{"id":44387,"date":"2025-05-21T18:04:47","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T18:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/?p=44387"},"modified":"2025-05-22T12:25:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T12:25:41","slug":"a-veteran-cruiser-comments-of-heaving-to-techniques","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/2025\/05\/a-veteran-cruiser-comments-of-heaving-to-techniques\/","title":{"rendered":"A Veteran Cruiser Comments of Heaving To Techniques"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 GD<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I believe it to be good advice on Skip Novak\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another often neglected reason to heave-to is fatigue, especially on the skipper\u2019s 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\u2019s good judgment. Lots of seemingly unrelated passage problems have fatigue as their root origin. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s descriptions where the boat is slowly drifting downwind leaving a windward \u201cslick\u201d that knocks down breaking waves before they get to the boat.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would suggest that many \u201cmodern\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

My best, Dick Stevenson, s\/v Alchemy<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 GD   I believe it to be good advice on Skip Novak\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s good judgment. Lots of seemingly unrelated passage problems have fatigue as their root origin. \u00a0 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 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1877],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44387"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44396,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44387\/revisions\/44396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bwsailing.com\/cc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}