Towed Generators

[Ademist]

I've pulled ours in many times above three knots and although it makes a tangled mess of the line, as others have said, it untangles easily when streamed aft.

Pulling in as fast as you can, hand over hand, makes it easier to retrieve. Leather gloves.

Main reason to stop using it on passage has been fishing. I wouldn't have expected in good winds it should cause any slowing down, but it is difficult to assess.

 

[mjcoon]

It doesn't happen often but towed generators have been known to be bitten off by a shark that thinks it's a fish.

You might not want that to happen when you are hauling it in! Maybe a rare benefit of the funnel method?

Mike.

 

[AndrewB]

Ours is an LVM Aqua4aero gen. Leather gloves, I use welding gloves, and simply pull it in. I sit on the transom steps and haul. Disconnect from the generator and then stream the twisted mess to straighten - which means you need to allow time, distance to effect the unravelling. Slowing the yacht obviously helps - but the exercise is good.

Exactly what I do with my Aerogen. The faster you pull it in, the better, and the gloves (I use riggers) are a must.

A hidden plus of a towed generator is that like a trailed warp, it tends to steady the yacht downwind and makes steering easier. But it does knock ¼ to ½ knot off the speed.

 

[Neeves]

To us the loss of 1/4-1/2 a knot is neither here nor there (we have never bothered to try to measure it) - the amount of power produced far outweighs to delay in arriving somewhere. We are out to go 'sailing' not to get to the destination faster than anyone else.

Trailed generators are ideal on a cat as you usually will only have one and you can fish, trawl, from the other hull. I suspect retreival from an open transomed mono is quite easy as you can sit 'in' the aft of the cockpit and very safely retrieve hand over hand.

Whereas ours is a combined unit and switching from wind to water takes time, but what else are you doing?, so we tend to only use the water phase for longer passages - I do wonder why they are not more popular given the levels of power they can generate - particularly for bigger yachts, say plus 40' (that can produce the higher hull speeds).

The first thing ITT did having bought LVM was discontinue the water gen mode - made no sense to me then, makes no sense now. Having invested - a bit of marketing might have paid dividends.

There is a little marketing opportunity in there somewhere, WattnSea is (far) too expensive, DuoGen sound fragile (from earlier accounts above) yet people here who use them without exception praise the concept.

 

[Ric]

Exactly what I do with my Aerogen. The faster you pull it in, the better, and the gloves (I use riggers) are a must.

A hidden plus of a towed generator is that like a trailed warp, it tends to steady the yacht downwind and makes steering easier. But it does knock ¼ to ½ knot off the speed.

Not sure why you need gloves (unless you are a surgeon or an office-wallah). I just grab it really hard - as soon as it stops no burns. Second and third grabs are easier as the rotation speed is slowed by the previous grab.

As for slowing the boat, I did notice this when I had the attachment point offset from the centreline of the boat, because the rudder had to work against the offset yawing moment. Now that I have built a clip-on frame to hold the aquagen, that fits to mounts low down on the centreline of the transom, there is less yaw-moment for the rudder to work against, so less drag.

As ever in sailing, keeping the boat in balance so the rudder is not working is the key to optimal speed. If the drag of the water generator is offset, giving the rudder work to do, then you lose speed.

My water generator really pays its worth on downwind passages where it acts as a drogue, moving the hydrodynamic centre of pressure rearwards and giving the rudder less (draggy) work to do.

 

[oldmansailingdotcom]

I tried the funnel and lost it, gloves, slowing down etc. The answer came by accident. I wanted to use it in shallow water and the makers suggest a 30m line - which means it will drag on the bottom every time you go about , so I tried 15m and it worked perfectly well - also (!!) it didn't get nearly as tangled because it was quicker to retrieve. So I tried it on a 10m line - absolutely no difference and it never once surfaced - even surfing at 8knots+. Unfortunately it did spend some time tangled in my windvane and I had to cut 1.5m off the line so now it is only 8.5m and it still seems to work as well as ever - and of course I can retrieve it in a trice with no problems at all.

 

[Kukri]

I tried the funnel and lost it, gloves, slowing down etc. The answer came by accident. I wanted to use it in shallow water and the makers suggest a 30m line - which means it will drag on the bottom every time you go about , so I tried 15m and it worked perfectly well - also (!!) it didn't get nearly as tangled because it was quicker to retrieve. So I tried it on a 10m line - absolutely no difference and it never once surfaced - even surfing at 8knots+. Unfortunately it did spend some time tangled in my windvane and I had to cut 1.5m off the line so now it is only 8.5m and it still seems to work as well as ever - and of course I can retrieve it in a trice with no problems at all.

I like this answer.

 

[KellysEye]

I know of two yachts crossing the Atlantic that had their towed generators bitten off by sharks who thought they were fish. Unlikely though.