Help Heaving to on my boat

[El Pinguino]

I think the windage caused by the furled headsail in all this quite important.

Two furled sails... hmmm.

I must admit I have never hove to in a heavy sea.... only in what I would call slight to moderate.

When others may have hove to I have been quite happy just lying to bare poles..... or poking off downhill under a very small headsail....

Problem is ... off the south west coast of South America you are typically looking at a hard northwesterly before an equally hard southwesterly change... not a nancy pancy Bass Strait or Tasmanian Southwesterly change... a hard going to blow all week southwesterly.... and you need all the searoom you can muster. And running before the NWly just draws you into the maw of the storm.

Which is why it is best to hove to if you can.

Steve... you were correct the first time.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Which is why it is best to hove to if you can.

Steve... you were correct the first time.

Your first two uses of "hove to" are correct, but neither your third use, nor Steve's were correct.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hove
past of heave

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/...itish/heave-to
if a ship heaves to, it stops moving. The past tense and past participle is hove to.


https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di...y/english/hove
Hove is the past tense and past participle of heave in one of its meanings.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hove
past tense and past participle of heave

Please provide one authoritative reference for "hove to" in other than the past tense/participle.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by StuM

Your first two uses of "hove to" are correct, but neither your third use, nor Steve's were correct.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hove
past of heave

https://www.macmillandictionary.com/...itish/heave-to
if a ship heaves to, it stops moving. The past tense and past participle is hove to.


https://www.collinsdictionary.com/di...y/english/hove
Hove is the past tense and past participle of heave in one of its meanings.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hovepast tense and past participle of heave
Please provide one authoritative reference for "hove to" in other than the past tense.

You really truly must lead a very sad and boring life.... were you like this as a child or did you have to work on it over the years?

Either way the result is not very pretty......

[Snowpetrel]

Ive had the same problem on a S&S 34, reputably they heave too very well, at least thats Jon Saunders tactic of choice in his epic double non stop circumnavigation.

So when I tried it mid tasman in a gale I was disappointed not be able to get the bow up past 70 degrees with just the third reefed main. And often she was nearer 80 or 90 degrees and felt quite vulnerable.

I blamed the differences on the windage of the furler, and the short foot of the main. And the relatively low wind speed of 35-40 knots. But no combination of sheet and tiller would improve it much.

In retrospect It might have been better to have dropped the main and forereached with the small staysail. Or maybe switched to the trysail. Possibly shaking a reef out of the main might have helped keep the bow up, but in the gusts she felt like she had more than enough sail up.

So I feel your pain, and I don't have any good answers, prehaps the sea anchor off the bow as per the pardeys, but I wouldn't be keen to try that first time in a blow, unless I was real desperate. At the end of the day 3 waves in the cockpit isnt to bad for a southern ocean run..

Enjoy Chile. Wonderful place. I loved Valparaiso.

[gpeacock]

Originally Posted by SteveSadler

To hove to is fairly simple regardless of size, keel, sails, etc.
You want to hove to for 30 minutes? Sheet everything in hard, throw the helm over to tack. Once tacked, throw it back again hard to windward.
Cook dinner, eat and continue sailing.
For long term and for leeward shores, sheet main in hard, furl headsail off the shrouds, then tack and back again to windward. If still making leeway, reduce headsail size to just enough to prevent a tack.
Thats as close to windward as your boat will hove to.
If you're laying 45 to 60 degrees off the wind you're doing fine. Motion
reduced 75%, as good as it gets. All monos can do this.

Hence why we are here. Ours hove to fine until this passage with seas greater than 4 m and wind less than 35 knots. In this condition we couldn't tack and even once the jib was backed we couldn't get higher than 70 deg. I don't expect us to be able to park the the Pardey's but I do need to work out the sail combination that works in these conditions.
Any conditions bigger and we run with warps or the drogue. Any conditions smaller and we can already heave to. Just need to fill the hole.
Single reefed main in greater than 30 knots... My wife will love that!
Thanks
Gary

[cyan]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

You really truly must lead a very sad and boring life.... were you like this as a child or did you have to work on it over the years?



Either way the result is not very pretty......

In fairness to StuM, he simply corrected the tense of a verb that nobody outside of sailing has ever heard. I appreciated the clarification. You then disagreed and he linked some references so we can all speak the same language as sailors. No reason to get angry here, IMO.

Oh, and thanks for the good information on South American wind patterns. I wonder if the Humbolt current effects this?

[cyan]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

You really truly must lead a very sad and boring life.... were you like this as a child or did you have to work on it over the years?



Either way the result is not very pretty......

In fairness to StuM, he simply corrected the tense of a verb that nobody outside of sailing has ever heard. I appreciated the clarification. You then disagreed and he linked some references so we can all speak the same language as sailors. No reason to get angry here, IMO.

Oh, and thanks for the South American Pacific weather info. I wonder how the Humbolt current plays into the wind/wave situation there?

[Scout 30]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

You really truly must lead a very sad and boring life.... were you like this as a child or did you have to work on it over the years?

Either way the result is not very pretty......

Personal insults are uncalled for, especially when you're wrong.

Future tense: Prepare to heave to.
Present/past tense: I am/was hove to.

[shane.h012]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

You may need a sea anchor to keep your head from being knocked down in that kind of sea state. It's been a while since I read the Pardeys on this, but from memory they always used a sea anchor above a certain sea state.

In any case, the time to practice and perfect heaving to technique is not in such conditions. You should experiment in calmer weather. Every boat is different. Experiment with different combinations of sails, reef points, traveler position. Make sure the helm is hard alee. My boat will heave to with a staysail and deeply reefed main but if the sea is up, it can be difficult to get the head through the wind. I would use the motor and in no event would I attempt to gybe into a hove-to position.

For whatever it may be worth, though, I don't heave to at all in that kind of weather. I don't like the prospect of having the bow knocked around by a breaking wave and turning me beam on to the next wave. So I run off with just a bit of jib out to stabilize the boat. Jib, not staysail, to get the center of effort as far forward as possible. I am ok without a drogue or trailing anything up to F9. Your boat is much heavier so should be even better.


Another thing -- I would avoid at all costs messing around on the foredeck in such weather. One breaking wave over the deck and you could be gone, tether or no tether. I'm sure you know this, but worth underlining. And worth taking into consideration in your choice of tactics.

Is heaving too that dangerous? I never been out in very bad weather yet, but have read some of the passages on the fastnet race when the boats faired the best and out of all the boats the ones that came back alive was the boats that heaved too, on that terrible night back in the late 90s, please quote me if I’m wrong...

[Scout 30]

Originally Posted by shane.h012

Is heaving too that dangerous? I never been out in very bad weather yet, but have read some of the passages on the fastnet race when the boats faired the best and out of all the boats the ones that came back alive was the boats that heaved too, on that terrible night back in the late 90s, please quote me if I’m wrong...

Correct! Lying ahull was what was dangerous.

[boom23]

Here are the free PDF versions of the Dashew books:

https://www.setsail.com/free-books/

Lots of information in there.

[boatman61]

I have laid ahull and hove to.. what makes the difference is the sea state..
Once in the Biscay I got hit by 60 gusting 70kts from the SE.. this resulted in the seas being backed up to near vertical and higher than the mast of my 31ftr..
Started hove to but in the troughs the sails were just flogging and when we crested the wind was trying to knock us into the valley below.. I doused the sails, shut the main hatch and waited it out down below... wind over current created havoc...
My wind speed indicator only went to 50kts.. the 70kts was from a fully crewed custom Jongert 20metre some 50nm East of us who we caught up with in La Coruna.. big cheer as we sailed in.. they had passed us just after Ushant.
Short handed running before is a limited option where exhaustion can become more dangerous than the seas.. in which case battening down and laying ahull if you cannot heave to is a safer option for survival.. but this is not advice.. just personal experience.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by shane.h012

Is heaving too that dangerous? I never been out in very bad weather yet, but have read some of the passages on the fastnet race when the boats faired the best and out of all the boats the ones that came back alive was the boats that heaved too, on that terrible night back in the late 90s, please quote me if I’m wrong...

I'm not aware of that in the late 90's maybe you can fill me in

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "Here are the free PDF versions of the Dashew books:"

I was being cagey knowing that this stuff is on HolyMotherNet, but having no knowledge of whether that is with Dashew's permission, or whether this stuff has been "pirated".

Given that the copyright on the material can not yet be time-expired, it would be nice to know that getting this stuff off the net does not deprive Dashew of revenue that is rightfully his.

Given that we have just had one lengthy thread about "morality" on a topic that has nothing whatsoever to do with ethics, here is a golden opportunity to have such a discussion about something that has!

Cheers

TP

[roland stockham]

One pinot nobody mentioned is that boats do behave differently in different wind strengths and see states. Move to strategies that are fine in a 30kn squall may not work the same in a prolonged gale. The parties suggest that sea anorrchors often don't work in less than horrible conditions (I have tried practicing in 30/35kn and it did not work for me, kept tacking due to lack of pressure on the bow)