Heaving to

[stevesailing]

Hi All,

I've been reading the Pardey's storm tactics book, which recommends heaving to as the preferred technique. They suggest that each boat will require different sail/sea anchor arrangements to keep them at the right angle to the wind. So, never having been a conditions that require it, but fearing that one day I might, I'd be interested to know what other CSY 44 owners have found works.

Cheers,

Steve

[Soggy Geek]

Ha ha, after owning Soggy Paws (CSY 44 WT) for almost 20 years we never really did figure out how to heave to.  We just never got into "storm" situations.  We did try twice to heave to for practice, but usually only in very very light air.  And we ended up drifting sideways, not really hove to.

However, here is what I got from Don and Gwen on Tackless II (a near sistership to ours)...

Wind ~25 kts on the nose, needed to stop and work on the main topping lift for a few minutes.  Stopping in the open sea means heaving-to. We have heaved to in Tackless II on a number of occasions, but never in this much wind and sea. Even though it is the prescribed maneuver, we were not sure how well it would work, especially since we would be trying to heave to with the staysail only. We had just had happy-hour conversation with some skippers in boats similar to T2, who liked heaving to with staysail only, but having never tried it ourselves, we were skeptical.

Don went forward and put the preventer on the staysail to hold the self-tending boom to windward when we tacked, and then we tacked her through and put the rudder hard starboard (up). The principle is that the rudder is trying to turn the boat one way while the sail is pushing the bow the opposite direction. Sure enough, presto, T2 came to a stop, hove-to neat as a pin! It was not quite as nice as heaving to with a main up, where our bow would angle up more toward the wind and sea. But even beam on the ride settled out considerably.

We had a roller furling staysail and that might have been a little bit of the problem--harder but not impossible to properly back the staysail.

Sherry

[stevesailing]

Thanks Sherry. That description from T2 will be a useful starting point for experimentation.

Cheers,

Steve

[Soggy Geek]

Steve,

Make sure you come back and tell us what worked for you...

Sherry