove to, if the boat will do it, until she won’t do that any more, and should that be or become impractical then to use either a parachute sea anchor from the bow (the Pardeys) or to stream a long warp with something on the end ( the warp ought to be a bit longer than the space between two seas, in theory) or ideally a series drogue, from the stern.
 
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No mention that I could see of what the auto helm was set to do. The closest the article comes to considering storm tactics was:

"- Act early. If conditions are deteriorating, set limits for taking down sail or making storm preparations and stick to them."

It may have lost something in the editing but, to my ear, the article sounds remarkably vague. Heavy on the trauma but light on drilling down to the specifics.

Edit: I think I can see the problem. It is reprinted from the RNLI magazine so presumably the original target audience would not be too interested in specifics.

https://rnli.org/magazine/magazine-featured-list/2018/november/a-new-kind-of-hell
 
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