Rope Rode - What Type (do you have)? What would you prefer?

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

You mean grip on the cones, or on cleats, or in retrieval, or where?

We had a spectra rode with polyester bridle. No problems.

with the cones I'm sure you know it is the braid compression/clamping that grips the cone tapes. With figure 8 knots in the ends of the tapes, they are not going anywhere.

With polyester bridle we have no issue with securing the drogue - we did have special high strength 'chainplates' on the transom to shackle it but never (that I remember) used them - either cleated or more often used the winches. Regarding cleating bare dyneema - we did quite frequently with shore lines (two of ours were long bare dyneema) and the tug boat hitch works perfectly - does not slip and easy to release under load if needed.

In retrieval would be the only place I could see a concern. The bare dyneema does not self tail (it will slip in the jaws), but generally self-tailing is not a super idea with a series as the cones might feed well, and it does winch perfectly well if hand tailed. You can attach 'puller lines' to bare dyneema with several of the good gripper hitches, they hold enough to hold the dyneema on retrieval loads (but not on max usage loads) - if you use the 'puller line' technique (which we did not) you might want to wait just a little longer for retrieval.

PS we used dyneema here just to reduce weight and bulk of the stored rode - it made a huge difference vs all dacron (we originally bought an all Dacron one and when I saw it in person I said 'no way' and we converted it to winter mooring lines and got a dyneema rode) , might be an important factor for some and not so much for others..

I said "in my mind," implying I have not used a Dyneema JSD.

I meant handing in general. Splicing and cone fitting are not problems, but naked Dyneema (Amsteel) is hard to grip and cleat (lots of turns) and perhaps winch. You answered the practical questions. I've used Amsteel for sections of anchor rodes (with polyester or nylon also in the rode) and I really dislike the handling.

I tested 2-3 drogue combinations as well. I'm surprised there have been so few reports of use, since it seemed to perform very well. In addition to the things you mentioned, I like that I could transition from a single steering drogue to 2-3 under load, so long as I planned for it by maintaining a tail on-deck. I tried using a short JSD as a steering drogue once, and found it was not very stable or durable at higher speeds (those little cones don't like being near the surface).

[wsmurdoch]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

At least under normal circumstances, I've always been a big advocate of hanging a small drogue type parachute under the bow, or even a stout bucket. If not an anchor under foot. Usually in order to slow a boat's wanderings on the hook.

I tried tying a 32 inch cone drogue to the anchor chain just below the water surface to see what effect is would have on the boat shearing about at anchor. I have used as my 'measure of merit' the apparent wind angle because I wanted the boat to stay aligned with the wind to minimize the wind force on the boat.



For the first 35 minutes (-65 to -30) the boat was swinging away. For the last 30 minutes (-30 to 0) the bridle of the cone was clipped to the chain. It seemed to make little difference in the variation in the apparent wind angle. Watching it in the clear Bahamian water, the drogue took a good part of the swing to come into use, and then the speed was not great enough to cause much drag.



This is a similar earlier test of a riding sail. You can see when it was hoisted. The riding sail cut the variation in the apparent wind direction in half.



This is the riding sail.

[estarzinger]

^^ nice test - thanks

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

^^ nice test - thanks

+1 very interesting, thanks for posting.

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by wsmurdoch

I tried tying a 32 inch cone drogue to the anchor chain just below the water surface to see what effect is would have on the boat shearing about at anchor. I have used as my 'measure of merit' the apparent wind angle because I wanted the boat to stay aligned with the wind to minimize the wind force on the boat.



For the first 35 minutes (-65 to -30) the boat was swinging away. For the last 30 minutes (-30 to 0) the bridle of the cone was clipped to the chain. It seemed to make little difference in the variation in the apparent wind angle. Watching it in the clear Bahamian water, the drogue took a good part of the swing to come into use, and then the speed was not great enough to cause much drag.



This is a similar earlier test of a riding sail. You can see when it was hoisted. The riding sail cut the variation in the apparent wind direction in half.



This is the riding sail.

Thank you. That really is pretty quiet with the riding sail.

The problem with a drogue is that only works after the boat has already taken off, and only effectually at significant speed.

I will repeat that test, but judging from how slowly the rode moves through the water, I expect a similar result. I may rig up a riding sail as well, though only for testing (if I do everything wrong, I can get this tri to yaw about 65 degrees each side--it's weird to be onboard).

On my tri, the big factors are bridle, rudder up, and reacher down on deck.