Attainable Adventure Cruising—What's New

Heavy Weather Gear and Strategies #8—Our New Backup System

posted by John & Phyllis Web Site

On Morgan’s Cloud our heavy weather system has always included two options: our standard strategy of heaving-to, with or without a drogue over the bow, and, although we have never had to use it, a backup system. In the last post I wrote about our decision to replace the old backup system and in this post I’m going to write about the new backup system we selected and why.

I have always had reservations about running off, with or without a drag device, because of the ever present risk of a broach that can lead to a knock down or even a roll over. While drag devices claim to reduce this risk, I have been concerned about a drogue like the Galerider tumbling or pulling out of a wave face with the resultant rapid acceleration of the boat. After all, this only needs to happen once in a multi day survival storm to trigger a disaster. In addition, in most cases, running off involves steering which violates one of our most important goals for a heavy weather survival system.

The Jordan Series Drogue solves the steering issue and, most importantly, it can’t pull out of a wave face since its long length and multiple cones guarantee that most of it will always be in the water. These benefits and Donald Jordan’s well reasoned analysis of his design, which agrees well with our observations at sea, together with the impressive 15 year track record of his system, convinced us to buy a Jordan Series Drogue from Ace Sailmakers. We bought one with 166 cones on 350' of rode, made up of 110' 1" nylon double braid—upsized from Ace Sailmaker's recommendation of 7/8"— tapered to 115' of 3/4" and then to 125' of 1/2" for the last 75 cones.

I would recommend that all voyaging sailors read Jordan’s design notes, whether you buy one of his drogues or not. The key things that I learned from him are:

• It’s not the wave strike from a breaking crest that gets you, but the sudden stop at the bottom of the trough. This is well substantiated by analysis of wave damage to yachts. Also, I think it is much of the reason that heaving-to works so well.
  
  
• What you see of wave behavior at sea during a storm is an optical illusion that can lead you to draw the wrong conclusions about where the real dangers lie.
  
  
• Jordan is a qualified engineer that has applied real science to the problem of heavy weather survival. In light of the preceding point, this is really important.
  
  
• Nowhere in his solution is there the kind of weaknesses in logic that you see in the promotion of many competing storm survival systems. (We have written about some of these weaknesses in other posts in this series.)
  
  
• He has no commercial interest in the system.
  
  
• There is actually very little danger of being damaged by a wave breaking onto the stern (being pooped) while running off. I would agree, in that in all my years of sailing I have never been on a boat that was truly pooped. Yes I have seen the cockpit filled with water on several occasions, but in most cases the boat had just slewed on a wave face and the water washed in from the lee side or quarter.
  
  
• That the gear you have and how you use it is much more important to your survival than what type of boat you have.
  

For those of you who would like more detail to substantiate Jordan's findings I would highly recommend reading the US Coastguard Report on his research and findings.

One glaring weakness in information about the Jordan Series Drogue is the lack of a viable short handed retrieval system, particularly for larger boats where the loads are very high. This was brought home to us by the experience of two friends of ours, very experienced and strong sailors, who were forced to cut a Jordan Drogue away in the Southern Ocean. In the next post in this series we will look at the modifications we have made to Morgan’s Cloud to make deployment easier and safer and retrieval practical.

Earlier Posts in the Series
#1 Goals
#2 Heaving-To
#3 When Heaving-to is Dangerous
#4 Options When Heaving-to is Not Working
#5 Stopping Wave Strikes While Heaved-To
#6 Survival Storms
#7 Our Old backup System

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Labels: Seamanship

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