Heavy Weather Gear and Strategies #12—Drogue Retrieval, The Devil is in the Details
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
In the last post in this series we talked about the difficulties in retrieving a Jordan Series Drogue and a way to make it practical using a drill motor and winch bit. However, that is only part of the solution. Like so many things in offshore sailing, the devil is in the details.
But before I get into that, a word of caution from a very experienced source:
“I'm scared of the way you have tested the series drogue, particularly motoring ahead with the drogue out behind you and then trying to winch it in. I feel there is a potential life threatening load on the winch and blocks and if anything lets go, someone could be killed.”
This quote came in an e-mail from Hal Roth. For those of you who don’t know of Hal, he is the author of 13 (soon to be 14) well respected books on offshore voyaging drawing from several hundred thousand miles of experience, including two single handed races around the world. This guy, together with his wife Margaret, has truly “been there and done that”.
Based on nearly 100,000 miles of sailing Morgan’s Cloud, I was confident of her gear’s ability to take the loads—after all they were no higher than we typically see on our genoa or spinnaker sheets. However, Hal’s point is valid: the loads we are talking about here are potentially life threatening, so be careful. If you try the techniques we are discussing, think about every step and make sure that you don’t position yourself in the bight of a line or where a piece of gear that fails will hit you—this is just another good reason to practice retrieval before you have to do it when tired and seasick.
Now back to the details. When testing retrieval, the first challenge we were faced with was to get the heavily loaded series drogue line onto the winch. To make this easier, before deploying we tied a retrieval line (blue) to the point where the bridles and drogue line connect. We took this line to our largest sheet winch and ground it in until the bridles came tight, preventing further travel. We then used a nipper line (red), that we dead-ended at a massive chain plate, tied with a double rolling hitch (a single slipped) to the drogue line to take the load. Next, we moved the blue line down the drogue line for another haul. It took three iterations to get the drogue on the winch (it would be fewer on an aft cockpit boat).
By the way, a rolling hitch is probably the most useful of the four or so knots that we regularly use on Morgan’s Cloud. I like the second version in the linked Wikipedia description best. If you can’t tie a rolling hitch, or another equally effective constrictor knot, then we recommend that you learn. This knot can get you out of deep yoghurt. A double rolling hitch is simply two rolling hitches tied one after another with about a foot between them. In my experience, the rope will break before a double rolling hitch slips.
Other things we discovered during our testing:
- We need exactly four turns on the winch; less and the line will slip, more and the drogue cones will not strip off the winch.
- A second person must aggressively tail the winch to stop the cones fouling.
- The cones will hang up on any fitting in their path. That is the reason for the black sail tie on the aft cleat.
You need a really large and well rounded fairlead with some way to capture the line to stop it jumping out. Our fairleads were custom built to our design some years ago as part of our rudder loss strategy and have fastpins that capture the line. They worked great during our test with no hang ups.
Next post we will look at an alternative retrieval system proposed by Hal Roth.
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
#9 You Need a System
#10 Jordan Drogue Launch System
#11 Jordan Drogue Retrieval System
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