On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 01:57:05PM -0400, Philip wrote:
>
> The JSD is not a "sea anchor". It is a drogue. Unlike a sea anchor (para
> anchor?) It yields to the seas instead of holding fast. This reduces the
> strain
> on fittings and allows the boat to become part of the wave action, not in
> opposition to it.
Despite the (admittedly inaccurate) nomenclature, nothing - sea 'anchor'
or otherwise - "holds fast" in the ocean except an actual anchor that is
dug into the bottom. The distinction you draw owes much more to
marketing than to reality; a large drogue will have more resistance than
a small sea anchor, and vice versa, so it's really about the relative
size of what you stream rather than its meaningless name.
The sea anchor that I used in the first case was smaller than the
recommended size for the boat - I was a relatively new sailor back then,
and thought that too small was better than none at all (an idea that's
got quite a number of failure modes built into it.) In the second case,
the sea anchor was just slightly larger than recommended. The biggest
difference, however, was that the first vessel, S/V Recessional, was an
ocean racer with a fine, tapered stern with very little buoyancy and
with a displacement of 4.5 tons with an LOA of 34', while the second,
S/V Ulysses, was a motorsailor with a very large, high stern with
tremendous buoyancy and more than twice the displacement for the same
length. Recessional was a racehorse; Ulysses was a bit of a lumbering
bear, a floating home with sails (steady enough at anchor that my ex
baked a carrot cake - grated the carrots, etc. - during a 45kt storm
that stalled over us, while other people in the same harbor were getting
thrown around hard enough to cause bruises.)
In both cases, however, the boats "found their best position" on a
Pardey rig; for Recessional, I found this out when anchored in a "wind
across current" situation. Rigging an actual anchor that rode on that
rig put us at a very comfortable angle that greatly reduced the rolling.
I have very little doubt that it would have worked the same way if I had
rigged the sea anchor on it.
Perhaps the biggest lesson here is that you have to be aware of your
vessel's configuration and make decisions based on that as well as all
the other info you have rather than just having a religious faith in a
"gadget" of whatever sort. It's all just tools; you, the skipper, are
supposed to be the brain that decides on their proper use and
configuration, regardless of what they're called.
Ben
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