The anchor chain vibrated beneath my hand as Scott hit the throttle and Quetzal eased astern. That’s not what I wanted to feel, the anchor and chain skidding along the bottom, and I willed the usually reliable 66-pound Bruce to set. It chattered, then seemed to bite, then chattered again. We were tired, cold to the bone and ready to drop below for a hot meal, a wee dram of whiskey and a sound sleep. Instead I hit the up button on the windlass remote and started hauling up the anchor—for the third time.

We needed to take the strain off the windlass with the engine, and Gretchen, next to me on the bow, relayed my directions to Brant, who was positioned amidships, and he passed them along to Scott at the helm. The uncooperative anchor broke the surface with a necklace of thick weed—not a good sign—and Gretchen knocked it off with the boat hook as we circled Loch Stornaway one more time.

Scotland is an enchanting sailing area—with a few caveats. The season is short, the weather capricious, and anchoring is a challenge because the holding is often poor. Still, after two months of cruising the Inner and Outer Hebrides, I felt like we had mastered the quirks of anchoring in rock, weed and kelp. It was mid-September and we were bound for Cork, Ireland. It was a struggle leaving the city marina in Oban as we had to warp Quetzal, my Kaufman 47 cutter, off the pontoon in gusty winds. Tacking down the Firth of Lorne, we bucked foul tidal currents before resorting to motor sailing. Our progress was painfully slow, and we decided to hole up in Loch Stornaway, a shallow bay on the Kintyre Peninsula and unambiguously described on both the Imray paper chart and Navionics ENC as “dangerous.”

The obvious question is, why anchor in a dangerous harbor? For a couple of reasons. It was well-protected from the strong south winds and easy to enter in the fast fading light, and it would also be easy to leave in the morning, making it less “dangerous.” Also, there was an inner harbor that the local guidebook declared as a “safe” spot. Most important, we planned to stay just 12 hours, maybe less. The wind was forecast to shift to the northeast later the next day, leaving the anchorage sheltered through the night.

The so-called safe harbor was tiny and already claimed by a catamaran. I was not unhappy to make our way into the larger bay where we were the only boat. While compact anchorages can seem cozy, they’re actually the most dangerous place to be when things go wrong.

The fourth time was the charm, sort of. Once we’d picked the spot, in about 20 feet of water, I released the windlass clutch and let the chain run as Scott slowly eased astern. I wanted to make sure that the chain didn’t pile up but also didn’t want to load the anchor until we had at least 4-to-1 scope.

“Neutral,” I shouted and tensioned the clutch. The anchor seemed to set, and the bow swung into the wind. I tried to ignore the tiny chattering in the chain. “Slow astern.” The anchor held. “A little more throttle.” The anchor was holding, but I sensed it was tenuous. Usually I put the engine near full astern for at least 30 seconds to make sure the hook is well-set. Instead, I paid out more chain for a scope of 7-to-1 and shouted, “OK, Scott, it’s good.”

Making my way back to the cockpit, I wondered if I should dig out the 100-pound Luke storm anchor buried in the lazarette but quickly dismissed the idea as being paranoid. The wind was actually lying down, and with two anchor alarms and four crew aboard, we would be alert to any change in conditions. Besides, we’d be underway in less than 12 hours.

I slept fitfully and was in the cockpit mere seconds after the anchor alarm went off just after midnight. We didn’t’ seem to be dragging, just swinging, and I reset the alarm and confirmed my bearings on two lights ashore. Scott joined me in the cockpit a couple of hours later when the alarm went off again. We studied the plotter; if we had dragged, it was a short distance and the anchor seemed well-set—in fact, better than before.

We discussed resetting the anchor but decided against it. The dark sky was ominous, and it was drizzling. We also plotted the safe course out of the harbor: “It’s 230 degrees magnetic; lodge that in your brain,” I told him. At latitude 56 degrees north, we were only three hours away from first light, when I planned to get moving no matter the conditions. I dozed in the cockpit. When the anchor alarm went off at 0300, we were definitely dragging, and this time it was serious.

The wind had veered, well ahead of the forecast, and was blowing hard. I started the engine and bellowed, “We’re dragging; everybody, now, let’s go.”

Scott, pulling on his jacket, took the helm. “You are going to have to steer aggressively,” I told him. “We are going to get the anchor up and then get the hell out of here.” Gretchen and I dashed forward, leaning into the driving rain and biting winds. Brant was the relay man, but before he could say a word, Scott shouted, “Oh shit”; he could see rocks right off the stern. From the bow, without the glare of the cockpit lights, I could see them too. They were terrifyingly close.

“Full ahead,” I screamed, and we frantically started to bring up the anchor. The boat came to a sudden stop and pivoted violently. The anchor was stuck. “Neutral,” I yelled, and the windlass breaker tripped. I flew below and reset it. Scott tried to maneuver the boat back into the wind, Gretchen operated the windlass, and I peeled the chain off the gypsy by hand. Then the windlass jammed again. When the breaker tripped for the third time, I told her, “We’re going to have to pull it up by hand.”

“OK,” she said, and if she was scared, she didn’t show it. We had more than 100 feet of chain to haul in.

Suddenly we were close to the rocks near the northwest corner of the bay. “Steer south, Scott! Brant, tell him south, south, south!”

“I am,” Scott shouted.

“No, this way,” I gestured wildly. We gained a little breathing room, and Gretchen and I hauled in a few more feet of chain. We were exhausted and confused: How could the anchor be stuck while we were careening all over the bay? I hurried back to the cockpit. Scott was right: The plotter showed him steering south, but we were drifting north, right toward another shoal.

“Forget the plotter, Scott, it’s useless. The direction is way off. We have to steer by compass alone, and by my directions from the bow, I can see better from up there,” I told him.

We would later learn that the combination of very slow forward speed while crabbing to leeward made the GPS heading erratic and inaccurate. The plotter was not fitted with an independent heading sensor, and relied on the GPS to extrapolate a heading based on the course and speed data it had collected—and this was almost our undoing.

In the midst of the mayhem, a bright shore light was focused on us, and a few minutes later a skiff approached. A local fisherman had come to help, and I thought to myself, Only in Scotland would someone come out in this weather. He suggested we try to pick up a mooring in the “safe” spot of the harbor. That would have required us dropping the chain and rode overboard, a scenario that I wanted to avoid. I suspected that within seconds of releasing the anchor we’d be washed ashore. Also, the idea of maneuvering among the rocks to find and then pick up a mooring in what were then gale-force winds seemed foolhardy, especially without our main anchor. The fisherman, who’s brogue was almost ­indecipherable, wished us luck and disappeared as ­mysteriously as he’d arrived.

Scott had his bearings now, and aided by Brant, who maintained his night vision, steamed toward deeper water in the center of the bay. Gretchen and I pulled with all the strength we had and made progress. The chain was draped in kelp, which explained why we were dragging even though the anchor appeared well-set. One minute the kelp had a death grip on the anchor, and the next minute it was free. Then it would snag the anchor again.

Suddenly we were close to the rocks on the south east side of bay. “Neutral, neutral, astern. Now!” Scott later told me the depth sounder had gone almost instantly from 18 feet to 8 feet, leaving a foot below the keel. Slowly we drifted away from the shore.

“This damn bay is a lot smaller in the dark,” Gretchen said, catching her breath. “Listen,” I told her, “we are going to be OK, I know it—but if we do lose it, if the engine dies or the chain breaks and we go on the rocks, whatever you do, stay with boat. Even if she breaks up, it is safer aboard, at least until first light.” Picturing Quetzal on the rocks sent shivers down my spine.

During a very brief lull we managed to haul in more chain, maybe 20 feet, then 30 feet more. We seemed to be making progress toward the outer harbor. Then Scott had an idea: “Let’s secure the chain and see if we can drag it out into deeper water. It’s just the kelp holding us now, but it’s still too heavy to lift.” It was worth a try. If the anchor remained fast, at least we’d be near the entrance to the bay, where it would be safer to let the chain run, drop the anchor, and motor out of Loch Stornaway once and for all.

It worked. The depth sounder went from 15 feet to 20 feet, and then we crossed the 30-foot (10-meter) contour line. We were out of the bay and dragging the anchor behind us. We kept steaming until we were in deep water and then slowed down. With all four of us pulling, we hauled the anchor aboard at last. Nobody felt like sleeping as we motored slowly south awaiting the light of day.

John Kretschmer’s latest book, Sailing the Edge of Time, is now available in paperback and as an audiobook.

Electronic Confusion

Most new plotters are not fitted with independent heading sensors, which means that the boat must be moving—and traveling in a relatively straight line—for the computed heading to be accurate.

Adding a stand-alone electric heading sensor is not a major project. Also, some new mushroom antennas for chart plotters come with both GPS and compass sensors. Today’s electronic compasses usually include a three-axis accelerometer, making speed and course even more accurate. By adding a heading sensor, the chart plotter will have the ability to provide a true heading at all times, even when the boat is stationary.

Notes an engineer friend: “With the boat pirouetting on anchor and then with a scared helmsman, your COG would have been crazy.”

It was.

The post Safety at Sea: Dragging Anchor appeared first on Cruising World.

The mast came down, on the proverbial “dark and stormy night,” about 0330. Of course, these things always happen at night, with no moon, over 30 knots of breeze and correspondingly big seas. Aboard the 68-foot cutter Distant Drummer, we were about 450 miles into a rhumb-line trip from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to St. Thomas, USVI. Capt. Chuck Austin and I had done this trip numerous times on his 52-foot cutter, Powerless, often just the two of us. This time we had six on board, in addition to Chuck and me: his son, Chuck Jr.; Teri Wilson; and newly arrived crew Lewis and Sally, from the United Kingdom.

After I watched the spar collapse, I yelled out: “All hands on deck! We’ve lost the rig!”

We had departed on a calm morning in the middle of last November, and motorsailed across the Gulf Stream in a light southwesterly breeze with a double-­reefed mainsail and staysail, which was self-tending on a wishbone-boom arrangement. The mainsail on Drummer was fully battened and had so much roach that one reef was necessary just to clear the backstay. The mast on this boat stood almost 90 feet above the water, so two reefs and a staysail was still quite a bit of sail.

Since we were heading southeast with that southwest wind, we cracked off just a bit to make the ride more comfortable. Then, as near as I can tell, with the wind and seas on the ­starboard quarter, we did a bit of a “snap roll,” and the mast broke. I don’t know what failed.

The mast had swept-back spreaders, in three sections, and the joints were just about at the spreader junctions. So whatever let go first, the mast ended up with the lower section, up to the first spreaders, still up and supported by the aft lowers. The middle, broken section was hanging to port, as was the top section, which had also failed; this too was hanging to leeward (port), and was dragging everything along. By “everything” I mean the rest of the mainsail, the staysail with the wishbone, and the roller-furled jib, along with various lines, sheets, lazy jacks and halyards. It was still dark, and we were lying abeam in 25 knots.

Let the fun begin.

This was all tremendously dangerous. We were lying ahull in some pretty good seas, with most of the mast and sails in the water on the lee side, attached to the boat with a whole bunch of lines. If anyone had gone over the side during this, the chances of a successful recovery were not guaranteed. The first thing to do was nothing: Make sure no one started the engine and put it in gear. Then, remembering stories of hulls damaged by broken spars, I tried to hold the mast section at the second spreaders to keep the whole mess from doing too much damage to the side of the boat. We had to get rid of the entire mess.

“Cut away the rigging” is something that pops to mind in this situation. When I was preparing my own boat, Gladiator, for the first BOC Challenge solo round-the-world race in the early 1980s, I’d been convinced to buy a small hydraulic cutter for just this situation, and told to cut the turnbuckle bolts because the rod rigging was very difficult to cut. Of course, we didn’t have such a tool aboard Distant Drummer. The captain and his son did have a hacksaw and big cable cutters, but they weren’t getting us anywhere. We considered using an angle grinder; we found the cutting discs but couldn’t locate the grinder.

I suspect that it was the staysail that changed our direction of attack. It had been set up with a Highfield lever for a quick ­release, so that’s what we did; by releasing the lever and pulling the quick-release pin, we were able to throw the entire staysail rig overboard, including the large, heavy wishbone rig. Next, Lewis and I addressed the forestay with regular pliers, channel-lock ­pliers, a 2-pound sledge hammer and a heavy screwdriver. Getting the cotter pins out was the hardest part (and that exercise has forever changed my mind about how to bend a cotter key; more on this later). Once they were gone, knocking out the clevis pins was easy, even under tension. Lewis and I moved from the headstay to the starboard cap shroud, then the port cap, then both of the split backstays. That took care of the heavy wire.

We then started on all the line that was holding this sea anchor of a spar to the boat. The best tools here were a pair of sharp tin snips and one of those folding knives with the replaceable blades. The roller-furling line, staysail sheet, two spinnaker halyards and lazy jacks all were cut. But the lower broken mast section was still hanging from the first spreader. I thought it was the internal wiring (and I am sure that was part of it), but the main halyard and jib halyard were still attached—which didn’t immediately dawn on anyone. But just a few minutes later, all the remaining attachment points in the mast stub chaffed through, and the last section of the mast went over the side.

However, the mainsail wouldn’t rip along a seam. The remaining part of the rig was now being held to the boat by the mainsail, which was attached to the stub and the boom. This Chuck slashed with the folding knife. The sail ripped free of the last sail slides, we cut the topping lift, and we were free of everything. Whew.

By now it was first light and we went around the boat twice, checking for anything hanging over the side. Loose lines were pulled back on board, and when I was sure that nothing else was over the side, we started the engine and engaged forward for just a second, then again with some throttle. We were again underway.

Using part of a halyard and applying tension using the anchor windlass, we then rigged a temporary headstay. This would help support the remaining stub of mast, which was held by only the two aft lowers and was also supporting the boom and part of the mainsail. We set a course for Savannah, Georgia, with the logic that the set from the Gulf Stream would actually take us to Charleston, South Carolina. No one was hurt in this whole episode; not a drip of blood was spilled. Yes, there would be a few days of sore muscles and bad dreams, but we had enough fuel to drive to England, a full fridge and freezer, a working generator and 800 gallons of water. We were in no distress or danger. Distant Drummer was now a motorboat.

Then things took a turn for the worse.

Our masthead VHF-radio antenna had gone over the side, however we still had the single sideband because the antenna was not the backstay, but rather a whip on the stern that was not damaged. We had a waterproof handheld VHF and plenty of batteries, but the captain used the satphone to call a friend in Little River, South Carolina, and asked him to notify the US Coast Guard about our situation. The Coasties in turn contacted the captain on the satphone. I don’t know what transpired in those conversations, but somehow the perception was that we were in trouble, and a distress signal was broadcast, meaning vessels in the area were required to lend assistance.

Sometime later that day, the engine fuel alarm went off. We had about 600 gallons of fuel on board. Prior to departure, we’d had the fuel “polished.” We then added 100 more gallons on our way out. We had dual, switchable-filter sets for the engine, plus vacuum gauges and alarms. The captain and I had experienced fuel problems before, so we had made every effort to make sure we wouldn’t have any on this trip. Regardless, the main engine was starving for fuel. So we switched filters. That didn’t help. After switching tanks, the engine ran for a while and then shut down.

The captain and I were upside down in the engine room trying to sort out the fuel problems when a call came from topsides that a large tanker was slowly approaching. When contacted with the handheld VHF, we learned that the Coast Guard had asked them to render assistance; they were coming alongside and would send a mechanic to help.

Trying to tie up alongside a 1,000-foot slab-sided tanker in the middle of the ocean with the leftover swell from the recent blow is not something anyone should try except in an extreme emergency. Which this most certainly was not. Attempting to raft alongside was really dangerous. And, of course, it was getting dark. Plus, neither crew was ready for this type of operation.

The ship, Sophe Schulte (registered in Hong Kong), edged alongside, and lines were thrown. The ship’s master did a wonderful job of coming alongside, but in doing so, we did some serious damage to the rub rail, cap rail and lifelines. Most of our fenders were destroyed. Our handheld VHF found its way over the side. Lines needed to be run way forward and aft on the tanker as we were surging fore and aft and rising and falling about 5 feet with each swell. Also, of course, it was raining, and as the rain collected on the flat-deck tanker, each time it rolled to starboard, a flood of water would drop on us from above.

Two of the ship’s mechanics, wearing safety harnesses and life jackets, came down a Jacob’s ladder and joined the captain and me in the main saloon engine room. There was a bit of a language problem because they were speaking Ukrainian with bits of diesel/English tossed in. We ran a direct fuel line to the main engine and got it started again. At this time, we were told that all hands were to go on board Sophe Schulte for the night for safety. The ship’s crew lowered a safety line; one at a time the Drummer crew was rigged into a full safety harness and life jacket, made the jump to the Jacob’s ladder, and climbed 25 feet to the deck of the tanker.

When my turn came, I was so worn out that I could not lift my leg to take the first step to the ladder, so I backed off, removed all the safety gear, and flatly refused to leave Distant Drummer. Everyone else departed. I closed up the engine room, had a hot shower and a stiff drink, and went to sleep to the sounds of Distant Drummer banging off the side of the tanker.

Things looked much better in the morning: clear, blue skies and the seas were much calmer. I got the generator started to keep the food in the freezer from going bad, then had a microwave breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee. Our crew was waving from the tanker’s bridge deck; USCGC Bernard C. Webber had arrived on station, and was about half a mile away and launching its RIB. I was still the only person on board Drummer when the RIB arrived and two petty officers came on board.

After a quick survey of the damage on deck, we went below to take a look. There was no water in the bilge or any visible damage to the hull. Then came the request for paperwork: vessel documents, passports and crew information, much of which I could not supply. They wanted to know if we had reliable power and could get home without assistance. I started the engine, and it ran for a few minutes and died. So, that was that.

By this time our crew was trying to get back on board Drummer, again by the Jacob’s ladder. The Coast Guard determined that this was probably not the best or safest way to transfer people, so they made the call to cast off Sophe Schulte and transfer the remaining crew using their RIB; we did so, and the master of the tanker deftly moved it away from us. After the paperwork was complete came the discussion between Capt. Chuck and the skipper of Webber. We were given a choice: Take a tow now and they would tow us to the nearest port, or we were on our own. This was a one-time, right-now offer. It was clear they would not come back should we have more engine problems. Since we were not able to count on our engine, Chuck accepted the offer of the tow, and the heavy tow line was pulled over from Webber. The last of its crew left us with a handheld VHF and departed in the RIB. Soon we were under tow, headed for Fort Pierce, Florida, about 400 miles away.

Over the next two days, we tried to straighten up the mess. A sailboat without a mast in the open ocean is something. With no spar or sails, we were rolling gunwale to gunwale, and everything was “relocated.” We fine-tuned the position of the wheel to keep the boat tracking behind Webber. A mere 1-inch movement of Drummer’s helm would make a difference as to how well we followed Webber. Thankfully the seas were calm, and they were able to tow us at almost 10 knots. (Quick aside: A month after all this, Capt. Chuck pulled the fuel-line pickup tubes out of the tanks. Some genius had soldered fine mesh screening over the ends of the tubes, kind of a pre-filter you couldn’t check. It had never been a problem until we lost the mast and were rolling in the open ocean. Some gunk had gotten dislodged and plugged things up.) Two days later, we arrived off Fort Pierce. A smaller Coast Guard tow boat was near the sea buoy; we dropped the tow lines, bid farewell to Webber, and were towed into the channel, where we tied up at the Dockside Marina.

Here are a few things I learned. First, cotter pins. I have always bent them all the way around to get the ends protected. That’s fine until you have a situation that requires quick removal. I would suggest cutting pins to the appropriate length and splitting them just enough. Then apply silicone or tape to protect both the crew and the pins. Then they will be easier to remove.

Next, a spare VHF antenna with 20 feet of cable is very good, cheap insurance. A folding knife with the quick-change blades? A lifesaver. I have always carried single-edge razor blades, but this was better. A sharp knife can dull pretty quickly cutting modern sailing lines. And the sharp tin snips were also invaluable.

The crew of USCGC Bernard C. Webber did a great job on all accounts. Had they been involved earlier, things would have been far easier. But no one was injured during this whole episode, and the potential for injury was great. All in all, in retrospect, it was just another full day (or three) of “yachting.”

David White, one of the major pioneers of solo and shorthanded racing in the United States, founded the BOC Challenge “Around Alone” singlehanded around-the-world race, and competed in the event’s first two editions.

The post Safety at Sea: Managing a Dismasting appeared first on Cruising World.

If we end up on the rocks, we stay on the boat. OK?”  The storm arrived so suddenly, and was so fierce and unexpected, it took not only our anchorage by complete surprise, but much of southern Spain, and later, after sweeping through the region, would have local news stations claiming it to be “a storm unlike any in living memory.”

The following details the experience and our individual perspectives on the most violent wind to cross our decks in 13 years and 48,000 nautical miles of world cruising, and how, by working together, and with a little help from Dream Time, our Cabo Rico 38, we survived without injury or damage.

Neville: Our 254-nautical-mile passage west, tracing latitude 39 from Sardinia, Italy, to the Balearic Islands, was a cruising delight, and after 53 hours of gliding across a smooth Mediterranean Sea, carried softly by 10 knots of northerly breeze beneath a deep cerulean sky, we raised the Spanish island of Majorca, and with it our 26th courtesy flag since leaving New York in 2007.

We anchored Dream Time in a pretty bay framed by rock and a sandy beach off the southern coast, dropping the hook in 15 feet of translucent water off the small village of Colònia Sant Jordi. Holding proved poor, with a deceptive layer of thin white sand concealing slabs of rock—seabed conditions that, ironically, had us comparing it to an anchorage in Belize, when 11 years earlier and just one year into our world voyage, Dream Time’s two ­anchors clung desperately to limestone bedrock in 65 knots of wind during Tropical Storm Arthur. But exploring with mask and snorkel, we discovered an area offering slightly better purchase, and dropped our 60-pound CQR with 90 feet of chain before setting the hook. By late afternoon we were at rest, happy to be anchored and ready for the shared, peaceful sleep that comes after an offshore passage.

We had timed our arrival carefully because forecasts were predicting squalls and wind gusts to 25 knots the following day. We awoke to a calm, humid morning with heavy skies that promised rain. But we felt safe, and after zipping up the ­cockpit canopies and checking our ­position with the dozen or so boats anchored in the bay, we settled in for a cozy day of reading.

Around noon, when a light rain began to fall, Catherine absentmindedly murmured the old sailor’s warning from behind her magazine, “Rain before wind, reef it in.” Just 15 minutes later, her ­premonition proved horrifyingly accurate.

Catherine: At 1230, a dramatic wind shift from northeast to southwest swung Dream Time 180 degrees, and we both went up to the cockpit to see what was happening. The sky had turned an ominous black and the rain suddenly became very heavy, then in what seemed like a second, the wind rose to 30 knots. We started the engine, and Neville quickly ran forward to stow the bow canopy we had rigged over our cutter boom. Minutes later, the wind went from 30 to 60, and then to a jarring 70 knots, and the rain, which was now torrential and blindingly horizontal, reduced our visibility to zero.

We put on life jackets just in time for the cockpit canopy to tear away. Neville had to race to take down all the remaining canvas before the wind turned them into deadly whips, and I took the helm—­running the engine in gear in an attempt to reduce the load on our ground tackle. The dinghy, which we had hoisted and secured alongside, was now flogging and crashing into the freeboard, but there was nothing we could do about it.

With no visibility, we could only watch in horror as boats appeared and then disappeared again into the torrential fog. A large Beneteau that had been anchored beside us was heeling hard over, beam to the wind and fighting for its life. A ­powerboat swayed and swung, motoring wildly among the boats trying to ­re-anchor. It was all happening so fast, I could hardly figure out who was moving: us or them? Who was dragging? The GPS was our only point of reference, but with the dramatic wind shift, even that wasn’t clear.

Somehow in the middle of all the noise and chaos, we both heard a loud jarring thud somewhere forward. I went below and could hear a slow steady chain sound but couldn’t figure out what was happening, so I came back up and told Neville, who asked me to take the helm while he went forward on deck.

He came back to report the snubber hook had bent and fallen away, and that 300 feet of chain had paid out. Somehow he needed to attach another snubber on the last remaining links to hold us. He reached behind me to grab his diving mask, and for a terrifying moment I thought he was going to get in the water. I yelled, “You are not going in!” He looked at me confused and smiled. “I just need these to see,” he yelled back as he raced forward again.

Neville: The conditions seemed to ­swallow us. The other boats in the bay were lost behind a wall of driving rain. VHF emergency distress signals screeched in alarm, and calls of “Mayday, mayday, mayday” were broadcast almost constantly. But our world and focus had been reduced to only what we could see and struggled to control.

I was numb with the certainty that Dream Time would be lost on the rocks. Ninety feet of chain was not enough in these conditions, not with such poor holding. The wind was tearing through our anchorage at a stinging 70 knots, and the rain was now so heavy, our decks were awash, driving Dream Time so low in the water, for a second I thought we were sinking. We later learned that a staggering 20 gallons of rain per square meter was released by the storm in one hour.

We turned on our sailing instruments and the tricolor and deck navigational lights. While working to secure the remains of the cockpit canvas—zips had parted under the strain, and I was concerned that the canvas, or worse, the fiberglass rod battens supporting it, could cause injury or tear free and get swept aft into the screaming wind generator—we both felt a heavy shock from the bow. Catherine, who went below while I threw down the last of the cockpit cushions, shouted that she could hear chain rattling from the forward locker.

Our snubber hook had bent and let go. The anchor was somehow holding. But now, as the series of colorful cable ties attached to the final few links warned, almost all our chain had been dragged from the locker. I had to secure our double storm snubber before we lost all our gear over the bow. The southwest wind screeching across open water had already built seas to 6 feet; I sensed we had only seconds before we lost all our ground tackle. After our first tsunami warning in the South Pacific, we had spliced a line to the last link and secured it to the backing plate of a deck cleat in the event we might one day have to quickly dump all our gear, cut the line and race to deep water. But how long exactly had I made the security line? Could the ¾-inch rope possibly hold under this load—or would it chafe through the hawse pipe? If chain and line tightened, would I even be able to reach one of the last links to secure our storm snubber or would it be too far over the bow?

While I was hunched over the bowsprit struggling to secure the snubber, the Beneteau punched through the rain just a boat length away. Wind was clawing and tugging at the mainsail and, from an unzipped stack pack, had flogged the sail up the mast to the first set of spreaders. The Beneteau’s wind generator, the same model as ours, had already lost two blades. I glimpsed people scrambling in the cockpit before the wind swept the boat from sight. It seemed hopeless. Thoughts of collision, which would normally entirely consume my attention, were forced aside. We had to focus only on the things we could control—actions that would increase our safety. Everything else was a useless distraction.

Dripping wet and shaking, from cold or adrenalin, I forced my attention back to the snubber but was finding it difficult to see. My sight was fogging. The dive mask was steaming my vision. I had to breathe only through my mouth, but leaning forward into the blast of wind and rain made that almost impossible. With the double snubber finally attached and the captive latch secured—a ­modification we had made in New Caledonia after heavy, ­pitching seas caused Dream Time’s bow to rise and drop so violently, the snubber hook let go—I released the windlass. The wind caught Dream Time, sweeping her hard downwind until the two 20-foot lines tightened, stretching under the intense load before dragging us sharply back to face the storm.

I had no idea where we were in the bay. Visibility was barely a boat length; the beach, the rocks and the town of Colònia Sant Jordi were all hidden in the storm. Staggering aft to the cockpit, I glimpsed the Beneteau close behind us, heeled hard over, her starboard rudder exposed. She was on the rocks.

With the double snubber attached, we had time to assess our position: The erratic and drunken track on the chart plotter told the story. Dream Time was 350 feet away from her original anchorage, and we were now a distressing two boat lengths away from the rocks. The depth gauge showed just 2 feet under our keel.

Catherine: We were much closer to land and could now see that the Beneteau had lost its terrible fight and was firmly up on the rocks and being pushed around by the crashing sea. Neville then turned to me, made eye contact and yelled over the screaming wind, “If we end up on the rocks, we stay on the boat, OK?” I agreed and said OK.

Then with everything done that could possibly be done, all we could do was hang on and try to hold the boat into the wind as long as we could and wait for the system to pass, all the time listening in ­silence to the seemingly endless ­frightened emergency calls and distress alarms broadcast on the VHF.

The weather did eventually move on, and anyone lucky enough to still be on their anchor, including us, began the process of figuring out what had been damaged, broken or lost—and those still afloat thanked their lucky stars.

About an hour after the worst weather had passed, a Civil Guard helicopter arrived and hovered over the grounded Beneteau, where it lowered a rescue worker and a basket before airlifting an injured person off the rocks. A catamaran swept ashore in our bay also called a mayday, requesting immediate evacuation. The distressed voice on the VHF said seas were driving their boat farther onto the rocks. They were taking on water and sinking. The Civil Guard responded professionally and calmly, gathering details and assessing the ­situation before asking directly, “Captain, are you and your crew in immediate ­danger?” After a long delay, a dejected reply came, “No, we are not in immediate danger.” With dozens of boats damaged and wrecked in the Balearic Islands, the Coast Guard had to prioritize its resources. The family on the catamaran would have to wait.

Later, a rescue vessel moved from boat to boat around the bay. When they got to us, the two people on the bow made eye contact, and as I raised my hand to wave, they made a thumbs up sign and waited for me to reply. Are you OK? Without saying anything, I returned the thumbs up. We’re OK. Then they moved on to the next boat. And at the end of the day, police divers started working around the four boats in our anchorage that had not been so lucky.

I like to think it was our little Dream Time that decided, in the strongest wind we have ever experienced, to throw off the snubber hook and pay out all of her chain because we were both frantically doing everything else we could think of, and because she knew, at that moment, that deploying all her chain was our best chance of getting through the storm in one piece. And she was right. Thank you, Dream Time.

After the Storm

Since the storm, we have measured the anchor-chain security line, which is long enough to pass 1 foot forward of the windlass, leaving enough room on deck to secure a chain hook or cut the line if required. Our old swimming goggles, that cover just the eyes, have now been relocated to a handy cockpit locker.

In preparation for our world voyage, Dream Time’s entire foredeck was rebuilt in Glen Cove, New York; the balsa core was removed and replaced with solid fiberglass. The windlass and forward deck cleats are all mounted in this reinforced area. Our windlass, a Lewmar V3, and our primary 60-pound CQR anchor are both rated for boats 10 feet longer than Dream Time. Our secondary 45-pound CQR was ready to deploy at the bow with 150 feet of 9 mm chain and a matching length of ¾-inch triple-strand nylon, but we did not have the sea room to deploy it.

When the wind shifted 180 degrees, our CQR did reset; we believe diving on the anchor and understanding seabed conditions helped prevent us from dragging onto the rocks. Also, we anchored in the center of the bay in anticipation of a potential wind shift, giving us enough room to swing and increase our scope if necessary. Additionally, storing the storm snubber in the forward deck locker by the windlass helped to reduce the time it took us to respond.

The working load of our Wichard chain hook is listed as 1,500 pounds; however, the conditions proved too great and twisted the hook almost 90 degrees before allowing the chain to fall free. Incidentally, we had replaced our single snubber line just a few weeks before the storm. It is interesting to note that the chain hook bent before this line broke.

Our windlass was fully tightened, but with no snubber to hold the heavy load, the strain simply overwhelmed the clutch and dragged 300 feet of chain over the bow. We still do not know how the last few feet of chain remained in the locker.

Neville and Catherine Hockley have recently completed their 13-year circumnavigation aboard Dream Time. Read more about their adventures at zeroxte.com.

Dream Time’s Storm Snubber

Dream Time’s storm snubber consists of an ABI chain grabber (see photo previous page) and two 30-foot  3/4-inch nylon lines each attached to the plate by a thimbled eye splice and shackle. To deploy, we secure one line to the starboard bow cleat, then pass the second line forward of the bowsprit and under the anchor chain before cleating off to the port cleat. Both lines have chafe guards in place, which when positioned at the fairleads, ensure the lines are of equal length and the grabber centered off the bow. With lines secured, the grabber is hooked to a chain link and additional scope paid out until the load shifts from chain to snubber lines. Important: To allow for line stretch, a minimum of 6 extra feet of chain should be released and allowed to hang aft of the grabber. Heavy seas and extreme pitching can result in the grabber falling free from the chain. To prevent this, we fabricated a simple captive latch, which also makes it easier to deploy.

The advantage of this storm snubber is that loads are shared between two lines and deck cleats. Additionally, should one line fail, the snubber will continue to perform under the second line. We have also found that the double storm snubber reduces sheering, the ­side-to-side swaying of the bow, and holds Dream Time more evenly to the wind.

The post Safety at Sea: Surviving a Powerful Storm in the Med appeared first on Cruising World.

While growing up aboard the schooner Elizabeth in the 1950s, I used to swing through the rig, much to the disgust of the timid adults ashore. I loved being aloft. I felt comfortable there, like a proud frigate bird surveying the ocean.

Once, in St. Petersburg, Florida, while standing atop our starboard ratlines, I noticed a blue kite stuck in a tree in nearby Vinoy Park. We were poor; I had no toys, and kites were fun. So I quickly slid down our galvanized shrouds, leapt onto the dock of slip No. 7 and dashed across the street.

It was tricky because the kite was caught at the very top of a large banyan, but I eventually managed to get it down. Alas, it wouldn’t fly. Again and again, I tried to launch it, and it would just spin out of control. I soon became frustrated, but fortunately, my brother-in-law, the Gyroaster, came by. He was a giant of a man, and handsome as heck. My sister, Gale, would melt when he was around. Yuck! Actually, you’ve probably seen him — he was the Marlboro Man for many years. And anyway, he knew a lot of stuff.

“You need a tail,” he said, as he returned to his pickup truck and ripped up a greasy T-shirt.

Once a few knotted strips of fabric hung from the kite, it was a totally different beast. It flew sweetly. I had perfect control. I’ve never forgotten that day.

At the beginning of our third circumnavigation, this one aboard Ganesh, our new-to-us and unfamiliar ketch-rigged Amphitrite 43, I quickly realized that my learning curve would have to be steep. Ganesh behaved completely differently than our previous S&S-designed Hughes 38, Wild Card. Gusts over 30 knots would send our old boat zooming like a scalded cat; ditto for large, breaking seas. Once we did 150 miles in 24 hours under bare poles using our Monitor self-steering device, and Wild Card felt like she was on rails.

In a blow, Ganesh was different.

Way different.

Off the coast of Colombia, with an apparent wind of 34 knots and a speed of 8 knots, Ganesh was beginning to scare me, and I don’t like to be scared. Worse, I could see that look of concern that my wife, Carolyn, had in her eyes. “She’s really, um, slewing, isn’t she?” Carolyn noted.

Since a large part of seamanship consists of stoically observing, I began watching the building seas with great attention.

In the troughs, Ganesh was fine. She’d point dead downwind. But as a wave picked her up and she accelerated down its foaming face, she’d start frantically hunting. The further off course she became, the more her bow would dig in, the less effective her rudder would be, and the more she’d want to carve out like a runaway surfboard. It was disconcerting, this uncomfortable feeling that our transom might attempt to pass our bow. What if we got sideways to the seas? Would all 15 tons of her broach?

I didn’t want to find out.

One solution would have been to heave-to, but we were making great time and pointing directly at the Panama Canal. I hated to stop her. Sure, it would be safer, but these heavy wind and sea conditions would last all week. I didn’t want to heave-to for five to eight days. I wanted to keep moving.

The towing of warps is an old trick. So I took a 150-foot-long anchor line and connected its end to my port cleat, led it through my strong aft chock and lowered the bight into the water. At first there was almost no pressure, but as I paid out the line, the drag increased. When I came to the end of the line, I cleated it off on the starboard aft cleat. Now I had a large bight of line 75 feet astern. It didn’t do much of anything, but took about a quarter of a knot off my speed.

I watched and watched and thought and thought. That’s all heavy-weather management is, really, just experiencing and seeing what happens, which, in this case, wasn’t much.

Next, I took one of our fenders with a stout line on it, tied a bowline around the bight of line, and tossed the fender into the water. It ran aft and stopped, and I immediately felt a difference. I added a second fender. Even better! Now we weren’t slewing around nearly as much. However, occasionally both fenders were yanked out of the water and would start skipping over the waves. When they did, we’d slew badly until they bit in again.

I watched.

Next I relieved the pressure on the port end of the dragging line with a rolling hitch and short length of line secured on board. I tied the bitter end of another anchor line to the first, then cast off the rolling hitch.

The added length of line paid out, and now my two fenders were trailing 150 feet aft, and coming out of the water far less. I let her ride like this for a while as the sea continued to build. I decided we needed more drag, so I tied another two fenders onto the line — and then extended it with another rode.

Now I had four fenders 300 feet aft. And I watched.

Next, I adjusted the length of my towline until all four fenders sat directly behind one of the waves, completely out of my sight. I reached down and felt the moderate strain. Suddenly a huge breaking sea approached, Ganesh started to surf off, the towline load spiked dramatically and all four fenders were completely pulled though the wave, from backside to front, and then dug anew.

I knew I had the right idea when Carolyn appeared in the companionway with her novel and asked, “Is it calming down?”

There was no longer any tendency for Ganesh to get squirrelly. I wasn’t scared of broaching, and our speed was still averaging around 6½ knots.

Each storm is different, and thus, a skipper needs flexibility in his decision-­making. This requires having the correct gear and knowing how to deploy it.

I’d put a tail on my kite. I was in perfect control.

One time, we came out of New Zealand with a perfect weather window — not! A major gale was on the way, in the same area as the infamous and fatal 1994 Queen’s Birthday storm. Yes, there was a squash zone involved this time too. Even the Kiwi skippers I heard on the radio were getting nervous, which is enough to make any sane sailor gulp. When a Kiwi or South African sailor says, “There’s a bit of breeze on the way,” that means you should check your last will and testament.

The whole reason I carry a Para-Tech sea anchor and a Jordan Series Drogue is so I have options in an ultimate storm. Was this one? I wasn’t certain, but I decided to deploy one or the other slowing device just in case. If I’d wanted to make speed downwind and stay with the system, I’d have deployed the series drogue, my experimental homemade fat-bag or my webbing drogue. However, the last thing I wanted to do was travel with this particular storm. I wanted to remain in it for the shortest time possible, so I decided to set my Para-Tech sea anchor off the bow so we could park and let the storm pass by.

I heaved to and rigged the Para-Tech’s retrieval line exactly as recommended. Next, I ran a 400-foot nylon rode from the aft deck, outside the stanchions (tied with yarn to keep it from unraveling) and up to the bow. Here’s the sobering truth of it: People occasionally get severely injured while deploying or retrieving large parachute-type anchors. It’s dangerous. The ads don’t tell you this, but it is. Once that parachute is in the water, your vessel might as well be shackled to a block of granite on the bottom. Thankfully, we had no problem deploying ours from our nearly stationary position.

Once the sea anchor took up and I’d doused our storm trysail, it was just like being anchored in 20-foot swells. Of course, our masthead was scribing large arcs in the sky and we were rolling violently from rail to rail. At first, we took to our bunks, Carolyn green at the gills. Gradually, we started crawling around on the cabin sole. Twenty-four hours later, Carolyn was making bread while I was jammed in a corner, playing guitar. We felt perfectly safe, if not comfortable.

Luckily (actually, luck had nothing to do with it) we’d removed both the anchors that normally live on our bow, as well as all our chain. These were now tied inside our boat to our mast base. Our boat’s ends were as light as we could make them. Thus she rode the giant waves like a swan.

Every two hours, day and night, I’d change the chafe point on the Para-Tech’s rode. That sounds easy, but it wasn’t; not when the line was shock-loaded with 5,000 pounds or so.

Here’s how I did it: I donned my foulies and sea boots, put on my safety harness, grabbed a crowbar and carefully made my way forward. (Picture crawling on the back of a rearing stallion in pitch-black darkness and you’re close to seeing me move about on deck.)

Once at the bitts, I made sure the 40 or 50 feet of extra rode was all in front of me, so if it got away, I wouldn’t be killed instantly. Then I paused and said to myself, “Fatty, this is what you came for. This is all part of it. But if you lose control of this line or end up in the water, you’re dead. Right now you’ve got 10 fingers. Let’s keep it that way.”

That’s exactly how it happened. I actually whispered that to myself. Some people think I have no fear; that’s silly. Everyone has fear. Life is precious. The trick isn’t to ignore your fear but rather to harness it.

And that’s what I did. I loosened up the line on the cleat, working gingerly, like I was playing with a bomb that could blow any second. More and more I loosened the line until any more loosening might allow it to come off the cleat. Then I carefully stuck my crowbar into the final crisscross of line and wiggled it. Instantly, with a sickening snap tightening sound, the line on the cleat slipped and took up once again.

I’d changed the chafe point by about an inch with complete control.

A little over two days later, the wind had gone down but the seas were still high. The smart thing to do was to stay put, but alas, another storm was spinning off the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand, and if we didn’t set sail we’d have to stay parked for another four days or so.

Thus, we decided to retrieve the sea anchor and try to get northward out of the worst of the weather.

What happened next, well, I still start whimpering just remembering it.

First off, my good friend and sailing hero Larry Pardey had once advised me to remove the retrieval line on the Para-Tech. “They never work, and they often get in the way,” he said. “Trust me, Fatty, just cut it off.”

On the other hand, the manufacturer of the unit said folks successfully use the retrieval line all the time.

So, I decided to try it. I followed all the instructions as faithfully as I could. In theory, the retrieval line collapses the parachute, making it easier to haul back aboard. But when I went to actually use it in battle conditions, it was totally useless: completely snarled in a jumbled mess.

Score one for Larry.

As mentioned, the sea was rougher than I would have liked, and I have one more confession, dear reader. My 400 feet of ¾-inch nylon rode wasn’t in one piece. I’m a poor man. Most of my shopping is done at Dumpster Marine. The anchor line was cobbled together from various discarded bits and one new 125-foot piece of black Samson braid.

Now, I wasn’t worried about my knots coming undone because I’d tied double-­carricks and whipped the bitter ends with strong wax twine. But a knot is a lump, and this greatly complicated things. I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow. Let’s just say getting each knot through the roller chock and around the rope windlass gypsy took about 45 minutes of tying and untying various short rope pennants with rolling hitches. Had any of those knots slipped while shock-loaded, well, bye-bye Fatso.

So here is the reality of the more than three hours that I wrestled with Satan up there on my foredeck: Retrieving my Para-Tech sea anchor was, far and away, the most dangerous thing I have ever done intentionally. In hindsight, I should have cut it loose. But, as mentioned, I’m a poor man, and it is a costly bit of fabric. And, yes, another factor came into play: I’m stubborn and pigheaded as well. I put that damn thing in the water, and I was going to get it back aboard!

Over the next couple of years I became fascinated by slowing devices. It didn’t take long to realize that the ideal one would create little drag at 4 knots and lots of drag at 6 to 8 knots of boat speed. Over the years, many attempts have been made to improve the proverbial mousetrap, and of course, I couldn’t resist the challenge taken up by some of my childhood heroes. My early idol Frederick A. Fenger (father of the wishbone rig) invented the plywood sea anchor, and John Voss came up with various fabric devices during his adventures made famous in The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss. I have no doubt that when Ulysses lost an attached sail overboard in a storm, he noticed the calming effect as it trailed behind his ship.

So, I sidled up to the prettiest little seamstress I know, gave her a hug and a smile, and placed a number of drogue designs in front of her.

“The Flat Fat drogue,” I told her, “uses cheap seat-belt material for the webbing and nylon for the slowing flaps, and stows well. The Fat Puffer has slits that bulge as the force of the water increases. And the Fat Web is basically just a bunch of webbing with maximum wetted surface that takes up minimal space.”

Carolyn frowned. I’m always asking her to sew up crazy ideas, most of which don’t work. However, occasionally she adjusts one of my stupid ideas brilliantly — and I steal all the credit. (Well, I’m a man, right?)

Don’t forget, heavy-weather management boils down to controlling two things: angle and speed. A drag device is one of the simplest, most basic ways to achieve this.

Carolyn looked at the various designs and scratched her head. “What’s my budget?”

“The usual,” I said. “Zero.”

She grimaced and gave me a look.

“Hey, babe,” I said. “There’s no challenge in buying one!”

“Darn you, Fatty,” she said, as she hauled her rusty Pfaff sewing machine out of the bilge and began hosing it down with WD-40.

Soon she was hunched over her rattling, jiggling machine, spewing out various drag devices and a brand-new Jordan Series-style drogue (136 cones) for good measure.

Perhaps the most important thing to be learned from this article is that “anyone can play,” as my father used to put it. You don’t have to be a scientist or mathematician to tame the elements. The truth is that a spare tire (even a retread) tied astern can save your life in certain conditions.

To put it another way, I may have sailed around the world twice on a $3,000 boat — but Wild Card had far more safety gear aboard than some of the $3 million yachts sailing next to me.

Why not heave-to in a storm? I do. I love to heave-to. It is a basic skill of any offshore sailor. But sometimes I want to keep moving for various reasons, perhaps to sail out of a strong (and dangerous) ocean current, for example. I want options, lots of options. I need flexibility to survive offshore year after year. And, frankly, my boat is usually fine heaved-to in up to 45 knots. However, if I get a 70-knot gust, will my sail track pull out or the gooseneck shatter or sheet break? I don’t know. And I don’t want to find out in hurricane-force winds.

As Carolyn and I endlessly voyage, we’ve found that I like places she doesn’t. Take Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, for example. There are odd currents, fierce storms and dangerously shifting sandbars. It’s a perfect place for an adventurous soul like me. “And how, exactly, did this area get its name?” Carolyn asked as we sailed Ganesh northward along its dramatic West African coast of shifting desert sands.

“From all the wrecks of the old sailing ships,” I said. “The vessel frame ends sticking up out of the dunes were easy to spot and kind of eerie. Once the rescuers rowed ashore, they’d then follow the footprints of the thirsty sailors in the sand to find their dehydrated bodies. So, it was kind of a two-for-one skeleton hunt.”

“Oh, lovely,” Carolyn said, rolling her eyes.

We’d gotten a good weather window out of Cape Town. There were a number of cruising vessels within 50 miles on the same passage. We had all tracked the moderate gale sliding toward us from St. Helena. A couple of the crews had real problems in the 40-knot gusty winds. They became fatigued from hand-­steering for more than 35 hours in the large breaking seas.

For Carolyn and me, it was a romantic time-out. I set out version No. 4 of my Fat Puffer. It’s a large bag that fills with water and has slits that enlarge and, hopefully, create turbulence in the gusts to break up a wave. I also unrolled our storm staysail. Our Monitor windvane was steering us straight and true. Our AIS transponder was on, ditto our radar. Our new LED tricolor is very bright, so we figured we’d be seen if other vessels were near.

We both went below; only occasionally peeking out to see the majesty of Mother Ocean in a grand mood.

I had a cup of tea, Carolyn opted for a single glass of red wine. We smiled at each other.

“What’s your favorite part of storm-strutting?” she asked.

“You,” I said.

– – –

Cap’n Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander recently completed their third circumnavigation and are restocking in anticipation of setting out to see the world again. The Cap’n is the author of Storm Proofing Your Boat, Gear and Crew.

The post Take it Slow in Bad Weather appeared first on Cruising World.

Check the Weather

Before heading out, spend some time reviewing the forecasts for where you are and where you’re going. Be realistic about the experience level and comfort level of the guests you’re taking on board – a gusty day might not be the best choice for a group of novices. Checking the weather before you leave will help you plan for the day and set realistic expectations with your passengers. Click here for some of the apps and sources we like.

Once you’re on the water, keep and eye on the horizon and boats ahead of you. If you start to see white caps or boats heeling over, it might be time to add a reef (click here for a good article on that) or head back.

It’s also important that you keep an eye on the forecast as they can change quickly, especially on the water. If you have mobile service, you can monitor it on your favorite app. Regardless, always remember to trust your eyes and what you see over what your electronics are telling you.

Prep your Crew

While you’re still on the dock, give everyone the rundown of what to expect on board and set realistic expectations. Make sure you know the physical abilities of each passenger, and hand out life jackets and other safety equipment sparingly (though there should always be more than enough safety equipment to go around whenever you leave the harbor). If your guests are non-sailors, click here for some more great tips to make sure they have a good experience.

Get Tuned

Make sure your rig set-up is inspected annually by a rigger (always a good idea for insurance, too) so your boat is able to handle conditions, particularly those that change quickly. While cruising boats often have limited on-water rig adjustments, an adjustable backstay is the most common. Playing your backstay — having more backstay in upwind breezes and less in downwind — will keep your rig ready to handle whatever comes across the water.

Check your Canvas

After checking the weather, you should have a good idea of how much sail you’ll need for the conditions, but err on the side of caution. It’s easier to shake out a reef than it is to put one in when conditions pick up or get puffy. If you need help with how many reefs to use or where, click here for a guide to get you started. Start your sail with a conservative amount of canvas and you’ll have more control. You can always add more later if needed.

If you feel like you’re not equipped with the right sails feel free to reach out to our team to see what else might be out there. You can also explore these guides on building your inventory: headsails, mainsails, downwind sails.

Play the Sheets

Set-it-and-forget-it won’t work on a puffy day. In puffs, ease the sails or head up to reduce sudden heel or overpowering. You can sheet in when the puff passes if you need more headway.

You’ll be easing and trimming more than in consistent breeze, so don’t forget you can assign roles to your guests if they’re comfortable helping. Rotate them on and off the sheets to keep anyone from getting too tired.

Keep it Calm

The skipper’s confidence level and attitude will filter down to all those aboard. If he or she seems concerned, the passengers will pick up on that. Know what you’re doing, and direct with confidence. If there is an emergency situation, like a man over board, act calm (even if you don’t feel calm). Your passengers will respond in kind.

Head Up or Run

If it’s getting wild on the water, try to sail downwind (which will keep the boat flat) or head into the wind as much as possible to minimize heel. How you respond will depend on the direction of the wind and your voyage. If you’re under canvassed, you should be able to maintain control of the boat at both points of sail, as long as you maintain forward motion.

Tend to the Stick

If building waves and breeze have your guests turning green, there’s not much you can do besides returning them to shore. Find a comfortable place for them to sit (ideally on the leeward, forward portion of the cockpit). This minimizes the chances that they’ll slip and fall while woozy, and if they do get sick, they don’t have far to go. Plus, if they’re comfortable and secure, chances are they’ll nod off until you get home. Click here for a few tips on seasickness our team put together.

This cruising tip was brought to you by Quantum Sails.

The post Keeping Control in Heavy Air appeared first on Cruising World.

La Cruz, Mexico

Bad weather is something we’re prepared for—at sea. But when the passage is over and we’ve dropped the hook, hurricane-force winds and 6-foot seas are the last things we expect. But we realize that extreme weather can happen just about anywhere. We experienced this firsthand when winds in excess of 80 knots ripped through Bahía de Banderas, on Mexico’s mainland near Puerto Vallarta, toppling trees, blowing windows out of high rises, and cutting power to towns around the bay. Over half of the 60 or so boats anchored in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, in the northern part of the bay, dragged or lost their anchors, and dozens more ended up with shredded sails or impact damage. Two boats went aground.

We’d pulled into La Cruz in the afternoon of February 3, 2010, having just completed a four-day, 500-mile light-wind passage from Bahía Magdelena, on the west coast of the Baja peninsula. After taking a pass through the packed anchorage, we chose a spot on the seaward edge of the fleet. In a light offshore breeze, we set our anchor with 150 feet of chain and 30 feet of rope in 33 feet of water.

It was raining and a swell was running, but my husband, Evan Gatehouse, our daughter, Maia, and I headed to town to enjoy an early supper. When we got back to the boat, we noticed a polypropylene fishing line wrapped around our propeller. After failing to free it, we decided the 1/4-inch line would be easier to remove in the morning.

Around 2130, our digital barograph’s weather alarm went off, signaling a rapid drop in barometric pressure; it eventually dropped 7 millibars over 2 hours. By the time the big swell arrived, it was clear that something odd was going on, and we decided to pull our dinghy up into its davits.

Thirty minutes later, the storm hit at near full force, spinning Ceilydh, our Wood’s Meander 40-foot catamaran, 180 degrees and placing her at the head of the fleet, with a lee shore astern. The massive noise of the wind drowned out the thunder, but bolts lit up the sky all around us. While Evan monitored things outside, I kept an eye on the GPS and turned the radio up to full volume. It was clear that things were going very wrong. Anxious disembodied voices on the VHF wavered in and out. A voice reporting a dragging boat faded into other frantic voices: “Close your through-hulls!” and “Mayday!” and “It’s blowing 77! Now 82!”

| |The author and crew of Ceilydh, a 40-foot cat, fared well in the storm.|

Our anchor held, but the two 100-foot steel fishing boats immediately upwind were dragging toward us—and the rest of the fleet. I called a warning over the VHF while Evan turned on the engine. But because of the line around the prop and the force of the wind and seas, we weren’t sure it would help. We made a plan to slip our anchor and sail out under staysail if we couldn’t avoid the fishing boats. I got Maia into her life jacket, and I mentally prepared to lose Ceilydh.

The fishing boats dragged past, eerily close, one on each side of us while their crews struggled for control in the driving winds, pelting rain, and turbulent seas. They didn’t hit anyone else because, unknown to us, all the boats around us had dragged away.

Ceilydh came through the blow relatively unscathed—a situation that may have been due more to luck than skill. Our bow roller was damaged, requiring replacing, and our anchor line partially chafed through, but that was the extent of our damage. But we were curious to learn how the other boats had fared, wondering if we really had just been lucky or if there were clear lessons to be learned. So several days later, we invited the crews of five other vessels to share their experiences and tell us what they learned.

**_

Vessel:** m/v _OuttaHere, a Custom Trawler 60
Ground tackle: 121-pound Rocna with 250 feet of chain

John and Liz O’Cull first considered the approaching weather when the big fishing boats came into the harbor. “We’d been in La Cruz awhile, and we’d never seen them come into the anchorage before,” Liz said. She starting paying attention when “there was a big swell, and the wind—it just seemed different.” The subtle changes didn’t prepare the O’Culls for what came next. “The wind hit at 45 knots, then kept rising at a consistent rate. I could count off the numbers—46, 48, 50. It finally hit 85,” Liz said.

Located at the back of the fleet, OuttaHere was holding, but boats were dragging toward her. “In the lightning flashes, we could see them fly by,” John said. “Sailboats were in full knockdown position, with masts kissing the water.” His fear was that one would get tangled up in their still-deployed flopper-stoppers or snag their anchor.

“One boat did come dangerously close, but it missed colliding with us when the next wave picked her up and carried her away. We lost some canvas covers, but other than that, OuttaHere did fine,” John said. But the two cruisers were quick to point out that their experience was the exception. “We tend to anchor as far from everyone else as we can, so we were on the outer edge of the action,” John said.

Vessel: s/v Tynamara, a Spencer 53
Ground tackle: an 88-pound Delta with 300 feet of 3/8-inch high-tensile chain; 5/8-inch double braid secured the bitter end

For Jerry and Winn Brian’s Tynamara, the storm began with a hard gust. “The wind generator exploded while we were talking about putting the brake on,” Winn said. The next moment, a boat hit their starboard side and their two 1/2-inch anchor snubbers snapped with the force. Then the windlass let go, the anchor rode ran out, and the bitter end tore free. The couple got their kids up into the cockpit. “We didn’t have life jackets on yet, but the boat was getting trashed. Water was pouring in through open hatches and glass was breaking—we had to be in the cockpit,” said Winn.

With Tynamara heeled over at 45 degrees, Jerry was trying to get the prop to bite so he could steer the boat into the wind. “There wasn’t time to be afraid, but I thought we were going to hit the beach,” Winn said. Then the boat’s big engine started to move them forward. “That was when I knew we’d be OK,” Winn said. “Once we got moving, we got control.”

Disoriented by stinging spray and the lack of lights on shore, Jerry took Tynamara out through the anchorage and into the middle of Banderas bay to wait out the storm. “We didn’t even have the radio on,” Winn said. “We had no idea what was happening in the anchorage.”

**

Vessel**: s/v Prism, a 33-foot Hans Christian
Ground Tackle: a 35-pound CQR with an all-chain rode

In the anchorage, the other boats continued to struggle. “The storm arrived as a wall of water,” Joanie Werner said. “We had no idea where the wind was coming from, and we couldn’t see to figure out which boat was where.” Part of the problem were the fierce seas: “They had no rhythm or predictability,” Joanie said. “It was like those storms you see in the movies, the ones that are so violent that they don’t seem real.”

Joanie and Leon, her husband, had their life jackets on but realized there was nothing they could do but hold on and be prepared to escape. “We had the depth sounder on so we’d know if we were dragging, and we had a compass course set for open water,” she said. “But we knew there was no way to add scope, and we doubted that we could even motor against the wind.”

The couple, who’ve been sailing for 35 years, said that time seemed to stop during the storm. “We knew we’d set the heck out of the anchor, but the storm just kept going and going,” Joanie said.

Vessel: s/v Star Dancer, an Outbound 44
Ground Tackle: a 66-pound Spade anchor with 200 feet of 5/16-inch high-tensile chain

On Star Dancer, it was the roar of the wind that woke Dave and Mary Ann Plumb. Turning on the VHF, they heard a Mayday—a boat was on the rocks. “Then we were hit,” Dave said. A large ketch crashed into Star Dancer’s bow with a force that the Plumbs thought was sure to hole her. The blow ripped their anchor free and set them hurtling downwind.

“We grabbed our safety gear and headed outside,” Dave said. The Plumbs realized that they couldn’t hold position as they tried to make their way into the wind, so they started keeping an eye on the depth. Their effort to get to safety, Dave said, “was like the wrestling contest of my life.”

Dave followed the contour of the coast until Star Dancer was free of the anchorage. They checked for water from the collision; amazingly, the hull was intact. “Everything stayed strong,” Dave said.

**

Vessel**: s/v Stepping Stone, a Maple Leaf
Ground tackle: a 55-pound CQR with 250 feet of 3/8-inch chain
The Mayday heard throughout the anchorage was from Stepping Stone. Located in the center of the fleet, Elias and Sarah Anderson reported that they didn’t have enough scope out. “The anchorage was crowded, and we wanted to be near the dinghy dock,” Elias said. When the gust came, it knocked them over and spun Stepping Stone 180 degrees. “We went from one end of the rode to the other, and then just kept going,” he said.

“I instantly knew that we were dragging,” he said. “We were sliding sideways. I ran up to the bow to let out all my rode.” They caught for a moment, but then the shackle tethering the bitter end to the mast ripped free. Meanwhile, Sarah was trying to start the engine, a diesel with glow plugs that needed to heat up. “It was the longest 30 seconds of my life,” she said. “I watched us fly past six boats. I thought we were going to hit every time.”

The engine started, but with the boat knocked over, it was useless. “All I could do was get the centerboard up and wait to hit the beach,” Elias said. Sarah had their girls, Kimberly and Savona, in their life jackets and in the cockpit when the boat suddenly slammed into a rocky reef jutting out from the beach. “We were on our side,” Sarah said. “The mast was pointing at the beach. I could hear the boat grinding on the rocks. Water was coming over the coamings.” Elias turned the engine off and told his family that they’d done their best, but they were going to lose the boat. He had time to call the Mayday and secure things. “He even gave us a little pep talk,” said Sarah.

“Then a wave lifted us up and we were free,” Sarah said. “We turned the engine back on and couldn’t believe when the prop caught. We were motoring, on our side.” Elias thinks they must have caught a brief lull, “The wind sure hadn’t dropped yet,” he said. They made for open water, shocked by their luck but still not sure what was happening with the weather or when it might end.

After 45 minutes of sustained 75-knot winds, with gusts reported as high as 92 knots, the wind began to drop. After an hour, the wind was 35 knots and had clocked around to an offshore breeze. On the VHF, relieved chatter began replacing urgent radio calls. Boats that had broken free began limping through the confused seas, estimated at between 6 and 8 feet, and into nearby Marina Riviera Nayarit. There was a lot of damage to the fleet, but no boats were lost. Human injuries were confined to sprains, bumps, and bruises. The fleet consensus was that storm planning needs to come well before the wind hits. Leon Werner from Prism said it best: “If you didn’t do it when you anchored, you’re not going to be able to do it when it hits.”

Lessons Learned in La Cruz

• Buy the right anchor: Manufacturer guidelines typically suggest sizing an anchor according to boat length and for maneuvers in average conditions; they’re not envisioning a heavily loaded cruising boat anchoring in a wide range of situations. Err on the side of “Bigger is better,” then set the heck out of it.

• Use enough scope: More than a few sailors on boats in La Cruz admitted to using too little scope, the length of rode paid out based on a ratio of length from the seabed to the height of the bow.
This was something the cruisers all thought they could add once bad weather hit. The reality was that the boats that tried to let out scope were among those that lost their anchors.

• Secure the bitter end: More than a few boats lost their anchors because the bitter end wasn’t secure. After their snubbers chafed through or the windlass brake failed, the anchor rode ran out. The bitter end was either not attached at all or attached too weakly.

• Have a plan for recovering your anchor: Several anchors were lost in La Cruz, but only a handful were recovered. No one had time to buoy their anchors, but one boat had a 20-foot length of yellow polypro line secured to the bitter end. The yellow line floated below the surface and marked the end of the anchor line for searchers.

• Stay prepared: The boats that had just completed passages and still had gear stored away and their decks clear fared better than their less orderly neighbors. Boats with dishes and computers out ended up with cabins filled with broken glass.

• Watch the weather: The weather anomaly, which pushed a subtropical blast north to collide with a cold front that had strayed down from California, caused a near classic weather bomb. No one forecasted the storm, but the falling barometer and other atypical weather signs did provide clues.

• Keep the safety equipment handy: Easy to grab life jackets, flashlights, handheld VHFs, and ditch bags topped everyone’s lists as items that they should’ve had better organized and available. Having a snorkel and dive mask handy can also help with visibility in heavy spray.

• Establish a radio net: If you’re in a harbor with more than a few boats, assign one person the role of net control. In La Cruz, the radio chatter got in the way of Mayday calls and other information. No one, for example, ever followed up with Stepping Stone after the crew’s Mayday call.

• Have an escape plan: Once the lights on shore went out, most of the crews became disoriented. Having an escape route programmed into a GPS and knowing the compass course out to safe water saved at least two boats.

• Double-check your furling gear: Be sure you furl your sail with several wraps securing it, and tie the furling line so it won’t unwind in a blow. At least 30 sails were badly damaged because they were poorly furled.

• Label your stuff: It’s amazing what can blow away in 80 knots of wind. Jerry jugs, dinghies, oars, kayaks, surfboards, and paddles all littered the shoreline the
next day. Most carried no identification.

Diane Selkirk set sail from Vancouver, British Columbia, in September 2009. After a year in Mexico, she and her family continued on through the South Pacific to Australia—carefully watching the weather and avoiding storms whenever they could.

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