[Paddlewise] Sea Anchors and Drogues (was: Fresh water lake paddling)

Every time I try to do a spell check on this e-mail I get this message (even
after I closed the browser and signed in again).

"We've updated Windows Live Hotmail from Qwest, so please refresh your browser
or close it and sign in again. If you are composing a message, make sure you
save it as a draft."  The last time this happened (less than a week ago) I
lost several hours of work and had to start over from scratch. At least this
time clicking Save Draft didn't wipe out everything I'd already written (and I
knew to copy and paste it to a Word file in case it did again). Welcome to
Windows Vista and Qwest I guess.


Doug wrote:

>>>>...Other than slowing a kayaking and giving it control in extreme surf,
what
are the practical benefits of carrying a drogue or sea anchor in a kayak? I
suppose a good sea anchor would help stop you dead in the water more or less
(notwithstanding current) if you got caught in an offshore wind and perhaps
blue water kayakers doing long crossings where there's a possibility of
extreme storms, but other than that, is it worth carrying one?<<<<<

I used to carry a large homemade drogue when paddling on the coast. Although,
I never had to use it in earnest my logic was to have it available if I got
caught out to sea after dark because I couldn't land due to the surf size or
the terrain. I figured I'd paddle out to sea several miles and be able to
slide down in the cockpit and get some rest once it was deployed. My
experiments with drogues of several different sizes convinced me that I wanted
a larger one. I made mine out of four triangles that were each two feet wide
at the mouth with webbing attachments at the four seams for the harness. It
had a small 4" on a side hole on the small end. I had a cord through the seam
at that end so I could tighten it to a smaller size hole if I wanted. the
whole thing rolled up to the size of a big fist.

Experiment showed me that the smaller sea anchors had considerable drift in
the wind and that running them from the bow (I had a loop of line there that I
could rotate the clip from the cockpit to the bow--and therefore deploy the
Sea Anchor from the cockpit but have it operate from the very bow) was not the
best in seas because the kayak tended to move backwards at about a 45 degree
angle to the wind waves. Our rigging also had a releasable line (from a cleat
behind the cockpit to the stern and back to a clip that clipped onto the
rotating line in front of the cockpit). Because of the rocker at the bow and
more keel at the stern of our kayaks it turned out that if I made the drogue
operate from the stern the kayak would stay pointed directly downwind and
therefore ride better in the waves. The downside was that you couldn't easily
see the waves coming.  The upside was that you could keep your back to the
wind and maybe see better how close you were coming to the shore. With a big
drogue you will want to attach a float on a short cord to the drogue so that
when you retrieve it, it won't be very far down in the deep. Alternately, have
a trip line to the small end so you can invert it and draw it up from the
middle. I'd still consider a float so the drogue couldn't go down so far there
was too a deep angle of pull (possibly pulling your bow under the waves).

If using a drogue to come through surf you would want a much smaller drogue so
as not to put too much strain on your boat and system when a breaker pushed
the boat forward. I'd be very hesitant to used a drogue in surf at all though.
I know of at least one case where a paddler had her thigh strapped to her
kayak by her paddle leash and came through the surf to shore strapped to her
kayak. A drogue line is a lot longer than a paddle leash. Enough line to hang
yourself, perhaps? I once tried to tow my brother's Coaster in with a towline.
At first I fastened the line to the cleat on my back deck. After the first
soup surfed me forward and the line jerked me to a sudden stop I figured that
the cleat would likely get yanked out of the deck if I did that too much. I
held the tow rope in my hand as I paddled and just let the floating line go
when a soup shoved me forward. I then went back out and picked up the line
again. I'd want a lot of shock absorption in any line I'd have fastened to my
boat when in the surf.

I personally like to get in (or out) through a bigger surf as quickly as
possible and would want to be held in the dump zone any longer than necessary.
I never understood those who tried to back in while paddling out to meet each
wave so they didn't get surfed backwards. It seemed to me they just prolonged
the agony and made it more likely to meet up with an especially big wave set.
After trying to pick a lull I'd surf in and broach once it broke and ride it
in sideways from there (or tumble in a really big breaker and roll up when it
passed) and then try to paddle to shore as fast as possible so I'd get hit by
smaller already broken breakers (soups--rather than dumpers) that I could ride
in sideways on a high brace.

Steph Dutton paddled the Oregon Coast in winter, landing through large surf at
times. He had some interesting big surf techniques. One I remember was to have
a breathing tube going into his kayak attached to his PFD in a way that he
could breath from that end when he was upside down. He then let the surf
tumbled him and his kayak in towards shore through the bigger waves while he
tried to stay in it. That way, he never had to bail out of his kayak in order
to breathe. Staying in your kayak is important when in big surf especially big
surf that is first breaking far out from shore. Swimming in bigger surf can be
brutal. You seem to be underwater about half the time. One doesn't make a lot
of progress swimming in a PFD at any time but if you can't get enough air to
put out the extra energy because of the time spent under the breakers you
won't be able to put a lot of effort into swimming.

A solo paddler crossing Lake Superior (I think it was) used a then commercial
sea anchor that withdrew into a tubular sheath on deck in order to be able to
rest without being pushed too far backwards while taking a break. Why lose all
your hard earned mileage fighting into a wind in order to get a little rest.
Two kayakers could tow each other for rests in such a situation but if the
solo paddler stops paddling into the wind he loses ground and has to gain it
back later.
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