Heavy Weather Gear and Strategies #9—You Need a System
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
Many of us (I have been guilty of this myself) buy storm survival gear, throw it in a corner of the lazarette, and head off to sea congratulating ourselves on our foresight and seamanship…not a good idea.
Fast forward to a building storm at sea. You are seasick, exhausted, and the boat has just experienced a partial knockdown, scaring the living daylights out of you. You need that drogue deployed and you need it now, before the next big wave makes the partial knockdown look like a gentle pat on the back. Oh yes, it is black dark too. (Why is it that this crap always happens in the dark?)
The drogue is in a corner of the lazarette under all the junk that you threw on top of it in the hurry to get to sea. To get it out and get the warp to set it on, you are going to have to move all this stuff in the dark. Worse still, the hatch will be open to the sea while you do it—seriously dangerous in this kind of weather.
OK, with superhuman fear-driven strength, you get the drogue out, together with several hundred feet of heavy line, and slam the hatch shut with only a few thousand gallons of water getting into the boat. Not enough to sink you, you hope.
Now, assuming the wind or a wave don’t tear the whole works out of your hands and wash it away, you just have to figure out on which side of that vital and oh so fragile self-steering gear to rig the bridle legs and what to cleat them to. Oh yes, that several hundred feet of line is now a hopeless tangle. What about chafe? Oh no, the chafe gear is in the lazarette. It’s got even darker and, if you’re anything like me, you have to take a break to puke.
The point of all this is that when you buy storm survival gear and lug it to the boat, you are about one third of the way to a storm survival system. The second third is putting together and trying out a deployment system that ideally will be set up and ready to go before you even leave the wharf. And then, don’t forget, you have to have a way to get the damned thing back aboard after the storm—the last third.
Next post we will look at our deployment system on Morgan’s Cloud for our newly-acquired Jordan Series Drogue.
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
#8 Our New Backup System
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Labels: Seamanship
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