Slowing down - making a Jordan series drogue

I've seen more than my fair share of storms. I used to think that a cruising boat should be able to take anything the sea could throw at it and that I should be able to handle a boat in any conditions, and so I paid far too little to weather forecasts or even the seasons. That youthful, optimistic adventuring spirit lasted through the ownership of several boats before being at last knocked out of me by one avoidable storm too many. I have a friend who has sailed several times around the world, much of it single-handed. He has rarely seen a gale, and once got right the way round the world without encountering one. That's the way to go!

Well, anyway, now dedicated as I am to choosing the right season for a route, and watching the weather as closely as possible, I still regard a gale or more as almost inevitable, and even if I have nothing but smooth sailing for the rest of my life, it will be pleasanter sailing if I have some confidence that the boat can handle some severe weather.

Part of the preparation for long distance sailing has been to strengthen areas, make sure every joint and connection and seal is water tight, simplify things, chuck out unnecessary weight, complication, and through-hull connections. That's all the same for any boat.

I've found that the way a boat behaves in rough weather depends very much on the boat. Each one handles differently in rough weather, so it's difficult to adopt a single strategy that will cover all possibilities. Sailing in storms is a big subject, but it is covered well in 'Heavy weather sailing' by Adlard Coles - a book I've read through and through, and was pleased to find that a new section has been added for multihulls in the latest edition.

Here's one storm strategy that isn't in the book that worked for me. 30' trimaran, single-handed, Gulf of Genoa, January 1st, 1982(?) (told you I failed to bother about the season). Sailing west from Viareggio with the wind behind me, all was well until it very suddenly increased. I got the mainsail down entirely, and was left with the working jib up. By the time the main was all snugged up, the boat was surfing fast steering with the Autohelm. I steered by hand and very soon, I realised I didn't dare re-attach the self-steering gear. We were going far too fast for that, and single handed, bound to the tiller, it would be difficult to drop the jib. Also, I was now going very fast in the right direction, so I continued with that setup - for the next 12 hours (until I'd sailed into the middle of the low, and the wind just stopped, as if someone had switched off the fan). The waves grew big and steep, and it seemed there was almost always a wall of surf behind me.

I don't know what the wind speed was, but I remember thinking the boat speed log was broken, because it kept showing 2, 3, 4, 5 knots, and I was clearly going much faster than that. Most of the time, the speed was showing in the mid-teens. Then I realised the speed log only goes up to 20 knots, and so those little readings were 20 knots less than they ought to be. I'd reached a top speed of 25 knots! This on a boat that I'd rarely seen go faster than 8 knots in 2-3 years of sailing!

Yeah, the wind speed... so the boat was going downwind at 15 - 25 knots. I had a Rutland wind generator. If I was anchored in a gale, that put out 4 amps. I'd never seen more than that. It was now frequently putting out 6 amps, and it sounded like a helicopter.

So that was a lot of wind, and the sea was quite shallow, so the waves were very steep. Maybe I did the right thing. No wave came into the boat. Of course, I was sailing on the edge of catastrophe. One wrong move with the tiller, and I'd have broached and capsized for sure. Or if the rudder hit anything in the water, or just popped up (it was a lifting rudder). But it went fine, that time.

That strategy might have been good considering the steepness of the waves, but usually, you need to slow down in a storm. Stop perhaps, with a sea anchor. However, Richard Wood's experience with a sea anchor has put me off that idea, as well as imagining lying ahull in bad weather trying to set an parachute in the sea off the bow attached to a bridle, and having that all work out just fine (probably in the dark, alone, tired and in the rain too...). Tricky to deploy correctly. So anyway, I've settled for a series drogue.

This kind of thing, attached to the back of the boat:

I made my own - instructions are here.

Here are a couple of things I learned that will be useful if you also make your own.

The cones aren't hard to make, but I needed 140 of them, so I bought them ready made on ebay. There was enough work involved attaching them, but after a bit of practise it took 4 minutes each.

There are several types of double-braided rope. I got some cheap, and struggled to attach even one cone. Turns out this type of rope (used for cod-ends on fishing nets) it much stiffer and more compact than the loose soft stuff you need for making a drogue. Check with your supplier than the rope will be suitable for a drogue.

Splices are easy. Here's how:

Stainless thimbles can twist and distort under great strain. A twisted thimble can fray your rope. Add a lump of weld to the inside of the thimble to close the loop.

Here's the bridle and finished drogue:

The drogue is no use without something strong to attach it to. I have some little cleats at the back - good for attaching a dinghy painter, but not a drogue. So I had some stainless steel plates made up and attached them to the hulls. The hulls are foam sandwich, so first I removed the foam from the inside:

and replaced it with plywood epoxied into place. The plywood is well glued to the outer skin:

Then a couple of layer of glass over that to join the ply to the inner skin:

Then bolt on the steel plate:

The 10mm thick tab at the aft end is for attaching one leg of the bridle. The loop at the for end is just something I can use to tie things in place on my aft platform (like a sit-on canoe I'm thinking of buying, for use as a second dinghy, to go fishing, and exploring creeks).

I don't expect this work to make the boat now prepared for any eventuality. But perhaps one day, in the right kind of storm, I'll attach my drogue, throw it off the back and sail slowly and safely downwind till it's all over.

Update, 3 years and many thousands of miles later: The series drogue remains in the bag. I once moved it from its locker to the cockpit, and that seemed enough to quell the storm, and all was well. However, I still regard it as my ultimate backup. When it all gets too much, I'll hang it out the back, tie off the tiller, close the doors, and stay inside. I haven't had to resort to that yet, but I have used an Abbot drogue quite a bit, and the results of that suggest to me that the series drogue is going to behave just as predicted.

The Abbot drogue, attached to the same plates has been great. See my trans-Atlantic log for details of that.

One other use of these plates: I use a Galerider drogue on a bridle over the stern whenever the boat surges about at anchor. The worst conditions I experienced were in Northern Spain, when I had a F6-7 blowing against 3 knot current. No fun at all. I had a lot of scope out, so the boat had lots room to sail about, and according to my GPS, we hit 4 knots before sailing ahead of the anchor and snatching to a stop, only to drop back downwind, and then surge forward again on the other tack. I hung a Galerider off the stern on a bridle, and the boat just stopped! Almost dead still. The anchor can cope very well indeed against a steady pull, so I wasn’t bothered about the bit of extra drag caused by the drogue, but I was very pleased not to have the anchor, the boat and me snatched about from one side to the other. I have three drogues on board – I have the Galerider specifically for anchoring in wind over tide conditions.

Paint

Ah paint! After all the repairs and alterations, it's time to cover the whole unsightly mess with a nice covering of paint that will obliterate my weeks of work.

See the nasty purple bruise just below the hatch drain hole? That was where water had got into the laminate. I drilled holes though the outer skin, and rinsed out the salt and chemical rich liquid, and then dried the area out with paper wicks, and then heat. Then I injected epoxy resin in to rebond the skins with the laminate. The ugly purple is some dye (builder's chalk) I added to the resin so that I could see where the stuff was going.

See the area just to the left of the drain hole? This is where two foam panels are joined, and the join had been faired in with car body filler. Car body filler absorbs water. This was evident by the old paint bubbling in this area. The paint was removed, then the car body filler, and the are has been refaired with epoxy filler.

At  the top of the picture you can just see a line of holes where I have fitted an epoxy/glass component that will hold the forward net in place. This replaces some aluminium track that was screwed and bolted through the hull - a hole every few inches. Each hole somewhere for water to leak into the laminate. Now, all gone. No more holes.

See on the right of the picture, there's a bit of the crossbeam? There was dampness in there. All rinsed out and dried and refilled, and finally, and extra layer of glass/epoxy. All now dry and reintegrated and strong.

At the bottom - the red colour? More epoxy filler, to fair in a layer of epoxy and glass added to strengthen the edge of the flare in the topsides which was damaged in places, and seemed thin and vulnerable to more damage. All fixed up, and now....

Obliterated. Weeks of work gone. Never mind the colour. It's just an epoxy undercoat.

The red line at the top - fairing with epoxy again, where an aluminium rubbing strake has been removed (again, holes through the hull every few inches. Madness!) The red at the bottom, the epoxy fairing over the reinforced hull flare. Some of the white and the blue is also epoxy filler - I varied the colour so I could see what I was doing as the work progressed. Anyway, it's all gone now...

Same for the decks too, where I have had to remove car body filler. And gel coat non-slip too. That was damaged and unsightly, and there was water under some of it. Nasty stuff. All gone, all ready for paint - 

I was fortunate to find a high build epoxy paint which is perfect for giving the boat a very durable and waterproof coating. I found it in a navy surplus yard. It's the sort of stuff that is used on ship's hulls, before the antifoul goes on. Leigh's Epigrip. I recommend it! Easy to apply as well as giving a tough finish. And as government surplus, it was £2 a litre. Cheaper than domestic emulsion! I bought the lot, 200 litres - enough for two coats on my topsides, three coats underwater (in preparation for the Coppercoat), and three coats underwater on the catamaran next door. (That's the catamaran next door, on the right of the image above). I was delighted with the bargain. My neighbour was quoted £5000 for the paint system for his boat.

No paint sticks better, is more durable or waterproof than epoxy paint. The one downside of epoxy is that it is vulnerable to UV, so it needs covering. The usual argument between yachties is whether to use one-pack or two-pack polyurethane paint. Both types are tough and expensive. Two-pack is tougher and more expensive. They give a shiny high gloss finish, which I have concluded has a dubious value. Shiny, it shows up every inconsistency in the hull, and so people spend forever filling and fairing before using this paint. And when the paint is damaged, it's quite a bit of work to again, fill and fair and repaint, and polish the patch in back to perfection.

I've concluded life is too short for that kind of perfection. I'll forgo the shininess and the expense and the upkeep ( I NEVER want to have to polish my boat!). The final coat will be domestic acrylic paint. The epoxy will protect the boat from moisture and abrasion, and the acrylic will protect the epoxy from UV. I haven't decided yet between Dulux and Sandtex, but the whole lot will cost me £30-40 instead of several hundred, and it will all be painted in a day. Scrapes will be touched up in minutes. And for the non-slip areas of the decks, same stuff, except I'll use the textured masonry paint. Cheap, easy to apply, durable, and since I've used it before, I can also say it sands away just fine - when it comes to recoating, the aggregate doesn't build up.

Painting. After all the work and preparation, it's a pleasant and easy job. All that work and preparation, now sealed up and hidden away. :)

Maybe my boat just wasn't yellow enough! Sorted!

Update: Leigh's Epigrip is brilliant. For epoxy paint, it is cheap. It is easy to apply. and after 2.5 years of hard use, I can say that it is very hard wearing. I've had places where a rope has been sawing across the deck (something I tend to avoid, naturally) and the top paint has gone, but howhere has the epigrip been worn through.

I used Dulux Weathershield gloss paint on the topsides and it is fine. A little wear and tear and scuffing, but it hasn't even dulled, here in the tropics. The Dulux salesman recommended that I used something else. He told me it wouldn't last. It has! One day, not soon, I'll give it all a quick sand and another coat. Maybe an afternoon's work, for several more years of looking fine.

I used masonry paint on the deck. Smooth everywhere, then textured where I need non-slip. It's OK. In places it has scratched off, where I have dragged something heavy across the deck. Eventually, it began to chalk, which doesn't matter much except the chalkiness contaminated the rain water we collect from the coachroof. So I have overcoated that with latex paint (available in the US, not sure what the equivalent would be in the UK). This stuff too is cheap, water-based stuff. It has stopped the chalkiness. One day, I'll give the whole of the decks and cockpit another coat. No rush though. And it will be cheap, it will take less than a day to do, and will last a few more years.

Kitchen

I know, sailors call it a galley. Mine's a kitchen.

The underwater sections of the hull all read dry with my moisture meter, except for an area below the kitchen floor. The kitchen floor consisted of foam and a layer of glass. I peeled back the glass:

You can see staining from water. I removed all the foam. The original builder of the boat fitted a floor this way. It's a bad idea. Bilge areas need to be dry and ventilated, or moisture builds up in the glass. Nothing is entirely waterproof - even epoxy coated hulls. Some water always passes through into the glass. If the water can evaporate from the inside as fast as it penetrates from the outside, it can't build up to a level that will allow osmosis to begin. Having water on the inside of a hull as well as the outside makes osmosis inevitable.

Anyway, it was a simple matter to remove the foam, and lay down a more traditional plywood floor. I first epoxied in some supports which greatly strengthen the hull right over the keel shoe I fitted, so that was a nice benefit of the new arrangement. And I think the finished floor looks a lot nicer than the old fibreglass one:

Note the foot pump I fitted by the step, to supply water to the sink. There used to be a hand pump, but washing your hands when one of them is occupied pumping water is just silly. And the pump was flimsy too. This Whale footpump is much more robust, and allows for a great deal of control when hand washing - this is important to me. The more frugal I can be with water, the less I need to carry. Less weight, more speed, or the ability to carry other essentials.

So, I got carried away. New worktops - normal domestic worktops which I modified for a multihull - ie, lightening them as much as possible by using a router to remove much of the chipboard under the surface, and then sealing the chipboard and all edges with epoxy resin.

New hob too. Cookers for boats used to be very expensive. Gas is heavier than air, and any gas leaking ends up in the bilge, waiting to blow a boat apart. So marine cookers need to be fitted with flame failure devices that turn off the gas if the flame goes out. That has now become the required way to supply domestic cookers too, so a stainless domestic cooker is just as good as an expensive 'marine' cooker from a chandler.

I'll make a stainless fiddle that hinged up against the bulkhead that will keep pans in place when the boat is sailing fast through bumpy water. Usually, fiddles aren't needed in a multihull, but I did once lose my chip pan when I hit a rough patch in the Gibraltar Straits. That was messy. So fiddles will be made and installed.

Only two burners on the hob, but I figured that with with a new grill and oven too, we'd manage OK. The little door beside the oven used to be a fridge. Silly place for a fridge, next to the oven. Not sure if a fridge is such a good idea for a cruising boat anyway. It's a big power draw which needs feeding with more batteries and solar panels - more expense, weight, and things to go wrong. I've got by just fine with several summers in the Mediterranean without a fridge, and never missed it. There are other ways to keep things fresh (wrap cheese in cloth, not plastic, keep cabbages and lettuces upside down in nets, allow plenty of air to circulate round fruit and vegetables, and sprout mung beans or alfalfa for salads and stir fries).

Cupboards. 10 of them altogether, 2 drawers, and a great big space under the cooker than could easily take a couple of sacks of potatoes. That space under the cooker used to house a waste water tank, which needed to be pumped out. I got rid of the tank, the pump and two underwater through hull fittings. There are a couple of places that don't allow disposal of washing up water into the sea. I won't go to those places.

Marine taps are expensive too, so I bent a bit of copper pipe. I think it looks quite nice. Well, water comes out of the end and without leaking anywhere else, when you pump the foot pump. And the tap can be turned away from the sink to over the step, when you need to fill a large container.

Just under the tap is a little box with a green light on. The light turns red and the box screams when it detects gas. Handy, just in case a flame failure device on the cooker fails.

This gas detector works very well, but I'm not sure what gas it tests for. It surprised me one day as I was working on the kitchen floor. I was down there on my knees, and did a little fart, and then this piercing alarm went off. I ran around for a little while before I realised what the alarm was, and why it had gone off. :)

That's a big kitchen for a 30' boat. But on a long voyage, there often isn't much to do except read and cook. So the kitchen to me is very important, much as I like reading.

Nigel Irens' influence on my boat

You know who Nigel Irens is don't you? Famous boat designer?

Well, he's been building a nice motor launch in the same shed as me. He's just finished and launched it, and donated the remaining bits of wood to us catamaran fixer-uppers, including some bits of nice teak faced poplar.

So I made some new drawers for my galley.

Thanks Nigel! Nice to have a bit of Irens input on my boat!

Fixing 750 holes in my boat.

The curved foam sandwich anchor lockers in front of my main beam were poorly made. I guess the foam and the outer glass skin weren't attached as well as they ought to have been. Anyway, my moisture meter showed water in there, and after drilling a few test holes, I got wet. So I drilled holes throughout the area that read as damp, 30mm or so apart. I then rinsed the foam by squirting water in turn into the holes, and vaccuuming it back out again. I did this many times!

Eventually, I judged it rinsed enough and let it dry out for several months. Readings with the moisture meter dropped into the green zone. It was time to fill the gaps between the foam and the glass by injecting epoxy.

I've injected epoxy before, and it can be pretty messy. Injecting with a syringe can get the epoxy squirted into quite a large area, but as soon as you take the syringe away it comes out again pretty quick. The easiest part of my problem area was vertical, and some of it even tougher, beyond vertical. I was keen to find a way to plug the holes using something that wouldn't be washed away with epoxy. Masking tape is just washed off by epoxy, and so is gaffer tape. Previously, I've found making a circle of builder's filling mastic round the hole, and then putting tape over it makes a leak-proof seal. But I had a lot of holes, so this method wasn't practical.

One day, I noticed a price tag stuck to a filling knife I was using to work with epoxy. The tag remained well stuck  So I bought a roll of 250 price tags. And then cut the roll into three, giving me 750.

I used nearly all of them, but fortunately, I had some assistance. The price tags worked perfectly. They even stuck to the fibreglass that was already wet with epoxy.

Fitting new windows

My windows used to leak. And the Perspex was crazed and foggy.

The old windows were held in place with some sort of mastic and bolts spaced about 3 inches apart. The leaks were mostly around the bolts, though the worst window leaked most because, as I discovered when I removed it, the plastic film that protects Perspex when it was new had been left in place.

I wanted to get rid of all the bolt holes. As well as being prone to leaking, they provide stress points in the Perspex. Around many of the bolt holes, there were clear signs of cracking in the old windows.

I have just finished fitting my new windows for the second time. The first time, I used the instructions I found here. The windows leaked within days. The paint I used was paint used for car exhaust pipes, as suggested in the article. But the article is Australian, and I am in the UK, so maybe the paint here is different. Anyway, it didn't work. The windows failed in the join between the paint and the mastic/tape. On removing the windows, I was disappointed with the performance of the tape. I'd expected it to be easy to remove from the Perspex, as the paint hadn't provided a good surface for it to adhere to, but it also easily came away from the hull. I don't know why that is. That 3M double-sided tape is recommended all over the net. All I can say is that it didn't work for me.

The second time around, I've used Sabatack 780, and their very expensive UV protective primer (£33 for a tiny bottle - but it was enough for my 15 windows).

It's important to use spacers between the window and the hull to get the right thickness of mastic - too much is both expensive and ugly. Too little doesn't allow enough flexibility between the Perspex and the hull. Perspex expands and contracts with temperature change much more than fibreglass, so some flexibility in the connection is crucial. I used little squares of hardboard glued to the hull (3.5 mm):

It's important to place the windows correctly first time on the hull after you've applied the gloop - trying to adjust the position once the gloop has made contact with the hull makes a mess. I did a dry run for each window, and drew a pencil line round the windows. I then glued some bits of wood in place to help guide the window to the correct position. I used plywood, but it would have been better t use some thicker wood so that the windows is guided into place from a greater distance from the hull. I wanted to glue the wood to the hull in such a way as to allow me to remove it easily without damage. Here's the trick to that:

Stick some masking tape to the hull where you want the wood to go, then use 5 minute polyurethane wood glue to attach the glue to the tape. The wood blocks can be easily removed with a chisel without damaging the hull, but the wood is stuck down well enough for locating the window, and can even be used as a base for clamping the window down. Here's a window that wasn't quite bent enough - I just clamped it down onto the spacers until the mastic had set:

The Sabatack was easy to clean up with a chisel the next day. It seems to go hard quite slowly, though you are supposed to put the window in place within 8 minutes of applying the glue.

It all seems to have worked well. I got 15 windows glued in and cleaned up in two days. That feels like progress at last. How waterproof and strong they turn out to be, only time will tell.

Six days later....

Only after I'd stuck in all the windows did it occur to me to test this system. Oh well, better late than never. I cleaned some scrap Perspex with isopropyl alcohol, applied the primer, left it to dry for 10 minutes, then glued on some scrap fibreglass using a narrow bead - as I'd done for the windows. After six days, I tore the pieces apart:

That's 10 mm Perspex under the crow bar, and 15mm foam sandwich on top. It took a lot of effort to break it apart! Now I'm certain the windows are securely installed. I checked where the glue failed - I'd expected the primer to tear away from the perspex, or the glue to come away from the primer. But those interfaces held! The glue tore away down the middle of the bead - and here it was still tacky. So I guess, even after six days, and having reached this fantastic strength, the glue would have become even stronger if I'd left it longer.

:)

Update: 2 and a half years later, mostly in the tropics, the windows are still fine. No leaks at all, no sign of any loosening.

Water - catching rain

I've fitted a water catching system to the coachroof.

I have a friend who sailed round the world using only the rain water that fell on his coachroof - and his coachroof is quite a bit smaller than mine.

But why bother? I have 2 x 150 litre tanks. On a recent trip from the Azores to the UK that took eight days, I used just 25 litres of water, and that included using fresh water for cooking and to wash up. So I guess I could eke out my water for 300/25 x 8 = 96 days. However washing was minimal (I was sailing alone), and I did no laundry.

It would be nice to be able to take a shower. And to wash clothes in fresh water. And to rinse the salt out of clothes that become salty (otherwise they never properly dry).

I could do all those things using rain water. And to replenish my drinking water, I could pour the collected rain water through a filter - they make them so fine these days that they filter out even things as small as viruses. Rain water fed directly to the main tanks would be silly - I have no desire to drink water contaminated with seagull poop.

It seems a no-brainer. The alternative is to carry lots of water (300 kgs for full tanks), and be reliant on shore supplies (which often means using a marina, which I intend to avoid as much as possible). Or to install a water maker. That's expensive, to buy and to maintain. And it needs a lot of power, so it needs lots of solar panels or a generator. To rely on the sun or a generator, and a water maker for a supply of water seems less secure than relying on rain.

It seemed a good opportunity to fit the catching system - I've just removed all the car body filler that had been used to fair the boat, and refilled using epoxy filler (car body filler absorbs water - a pin-prick through the paint results in filler absorbing water and eventually causing blister and then more holes in the paint). After fairing in the coachroof, I used a hot glue gun to attach to 15mm plastic plumbing pipe to the bottom of the coachroof. I then used epoxy filler to fill the space under the pipe, and create a gutter. I used release mould on the pipe - but this wasn't necessary. Epoxy doesn't stick to the pipe anyway.

After pulling the pipe away, I glassed over the filler underneath and on top.

The red and blue colour in the photo is epoxy filler - I added red or blue builder chalk to each mix of filler, to make it easier to see what I was doing when it came to sanding t smooth. (Currently the boat looks very badly bruised!).

I left a gap where I want the water to run out when I am not collecting, and drilled a hole through the deck just uphill from the gap. In the deck hole, I epoxied a long plastic pipe insert (standard plumbing part, 40p!) which is the right size for push-fit plumbing fittings. The pipe comes out behind a bulkhead in the kitchen, so it will be easy to attach some plastic pipe to the inlet leading to a tap which I'll set at the height of my water containers.

Update: I'm anchored in Turks and Caicos, and water costs $2/gallon. There are no taps anywhere but in marinas, which are $50 a night. We're living on rainwater that arrives in occasional squalls. Crap from seagulls seems an English problem, or northern European anyway. I can't remember how far south we had to go before bird shit wasn't a problem. Anyway, south of Portugal and in all of the Caribbean, all we need to do is let the first water wash dust  and salt off the roof, then collect the rest. It is a lot of work though, carrying the containers up to the deck to syphon them into the tanks. Despite my initial reservations, I think it would be much better to plumb the rain catching system directly to the tanks, with a diverter tap for discarding the first water.