In last week’s Cruising Compass, we ran a video made by Skip Novak on his techniques for heaving to. Regular contributor Dick Stevenson, who has sailed and cruised many, many miles, has some useful additions and comments as a follow-up to the video. GD
I believe it to be good advice on Skip Novak’s part to suggest not attempting to go upwind in gale force or even approaching gale force winds in the open ocean: heave-to and wait for the winds to shift.
Another often neglected reason to heave-to is fatigue, especially on the skipper’s part. Heave-to, have a hot meal, take a shower, get some sleep. This suggestion should not be thought of as whimping-out, but rather as a safety issue and exemplary of the skipper’s good judgment. Lots of seemingly unrelated passage problems have fatigue as their root origin.
Pelagic is an expedition-level boat with superb equipment and man-power. Cranking the headsail to windward, in preparation to heaving-to, might be more work than most would want to do. Perhaps far easier is to get the headsail (on many modern boats this will be a roller-reefed jib) pulled in hard and the mainsail similarly well-set and tack the boat without touching the sheets: the sails end up correctly in their hove-to position.
And I would wish to note that Pelagic ended up doing what I think is called: fore-reaching: slowly jogging to windward at 1-2 knots. This flies in the face of what many of us think of as hove-to: the holy grail of heaving-to being Lin & Larry Pardey’s descriptions where the boat is slowly drifting downwind leaving a windward “slick” that knocks down breaking waves before they get to the boat.
In my experience with heaving-to, I also end up slowly fore-reaching. I have never hove-to in anger or in winds greater than ~~25kn and usually in practice or waiting for daylight to get into an anchorage. In any case, we always fore-reached: I have wondered whether the boat could be induced to drift down wind if the wind speed were higher: perhaps in the 40s.
I would suggest that many “modern” boats will likely need a good deal of experimentation and practicing to come up with a configuration that works for them: preferably done before needing. For example, it took me a while before I realized that adjusting the traveler to windward made a difference on my boat.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
