Parachute Anchors, Para-Anchor, Sea Anchor

Guillermo said:
.."The time to get into a life raft, is when your right foot is already wet, and you have to step up into the raft with your left."
Could it be applied to this case?
Click to expand...

Well it certainly doesn't look as though the boat was sinking or sank. So abandoning an unballasted vessel (no lead weight) for a flimsy liferaft should take on a new definition, possibly??
 
Special Swivel from Colligo Marine

COLLIGO MARINE RECEIVES US PATENT
FOR HURRICANE ANCHOR SYSTEM
Helps Keep Boats Anchored Securely – Even In High Winds, Waves

MESA, ARIZONA (USA) – Colligo Marine has received United States Patent Number 7,516,713 for its unique hurricane anchor system that helps boat owners in the path of storms anchor their vessels securely - even in the highest winds and waves.

The Colligo system allows for the placement of three anchors on a swivel and three lines back to the boat. The boat can then swivel on the anchors without getting anchor chains and lines twisted around each other. The minimum breaking strength for this heavy-duty system is over 30,000 lbs. It comes complete with galvanized bridle plates, shackles and a swivel. Mono and multi-hull models are available.

The Colligo Marine hurricane anchor system is distributed by Taylor Made Products as the Storm Surge Anchor System and available at marine retailers across the US. For more information, visit www.colligomarine.com

Editors Note: a high resolution image of the Colligo hurricane anchor system for publication can be downloaded at www.homeportmarine.com/marcom/colligohas.zip

this might be useful info for para-anchore systems
 
Para anchors are usable only once. I thought about this after someone explained this to me.

You get into a storm, you get the anchor out in 30kts across the deck, you manage to get it in.

You have a reasonably good night and it increases to 50KTS.

It then drop next day to 20kts! Ok so far?

You decide to get on your way, how can you drag in a para anchor when your pulling at it. You have 100x LOA and a para anchor with tons of water.

You would have to wait till it was calm to do this with man and wife.
So to get on your way you cut it loose.
 
Parachute Anchor Websites

Frosty said:
Para anchors are usable only once
Click to expand...

Trip Line:
Used to help in deflation and recovery of the para-anchor. Trip lines vary in length from 50 to 100 feet on typical vessels, and up to 1,000 feet for those with deep drafts and high freeboards.

Retrieval Float:
The last float marking the tail end of the Trip Line. The Benefit: High degree of visibility allows a skipper to easily motor toward the retrieval float to capture the trip line. Large enough to prevent the para-anchor from sinking too deep under the water when anchor rode is slack

Maybe go read a few websites:
http://www.paraanchor.com/info.rigsystem.html

http://www.paraanchors.com.au/page6.htm

http://www.para-anchor.com/news.bluewater.html

http://creativemarine.com/newprodct/paratech/paratech.htm
 
Yes a trip line but its still reall rough but you have decided to be on your way expecting it to improve. You would need a 100 x loa trip line too then!! and winch it in as the boat is till hard on the chute. Some one needs to drive well and someone needs to haul in and some one needs to stand at the front to see what happening.

You would have to which it in faster that the boat can fall back on it -or drive into it.

As I say not easy on a pitching deck with nausia and a bad nights sleep and after an hour or two its easier to cut it loose.

I dont do links -I don't have speedy connection but Im repeating actuall experiences. I know what its supposed to do and in ten KTS it looks easy by the guy that made it. But when its your first time in lousy conditions it very easy to come to a quick desicion. You can buy another or carry 2.
 
Drogues

Beware that some surplus parachutes, altho shiny and loooking like Nylon, are cotton. I tried one and it lasted less than an hour.
Mooring from the bow always results in a sloop shearing around , drastically increasing the loads and chafe on lines. Mooring from a stern quarter is much safer and more comfortable. Using chain for the first couple of feet from the boat eliminates chafe.
You put yourself at much greater risk abandoning ship than you would have staying with her.
Friends in the Queen's Birthday Storm off New Zealand used a galerider of the stern quarter and kept shortening the rode to stop it from fouling the skeg. When they had shortened it to 80 ft it worked far better and needed no further tending. They had no major problems .
Brent
 
Brent Swain said:
Beware that some surplus parachutes, altho shiny and loooking like Nylon, are cotton. I tried one and it lasted less than an hour.
Click to expand...
Are you sure it was a parachute? I could only think that might have been a WWll product when a shortage of rayon/nylon might have forced the issue. Shouldn't be using ANYTHING this old.

Mooring from the bow always results in a sloop shearing around , drastically increasing the loads and chafe on lines.
Click to expand...
Sloops do tend to 'sail around' their bow deployed anchors, as their bare mast CE is ahead of their CLR. But this is usually more of a problem with shoreside anchorage rather than big wind storms at sea.

Most bow deployed sea anchors try to utilize a bridle arrangement to keep the bow headed into the seaway, and chafe with this bridle is certainly a problem. (multiple points)

A ketch, or a yawl, or an aft mounted radar mast might help prevent some 'shearing around'.
 
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Shearing around is just as much a problem when lying to a sea anchor from the bow as lying to an anchor, as the dynamics are the same, as has been pointed out.
Brent
 
Larry Pardey is a strong advocate of chute anchoring. His book "Storm Tactics" ( I think) tells all. He gave a copy to my son when we met him and Lin at Horta just before they wrong-wayed Cape Horn in ? '02? They are gods.
 
Me again. Finally found my first post (after reading everyone else's). Larry Pardey used his rig more than once in 70 kts. His trails from the bow, but is hauled back by a line to a cockpit winch with a BIG sheave where it joins the bow line. He lets a bit of bow line out now and again to freshen the nip. The aim is to achieve dead downwind drift with the boat about 45 degrees into the seas. This produces a slick to weather which causes waves to break before reaching the boat. He told me he winched it all in in surges afterwards. (Don't know if he uses trip line or not. They tend to get twisted around the rode.) By the time ur taking it in the line is under far less strain, right Frosty? I wouldn't cut mine away. What's the rush?
 
It seems a bit of drift is required to produce the slick-- typically less than 2 knots, tho.
TeddyDiver? Those are considerations for sure, but surely there would be an hour or two to recover this expensive piece of equiptment? If not-- well, bad luck. If conditions are so bad and the lee shore so close one will be in for it anyway trying to claw off.
 
Wouldn't a sea anchor work well with a cat? The bridle from two hulls would work a lot better in keeping the boat into the wind than a mono-hull.
 
"Heaving-to: safety valve at sea" By Lin & Larry Pardey

http://www.para-anchor.com/news.stormmanage.html

....excerpt...
We used a para-anchor with a triple-reefed mainsail on Seraffyn in the Gulf of Papagayo off Mexico and in the North Pacific during storms with winds reported to range from strong gale force to hurricane force (between 40 and 70 knots). Our nine-foot diameter, coarsely woven nylon para-anchor is much stronger and easier to stow than the smaller diameter, traditional, iron-hooped, canvas-coned sea anchors described in older cruising books. The nylon para-anchor used with a nylon rode is more elastic than its canvas and manila counterpart, and the nylon rode absorbs the shock of the boat surging against the sea anchor. This gear helps a vessel lie hove-to safely fifty degrees off the wind even after the winds increase beyond storm force. Our para-anchor is a surplus Navy cargo chute. They are used extensively for this purpose by the fishing fleet around southern California and Mexico.
 
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