1) I’m sailing from the Chesapeake Bay down to St.Thomas, USVI on Christmas eve in a heavy full-keel 47 wood cutter staysail ketch. I know there is a storm approaching, but I figure if I can get out past the Gulf stream (avoid the northerly wind against the north flowing current) before it hits, then I will ‘run’ with the wind and waves in the open ocean. It turns out to be a much more intense storm than predicted with a very intense center that moves just north of Bermuda. I experience 60-70 knots of wind for two and a half days. I am surfing BIG but organized seas using a hankerchief-size staysail. It’s reported that two other vessels nearer the center of the low pressure are sunk in the same storm. I have two other inexperienced crew onboard and we are doing 3 hour shifts, as that is as long as you can concentrate on avoiding a broach. I decide the wind is high enough to run under bare poles and save the staysail from gibing itself to death, and maybe keep my bowsprit out of the backface of the wave at the bottom of the trough. We slow down all right, but now the crest of the waves are breaking over my stern and completely filling my cockpit. Tons of water is captured in the cockpit floor space and spills thru the engine hatch seams located there. It’s drowning my brand new diesel engine, and the slower surfing speed has aggravated our broaching tendency. Bilges getting full of water. Back up with the staysail until we are all so tired, I decided to heave to with a rudder forcing her to windward and a backed staysail forcing her off wind. Finally some much needed rest for all of us. I cannot think of a drogue arrangement that I could have left UNATTENDED in this situation, either in reference to broaching tendencies caused by the opposite rotation of the surface waters at the crest of the wave as opposed to that in the trough, nor with reference to the amounts of water I was collecting in the bilges.
