Norway to the Chesapeake Bay
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
This post has been archived to our main site. Please see Sailing routes.
Labels: Passage Planning
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Heavy Weather Gear and Strategies #10—Jordan Drogue Launch System
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
OK, enough blather about why we selected the Jordan Series Drogue and why you need a complete system for dealing with a drogue or sea anchor; on to the nuts and bolts of our deployment system.
Attachment Points
When setting up to use our new Jordan Series Drogue, the first issue we examined was attachment points for the bridle. Although we have massive stern cleats and fairleads that would theoretically be able to stand up to Jordan’s projected maximum load of 30,000 lb (13,600 kg) for Morgan’s Cloud, we opted to fabricate and build two dedicated chainplates for the following reasons:
- Any rope that passes over a fairlead is potentially vulnerable to chafe no matter how well rounded that fairlead is. (It is amazing how often we have read accounts of heavy weather deployment of sea anchors and drogues that end with a broken warp due to chafe.)
- We don’t want to be messing around with chafe gear and be trying to “refresh the nip” by adjusting bridles under heavy load in storm conditions.
- We want to be able to set up our Jordan Drogue system before we go to sea and leave it that way without having to remove it to free a cleat for something else.
- We want to get the bridle legs as far out on the corners of the boat as possible, which should make her yaw less. Also, this positioning has the added benefit of keeping the bridle legs away from the self steering gear.
After some calculation, we ended up having two stainless steel chainplates 27” (68 cm) long by 2.75” (7 cm) wide fabricated from ½” (130 mm) stock. We fastened the chainplates to our toe rails with seven 7/16” stainless steel bolts. We can only get away with this positioning, even though these toe rails are massive and welded to the hull, because there is a substantial existing chainplate (originally designed to take the load of the spinnaker sheets) in the way of three of the bolts. For most boats, to get adequate strength it will be necessary to bolt through the hull and a substantial backer plate. In the case of fiberglass boats it may be necessary to build up the laminate thickness in the way of the plate.
Set UpBefore going to sea, we will shackle the bridle legs to the chainplates with two ¾” Crosby 209a alloy galvanized shackles with a safe working load of 14,000 lb (6350 kg) and a deform point of twice that, and then wire the shackles closed. Interestingly, the weakest point (every system has one) in all of this is the hole in the chainplate, which will fail at about 26,000 lb (11,800 kg). Since it is unlikely that more than 70% of the peak load will come on one bridle leg, this is well within acceptable limits.
We will then carefully lead the bridles clear of the self steering gear, back to the the aft deck and flake (never coil) them, together with the series drogue, into a sail bag with the bitter end and 12’ of chain, to act as a sinker, going in last. We will tie the chain end to the mouth of the bag so it does not get lost and keep things tidy by using plastic wire ties to lash the bridle to the stern rails. Finally, we will lash the bag down securely on the aft deck.
Deployment
To deploy, we just have to cut the wire ties, flip the port bridle outside the self steering gear, open the bag and chuck the chain over the side via the same route as the bridles come inboard—a far cry from this scenario.
While different boats will require different deployment systems we think they should all be:
- Completely chafe free.
- Strong enough to withstand Donald Jordan’s design loads. As can be seen by the steps we had to go through, on larger boats this is not a trivial challenge.
- Completely pre-rigged before going to sea.
- Preferably deployable without opening a locker hatch and so opening the boat to the sea. Difficult or impossible on some boats, I know.
- Easily deployed by a seasick, scared and tired sailor in the black dark. (We even have the steps written down, complete with pictures, in the boat’s manual, since I know that in such conditions I’m capable of making some deeply stupid blunders.)
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
If you want to make sure that you don’t miss the next installment in this series, without having to keep checking this blog, subscribe to our feed or automated notification e-mails, both available on the side bar. You will then receive a short notice when the next post comes up. Of course we will respect your privacy and will never divulge your e-mail address or shower you with junk. If you don’t like the feed you can unsubscribe in a moment.
Labels: Seamanship
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The S word - stability
posted by Colin Speedie Web Site
Bringing our new boat home for the first time
From the first time I saw one, I thought that one day I’d like to own an OVNI for long distance cruising. Living and working for part of each year in France meant that I encountered OVNI’s and their sisters from Garcia and other builders regularly, and saw them return battered but proud from distant shores again and again. Listening to their skippers only made me more envious – all of them had nothing but the highest regard for the seakeeping abilities of these quirky craft. One day, I thought, one day…..
So when the time came to put our money where our mouth is, there was no hesitation. And I can honestly say that the vexed question of the supposedly limited stability of the OVNI was never an issue for us. I simply thought of Jimmy Cornell taking his OVNI 43 Aventura III to the Antarctic and Alaska, and then crewing aboard Igloo, an OVNI 39, to Spitsbergen. I also thought of many other well known high latitude boats, Pelagic, Seal, Parati (to name a few), all lifting keelers that have made equally illustrious voyages. Now we’ve a long way to go before we dare to include ourselves in the company of these immensely capable boats and their crews, but you have to aspire to something.
Nonetheless, I thought it would be interesting to check the numbers. The OVNI 435 has an EU category A (Ocean) rating, and that’s good enough for most people over here. Being no naval architect, the complexity of the formulae needed to come up with comprehensible figures made my head spin, so when I heard about the excellent Sailing USA web pages (www.sailingusa.info/cal__avs.htm, for example), where simple data entry can be calculated to give a wide variety of figures that might be pertinent to ocean cruisers, it seemed a good place to start. So using the manufacturers’ data from our owners handbook, the website allowed some basic calculations to be effected.
The OVNI 435 has a ballast ratio of 135% - about average for today’s cruising yachts, and has high form stability, as we found when we sailed her home recently. The stability value is 34.15, and the Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS) is 126.57, within the boundaries deemed acceptable for ocean crossing. The capsize screening value is 1.84, anything less than 2 being considered good. So looking solely at the stability numbers there is little to be overly critical about.
In terms of performance and comfort, the OVNI shows up well. The displacement to length ratio is 258, firmly in the moderate category, whilst the sail area to displacement ratio (with the standard genoa) should provide more than enough power for fast passage making at 22.42 – ours will be lower, though, as we are having a yankee rather than a genoa as our working headsail, giving us a rating of somewhere just under 20 – more cruiser territory. And finally, she has a motion to comfort ratio of 31.17, which when combined with the soft ride associated with internal ballast should make her a comfortable boat to make long passages aboard. All in all, a steady, middle of the road design built for long distance cruising.
Of course, these are “dry” figures, so we’ll be making sure that we don’t overload our boat. She has been kept deliberately simple, and even with only two of us aboard for most of the time, we’ll still be watching the weight. We’ve also kept weight down aloft – radar on the stern arch, hanked on staysail and so forth to keep the stability levels up, and in keeping with all our previous boats, we’ll be stowing everything possible below decks on passage. Keep it low, keep it light and keep the decks clear is a good way to go, we believe.
Another factor we’ll be looking to exploit is the ability to lift the centreboard when going downwind, not just to gain extra speed (although that’s good, too) but to avoid “tripping” on the keel and broaching. Many experienced OVNI sailors report lifting the keel in bad weather, allowing the boat to slide when hit by bigger waves, rather like a multihull. Well, if and when we have to face that, we’ll find out how well it works!
But at the end of the day, these are all just figures, and as it’s not unknown for well respected ocean cruisers to get into serious trouble if caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’re not kidding ourselves that we’ll be any less likely to suffer if it’s our turn one day. And so we’ll be out as soon as possible learning how our new boat likes to heave-to, run or work her way upwind in strong winds, and what survival tactics or equipment will be most suitable for our boat, so that we’ve at least a good working idea of where to start when the going gets really tough. There’s nothing like empirical experience, as the sea soon deals with the complacent, and at the end of the day it’s down to the way the crew handle the boat in so many cases, and staying away from the most dangerous places and conditions if at all possible.
The Sailing USA website makes this abundantly clear, quoting the 1998 Sydney – Hobart race review report that gave the following as one of the significant findings: “There is no evidence that any particular style or design of boat fared better or worse in the conditions. The age of yacht, age of design, construction method, construction material, high or low stability, heavy or light displacement, or rig type were not determining factors. Whether or not a yacht was hit by an extreme wave was a matter of chance.”
The numbers for the OVNI are reassuring, and may be one of the reasons why so many experienced sailors over here choose them for ocean crossings, which is good, but it is surely only a small part of the picture. We always felt we had chosen wisely long before we looked at the numbers though, and felt that as others had gone before us and come back to tell the tale, then with time, experience and humility in the face of the sea, maybe we shall make it too. So now it’s down to us, a good strong boat and yes, that indefinable entity – luck.
[This post is part of a continuing series on the selection, building, and fitting out of an aluminum Ovni 435 by guest writer and very experienced offshore sailor Colin Speedie. You can read earlier posts in this series by clicking here and scrolling down to Colin's posts.
If you want to make sure that you don’t miss the next installment in this series, without having to keep checking this blog, subscribe to our feed or automated notification e-mails, both available on the side bar. You will then receive a short notice when the next post comes up. Of course we will respect your privacy and will never divulge your e-mail address or shower you with junk. If you don’t like the feed you can unsubscribe in a moment.]
Labels: Boats and Design
Monday, February 18, 2008
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
If you want to make sure that you don’t miss the next installment in this series, without having to keep checking this blog, subscribe to our feed or automated notification e-mails, both available on the side bar. You will then receive a short notice when the next post comes up. Of course we will respect your privacy and will never divulge your e-mail address or shower you with junk. If you don’t like the feed you can unsubscribe in a moment.
Labels: Seamanship
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Mooring By The Stern
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
This post has been archived to our main site. Please see Anchoring.
Labels: Seamanship
Friday, February 15, 2008
New Aluminum Boats, What to Paint and What not to Paint
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
This post has been archived to our main site. Please see Painting aluminum boats.
Labels: Maintenance and Refit
Monday, February 4, 2008
A practical cruising rig
posted by Colin Speedie Web Site
Here in Europe the standard rig for most yachts sold as “cruisers” is still the sloop, usually with a large overlapping genoa of 130% or more. That might be fine in sunny sheltered waters with an army of gorillas to help out, but is less than ideal for shorthanded crews sailing in windy and exposed seas. This is when the ability to shift gear to suit the conditions by reefing swiftly and safely is far more important, and the true cutter rig comes in to its own.
So we have opted for a roller furling Yankee, coupled with a hanked on staysail on a detachable stay. The mainsail is fully battened, using Harken cars and mast track – simply the best there is. All reefing will be by single lines lead aft to the cockpit handled by a power driven winch. The aim is to achieve (as far as possible) the ability to reef all sails from the cockpit with the minimum of fuss.
So we have opted for a roller furling Yankee, coupled with a hanked on staysail on a detachable stay. The mainsail is fully battened, using Harken cars and mast track – simply the best there is. All reefing will be by single lines lead aft to the cockpit handled by a power driven winch. The aim is to achieve (as far as possible) the ability to reef all sails from the cockpit with the minimum of fuss.
We have specified spare halyards for most sails, believing that the extra complexity and windage should be more than compensated for in terms of safety and reliability. This is not all that awkward to achieve – although our rod kicker (theoretically) does away with the need for a topping lift, we’re still going to have one as it will also double as a spare main halyard. The spinnaker halyard is having an extra long tail, to double up as a lifting halyard for our dinghy, and also so it can be deployed should we have to rescue anyone from the water. As this halyard is led aft to the power winch, this should prove a useful and practical feature.
All OVNI’s are supplied with Sparcraft spars, which seem robust and well finished. A full set of folding mast steps are being fitted to simplify regular rig inspections aloft, conning the boat in shallow water and in case of the need to make emergency repairs. As OVNI’s are true centreboarders, the mast is mounted well forward above the pivot point of the keel to ensure good balance of the hull and rig. This means that the boom doesn’t sweep the cockpit, a useful safety feature on any cruising boat. For the first time on any of our boats we have specified a boom brake, in our case the new model from Wichard. This is a clever looking device, derived from climbing equipment, and has no moving parts, relying solely on friction to slow the travel of the boom and will double, we are told, as a preventer when fully tensioned. It will be interesting to see how well it works.
The rig is well stayed, in the best traditional cruising manner. Many modern yachts are going over to one single chainplate per side to handle all standing rigging, combined with aft swept spreaders, features that don’t appeal to us on a cruising boat. In contrast, Pèlerin has fore and aft lowers giving vital support where it matters in the bottom panel of the rig, combined with parallel spreaders that reduce chafe on the mainsail, and make it easier to reef the main off the wind – a hardship at times with a fully battened main even with parallel spreaders. Some crews find the running backstays on cutter a nuisance, but we like them as they stiffen the rig up immensely, and are very reassuring in strong winds. Twin standing backstays offer a simple and dependable failsafe in the event of one failing. All in all, it’s a simple, strong, belt and braces set-up in line with our overall philosophy of safe, self-sufficient cruising.
[This post is part of a continuing series on the selection, building, and fitting out of an aluminum Ovni 345 by guest writer and very experienced offshore sailor Colin Speedie. You can read earlier posts in this series by clicking here and scrolling down to Colin's posts.
If you want to make sure that you don’t miss the next installment in this series, without having to keep checking this blog, subscribe to our feed or automated notification e-mails, both available on the side bar. You will then receive a short notice when the next post comes up. Of course we will respect your privacy and will never divulge your e-mail address or shower you with junk. If you don’t like the feed you can unsubscribe in a moment.]
Labels: Boats and Design
Sunday, February 3, 2008
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.
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
If you want to make sure that you don’t miss the next installment in this series, without having to keep checking this blog, subscribe to our feed or automated notification e-mails, both available on the side bar. You will then receive a short notice when the next post comes up. Of course we will respect your privacy and will never divulge your e-mail address or shower you with junk. If you don’t like the feed you can unsubscribe in a moment.
Labels: Seamanship
Friday, February 1, 2008
Why White?
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
Question [edited for brevity]: Why did you paint “Morgan’s Cloud” white? I thought she looked better painted dark blue.
Answer: By the end of our last cruise, the hull paint on “Morgan’s Cloud” was in pretty bad shape. In fact, we had two large circles on the starboard side that were worn right through the paint and down to the bondo, from our big balloon fenders that had rested there during the two winters we spent alongside in Tromsø.
In a perfect world, we would have stripped off the paint and gone with an unpainted aluminum hull—much less maintenance and expense. However, “Morgan’s Cloud” was manufactured well before computer plate cutting of aluminum was being used on boats and so, without bondo to fill in the bumps and hollows, her hull would look somewhat rippled. In other words, this isn’t a perfect world and we had no choice but to paint the hull.
When we looked closely at the old paint job with Doug, painting expert extraordinaire at Billings Diesel and Marine, he noticed a few bubbles between the bondo and the hull, which he conjectured were caused by the heat of the sun on the dark paint (though the sun isn’t that hot in the Arctic, it shines for a lot of hours at a time). His suggestion was to paint the boat white, which we did, even though John’s Arctic photography is going to suffer (just try getting a white boat to stand out amid the ice!).
As Nathanael G. Herreshoff once said, "There are only two colors to paint a boat, black or white, and only a fool would paint a boat black." So I guess we’re in good company!
Labels: Maintenance and Refit
Timing, Caribbean to Europe
posted by John & Phyllis Web Site
This post has been archived on our main site. Please see Sailing routes.
Labels: Passage Planning
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- Picking a Route Across the North Atlantic
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- Best Time for West to East Atlantic Crossing
- Life Rafts
- Radar Scanner Position
- Self sufficiency in power
- Heavy Weather Gear and Strategies #13—Drogue Retri...
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