Hey, Ben, how did you weather the storm? Your normal anchorage or did you
move the boat to someplace else.
The phones are down in Long Island (not to mention power, trees, and general
devastation) so I haven't a clue whether or not I still have a boat. I saw
something late last night on one of the coverage's which showed 90+ gusts at
Eaton's Neck which is right next to Oyster Bay. At this point, first of
all, we're stranded in Manhattan at home (bridges are closed and tunnels are
flooded) and even if we could get to Queens I doubt the roads are clear out
to the Island and Oyster Bay. It may well be a couple of days before I'm
able to either connect with the yard and/or drive out to see what's what.
I've lived here my entire life, all 69 years of it, and never saw such a
storm or destruction, especially here on Manhattan!!! 4' of water on 1st
Avenue and 95th Street??? And in lower Manhattan, around the Battery, it's
the first time since a major storm in the late 1800s where the Hudson and
East Rivers actually met!!! Just to give you an idea, the measured storm
surge for that storm was 11+ feet. Sandy's surge was 13+ feet!!!
If you had access to a TV you would have seen water pouring down into the
Brooklyn Battery Tunnel like it was coming off a spillway!!
S
Steve Weinstein
S/V CAPTIVA
1997 Hunter 376, Hull #376
Sailing out of Oyster Bay, NY
All outgoing mail protected by VIPRE A/V
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Okopnik
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 11:34 AM
To: liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com
Subject: Re: [Liveaboard] A SAFER WAY TO ANCHOR MANY MODERN BOATS IN A
HURRICANE
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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