Anchoring for a Hurricane

Hurricanes are no regular storm, they almost take on a life and personality as they crawl through the skies. Avoiding these monsters should be the first choice, but if you are land locked and the storm is coming at you, you will need to prepare. 

Previously, we discussed the options of securing your yacht for the storm. They are: tying up in a marina, anchoring, or sailing through it. Marinas are preferred if you already have a slip and you know the yacht will be safe there. Sailing through it is a dumb idea and should be avoided. We will now delve deeper into how to anchor for the storm. 

The first thing you need to do is find a protected place to hide. Preferably one with land all around you to stop the waves from tugging on the anchor in the bottom.  

The next thing you need to do is let out enough anchor rode. Chain is preferred, as it won't chafe on anything on the sea bed. The minimum scope for all chain is 5:1.  This means that for each foot of water depth, you will let out 5 feet of chain. 5:1 is fine for light weather, but this is a severe storm we are dealing with, so the scope needs to be increased.

The minimum scope for an event like this is 10:1. Naturally, this limits how deep you can do this in by how much chain you have. If you carry 300 feet of chain, then you can only do this in 30 feet of effective depth. This means that the height from the bow roller to the bottom is only 30 feet. If you have a 10 foot high bow roller from the waters surface, then you can only reach 10:1 scope in 20 feet of water! 

After you let out all of that chain, you then want to reduce the amount of shock load that the system will encounter. Chain is great for anchoring because it is heavy and the weight of the chain will form a nice catenary curve leading to the anchor. This means that the chain closest to the anchor will be horizontal and the pull on the anchor will be horizontal along the seabed. This reduces the risk of pulling the anchor up out of the substrate. 

Wind gusts will push your yacht back and waves will cause the bow to rise and fall. All of these movements will tighten the chain and snap on your ground tackle. To dampen these effects, we need to introduce some elasticity to the equation. 

You will want to use a very strong piece of 3-Strand nylon rope, as it will offer the most stretch available with the strength required. This line, called a snubber, will be tied to the chain itself and led to a cleat. More chain will be let out and the snubber will begin taking the load. I like to let even more chain out, causing it to drop straight down from the bow, letting me know that if the snubber stretches a lot, the chain will never come into tension. This will dampen any shock loads on the chain and anchor, leading to a much more secure anchoring. 

Now, to make sure the anchor is set well, you will want to drop it in a different from normal fashion. In cases like this, we will sail into the anchorage under full sail and drop the anchor while moving at speed and in the direction that the winds are predicted to be coming. 

If you are in the storm and sailing into the harbor of choice during the storm, then you already know which direction the winds are going to be blowing, and you can do this maneuver on a run. When the eye of Hurricane Jose was passing 20 miles East of us, we sailed into the anchorage on a run and under storm sails. The effective depth was 20 feet, so I only needed to drop 200 feet of chain for 10:1 scope. As we were sailing along, Maddie gave the signal that we were in the right place and I dropped our anchor with 100 feet of chain (5:1 scope). The anchor dug into the bottom as we moved over at around 4 knots and brought the yacht to an abrupt halt. The bow stopped and the stern swung around rapidly as it was still carrying all of that momentum. This let me know that the anchor was set and well buried, as it did not drag under those extreme conditions.

I then let out an additional 140 feet of chain, bringing our scope to 12:1. I let that sit for about an hour, making sure that the anchor was not going to drag. When we were certain of its holding, we then added the snubber to the equation. 

Should the anchor begin to drag, all we need to do is untie the snubber and let out more chain until it stops dragging. Then we can tie a second snubber (which is kept on the bow as well) to the chain to hold us, should we need it. 

Anchoring for a severe storm is a critical skill to have and should be practiced enough that you feel confident in carrying out the task when the moment arises.

Hurricane Hole

As Hurricane Jose passes by us in the Chesapeake Bay, we need to find ourselves a safe anchorage. The hurricane is passing by offshore, but the effects of its massive low pressure system can be felt for miles! 

The eye of the storm is only 4*W of our current position, and at our latitude, that comes out to be roughly 206nm away. This is by no means the equivalent of getting slammed by the hurricane, but the winds in the area surrounding it will be significant. We need to seek safe harbor to wait out this massive storm! 

Our options as cruisers are the following:  

1.  Tie up in a marina

2.  Anchor in a protected anchorage

3.  Sail it! 

Tying up in a marina may be the preferred choice for most boaters, as you have the security of tying up to a fixed object. The problem with this is we would be arriving new to the marina and tying up blindly to the structure we encounter. We would be considered a transient yacht, and placed in whatever slip is available. This may entail being in a narrow slip that will bang up your top sides as the storm rages over, or being set on a Tee-Head where the side of your yacht will be pummeled into the pier!

The worst thing about a new marina is you don't know the condition of the marina. The wooden piling you tie to might look find from the outside, but they could be completely eaten away by worms. As your yacht puts pressure on the wooden structure, the piling could snap off!  If you have been in a marina for a long time, you would have come to learn its tricks and know how to safely tie up for a storm. 

The next problem with marinas during severe storms is that they are subjected to the tides. If the storm floods the waterway you are in, the marina could go underwater! You would need to let your docklines out at the water rises to avoid them getting too tight. If the water is sucked away by the approaching storm, you could find yourself stuck on the bottom for days until the water flows back in. 

Back in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy came through, I hauled out Wisdom at the only marina that had space left to haul out. The travel lift slip was 10 feet deep and we drew 6.5 feet. Getting out of the water was no problem, the real dilemma came after the storm! As Hurricane Sandy passed by, she drained the bay of its water, lowering the depth in the travel lift slip do 4 feet! It took nearly 2 weeks for the water to flow back into the creek where the marina was located so that I could be launched again. 

As cruisers on a budget, getting stuck on the bottom in a marina slip for days after the storm has passed means we would need to pay for all of those days. Every day that passes could be anywhere from $45 to $90 a day, depending on the transient rate at the marina.  

The second option is to anchor in a protected area. This is certainly cheaper than tying up in a marina, but a bit of a gamble. Anchorages can either save or destroy your boat, and the outcome depends completely upon your preparation and selection. 

The first thing you want is an empty anchorage. If there are other boats around you, especially upwind from you, you may have to deal with unwanted situations.

The second thing you want to look for is the right water depth. Too deep will require too much anchor rode just to reach the bottom. Too shallow and you may hit bottom in the troughs of the waves. I prefer an anchorage that is 16 feet deep, because that gives us 10 feet under our keel.

The third thing you want is a good bottom that the anchor can dig deeply into. The ideal bottom condition depends on the anchor you are carrying. We have a Mantus anchor, which works best in sand and mud. If you have the option available to you, try to find a bottom that is soft mud covering hard mud. What happens is the anchor will sink deep under the soft mud, giving it plenty of holding power. As it gets to the bottom of the soft layer, it will be perfectly oriented to penetrate the hard bottom below. Soft bottoms can hold well, but they can also allow the anchor to creep through it. A hard bottom will lock the anchor in place and stop it from dragging. Having a soft layer above the hard layer ensures that the anchor will not slide along the surface of the hard layer, causing you to drag anchor as you careen onto a lee shore!

The fourth thing you want is plenty of room to swing. This requires a large open area where you can swing around as the wind shifts. If there is a wreck, landmass, or other boat in the way of a full circle swing, you may encounter that obstacle during the storm so it would behoove you to move to a different anchorage. 

The last thing you want to find is 360* land coverage, and preferably tall land. High land, especially cliffs will shield you from the wind, as the land itself shields you from waves. If you have any exposure to a larger body of water, huge waves can come in created by the greater fetch. Obviously, having enough swing room means that the area will be wide open, so you will still experience some wind-related issues. 

Finding this perfect place while out cruising can be challenging. Sometimes you will need to make a compromise and anchor in a less than ideal location.  

We were lucky to find this place as it offered all the needed criteria and was completely empty! The depth in the entire basin is 16 feet deep and made out of soft mud over hard sand!

While this anchorage may seem like a dream come true, the truth is we were very fortunate to find it and get into it in a timely manner. 

We were safely anchored in another river, but decided that it might be fun to go sailing today since the winds in the river (where we were very protected) were rather light. A friend of ours who was sailing further north in the bay told us that the winds were rather light today and the seas were only 1 foot tall.  The thing is, we were much closer to the passing storm, so our winds were amplified, as was the sea state!

This brings us to our thrid option, "Sail It!" The bay is rather small, so heaving to for the entire storm isn't very practically as you will probably drift into an obstacle before the storm passes. If the winds are blowing you in the direction of travel that you wish to take, you could always run before the storm to get to safe harbor and wait for it to pass.  

We went out in what we expected to be rather light conditions, only to have ourselves beaten into submission! We had a reeked sailplan up, just in case the winds would be stronger than expected, and then we met the full fury of the storm. The winds were a steady 27 knots with gusts into the 30s and waves that required us to look up at the crests! Our original destination was slightly to windward and we quickly changed our minds and ran downwind as we searched for a new place to stop. 

Luckily, all this wind gave us an incredible boost of speed! We cruised along at around 6 and 7 knots the entire way, making a 20 mile away destination seem much closer. From anchor up to anchor down, we were only moving for 6 hours, and only 2 of them were very intense as we ran before the storm. On our run, we searched the upcoming rivers for a place that was deep, protected, and the right kind of bottom.  

I figured the sailing would be intense as I was raising anchor, but the winds were blowing the same direction we wanted to be going. What only took a few hours of sailing in the storm would have been the equivalent of 2 days of beating to windward during normal weather. The lack of anchorages between these two places meant that we would have needed to spend a night anchored out in the middle of the bay, completely exposed to the ever changing weather of the bay. 

Sailiing it might seem like a fun idea at first, but I strongly recommend against it. Going out in a gale to run before the storm is extremely tiring and taxing on the yacht and the crew. Maddie was fighting off motion sickness as I had to steer us through each massive wave that tried to broach us. This was fine for a few hours during the day, but imagine if this was your plan to ride out a storm that is supposed to last 3 days?! You would die from fatigue out there! 

Cruising means that you have to be on a sailboat when the weather is far from optimum, but it also means knowing how to prepare for severe weather in a safe manner. 

Oversizing Your Rigging

You often hear people suggest that you should oversize the stays of your yacht if you want to go ocean voyaging. They make it sound like if the stays are the weak point and making them larger will turn any sailboat into a blue water yacht.

The reasoning behind this is in the ocean, you will encounter storms with no place to hide. You will be forced to sail through weather you would only encounter in a nightmare, and your rigging will need to hold all of this abuse. By increasing the size of your stays, you are also increasing the strength of the wire, making the entire system stronger! Or so the common thought would lead you to believe. 

The problem with increasing the size of your steel standing rigging is two fold. First, the added wire size directly translates into added weight aloft. This will make your yacht much more tender and life during a storm will be far less than deplorable. The second reason is the wire size of your rigging is not the weak link in your standing rigging. Your entire rig is a calculated design where everything shares the responsibility. Increasing the wire size but not increasing the size of the clevis pins that hold the terminals is pointless. Now you have heavier rigging of the same strength! Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so increasing the size of one link will not make the chain any stronger. True upsizing of your rigging would entail increasing the size of everything involved in your standing rigging. 

With steel rigging, there is a severe weight penalty for increasing the size of the wire. Synthetic standing rigging doesn't carry such a weight penalty; instead it carries a financial penalty. Increasing the size of the line used will increase the cost per foot dramatically! For example, 6mm New England Ropes STS-HSR costs $2.79 per foot. 7mm New England Ropes STS-HSR costs 3.49 per foot. That is a $0.70 increase for each foot of line you need to buy! If you take it a step further and go to 9mm New England Ropes STS-HSR, you are now looking at $6.09 per foot! Now you are looking at an increase of $3.30 for every foot just so that you can upsize your rigging by 3mm! 

Windage is another concern with increasing the size of your synthetic standing rigging, as it is suddenly a larger stay to pass through the wind. This is only a real concern for racers, as the average cruiser has enough junk on the deck to nullify any penalty from larger stays. 

After the financial burden, increasing the size of your synthetic standing rigging does offer one major advantage, it decreases the amount of creep you will experience. Having larger stays means that each stay will be loaded a lower percentage of its maximum. If you apply a static load to synthetic standing rigging, it will creep. If the load is greater than 10% of its maximum breaking load, you will experience significant creep. If the load is less than 10%, you will experience less creep. As you increase in size, the strength of the line increases dramatically, and so would the decrease in creep. 

Increasing the size of your steel rigging is pointless, as this will simply add weight aloft and cause you to heel over more while sailing. Increasing the size of your synthetic standing rigging will cost a lot more but it will also give you less creep. 

Ideally, you should try to keep your yacht's rigging at the designed size. When the rigging was designed, the designer factored in the heeling forces of the wind and the ballast in the keel. Altering from this would mean deviating away from an expertly calculated state into an experimental state.

Dealing with Winter's Stretch

Dyneema, used in synthetic standing rigging, is remarkably strong and light weight. This makes it an excellent choice for standing rigging, as it supports the mast without adding unwanted weight aloft.

The dark secret about synthetic standing rigging is that the dyneema has a negative coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it actually elongates as it cools. Aluminum, a common spar material, has a positive coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning that it will shrink while cooling.  Stainless steel rigging also has a positive coefficient of thermal expansion, so it will shrink along with the aluminum at roughly the same rate.

As winter approaches, the mast will shrink ever so slightly, as will steel rigging, meaning that it will all stay roughly the same tension. This is why steel rigging seems to stay the same tightness year round, as it expands and contracts with the mast. 

Synthetic standing rigging, on the other hand, becomes rediculously loose as winter approaches. The mast contracts ever so slightly, while the dyneema expands a bit. The combination is a longer than normal stay on a shorter than normal mast! You might be tempted to simply tighten the deadeyes during winter, that way the standing rigging is tight again, but the problem is that once summer returns, the mast will expand slightly and the dyneema will contract drastically.

It is very fair to say that synthetic standing rigging is temperature sensitive. I prefer to tune synthetic rigging at 80*F. I find that this gives you wonderful sailing in summer, when it is much hotter, and rigging that is still functional into the cooler times of spring and fall. In the dead of winter, it is not uncommon to find that your headstay has expanded a full 1/2 inch (12mm). 

While it might look as if the rigging is lost during the winter, you must admit that no one wants to go sailing when it is 20*F outside! As the weather warms up, the rigging will all go back into its place without any need for adjustments or tuning. 

This works well for fair weather sailors who only sail when the weather is inviting. What happens if you need to sail in the winter? Should you tighten your rigging for the sail and be sure to loosen it as the weather warms? What if you forget to loosen it and the contracting stay becomes too tight and breaks a fitting or rips out a chainplate? 

While I have yet to go sailing with synthetic rigging in the winter, we are probably going to be encountering this scenario soon. Maddie and I have set out cruising and we will be crossing the North Atlantic in the winter. We hope to arrive in the Azores by December and may be sailing over to Portugal in February! The winds will certainly be cold and the rigging will become slack! 

I have the standing rigging tuned to perfection at 80*F, and I know that if I tighten it during the winter, I will have to go through all the trouble of re-tuning the rigging as spring rolls around. If only there was a way to mark the 80*F position on the lashing! 

There is! Our plan is to setup a secondary lashing that will run over the current lashings to tension the rigging without disturbing the current setting. The current lashings will remain, but the new lashings will go over them and pull the stay tight once again. With the new lashings pulling everything tight, we will be able to safely sail during the winter to reach our next destination, and simply untie the new lashings as spring approaches. As soon as we untie the new lashings, the old lashings will take over and allow the stays to contract to their old settings! 

This idea has not been tested, but it is my solution to winter sailing on my own boat as we cruise the North Atlantic in the winter with synthetic standing rigging. 

How to Anchor by Sail

The commonly accepted practice to anchor requires a motor. The typical plan is to drop the anchor and then back down on the anchor with your motor. As the thrust from the propeller pulls your yacht backwards, the anchor will be buried into the seabed and hold you from drifting back. When you come to a stop, you know the anchor is well set and secure for the night.

If you are sailing, there is no motor involved in reversing to backdown on the anchor, so you can't really backdown on the anchor to know that it has set! This means that you would drop the anchor and wait for the wind to blow you back. As you are pushed back, the anchor will set (or drag). If your anchor will set, then all is fine, but if your anchor will drag, then you will slowly (or quickly) drift back.

To avoid this dilemma of not knowing if the anchor will set or drag when the wind picks up, there is a trick that still doesn't require the motor!

When sailing into your anchorage, simply drop the sails and continue to drift along with speed. While you are still moving at around 2 to 3 knots, drop the anchor and at least 5:1 scope based on the water depth. The boat will continue to drift forward as the anchor rests on the seabed.

When the yacht covers the distance of the anchor rode, the chain will become tight and start to pull on the anchor with a considerable force. This will jerk the anchor horizontally along the seabed and bury it into the substrate.

If the anchor drags, the yacht will continue to move forward until the anchor sets (hopefully). When the anchor sets, it will be very apparent because the bow will stop in its tracks and the entire yacht will spin around with some speed. This is why it is important to not do this at speeds greater than 3 knots because the force on the chain could be a bit too dramatic.

When the boat spins around, the anchor is set, and you can then let out additional chain should you desire; all while knowing that your anchor is firmly set into the seabed!