We did know about it. The wave heights were up to our spreaders

I believe you re 30 ft waves. The camera does not capture them, and I saw them many times when I worked on the Grand Banks.... Just ignore those armchair sailors.👍❤️

Thanks! I looked into them but our budget only allowed for one drag device so we went with a parachute sea anchor.

Been 3 years and it’s all been worth it :)

The throne! We miss it so.

+Norman Boyes thank you!

Yeah, we try and avoid those situations as much as we can, but from time to time we get caught in them.

+SenatorPerry and thank you for the tip! It would have been nice to have had someone else to talk to

It’s in the next episodes! We made it more robust so that we wouldn’t have this issue again!

Rod rigging is plagued with impromptu and unannounced separation of the heads leading to a total rig failure. I personally avoid them on my own boat. Fiber and wire headstays do take a beating from the hanks, but with the appropriate preventative measures, these problems can be mitigated. We have soft hanks to better distribute the force over more area and a chafe sleeve over the entire stay. In high wear areas, such as the head and tack, we have an additional layer of sacrificial coverings.

When the chop peak is 30m high and the swell troughs are 60m down, grats that's the Southern Ocean.

We have learned a lot since then!

We have learned a lot since we first started and now looking back at when we first started we would have done a lot differently. Thanks for subscribing and following along 😉

+buffettfanman thanks, we will give that a try! We see ginger root for sale in most markets, we will pick some up.

+Tim K yes, but our destination was the Bahamas which were about 570 miles away at that point. We were trying to stay away from land since this part of the Outer Banks is known as "The Graveyard of the Atlantic" thanks to all the shipwrecks they have. We actually adjusted our course to be further from land to minimize the risk of drifting ashore in the storm and then hove to. We were planning on crossing the Gulf Stream right after the storm and shooting south but all that changed when our headstay got severely damaged. Oddly enough, the most dangerous thing during a storm is the proximity to land. The boat will float through the storm, as long as you have enough water to float in.

Glad you guys are ok now. Hope SV Wisdom is repaired quickly and that you are on your way as soon as it is safe to do so.

+buffettfanman our radio and sat phone both give us weather updates, but the Sat phone said that we were in a "gentle breeze" of 15 knots. So yeah...and for the motor, we got a generator! Excited to try it :)

Rigging Doctor careful make sure the cabin is well ventilated and you guys get a Carbon Monoxide sensor from a hardware store.

Rigging Doctor Do you have like an iPad? So you can see the highs and lows and which way they are moving? Or are you using a iPhone 6 something?

We have iPads, and iPhone 6 and SE.

We just crossed the Atlantic with our electric motor. teespring.com/armchair-sailor#pid=389&cid=100019&sid=front

+Loanword Eggcorn according to the manufacturer, the harder it blows, the better it works. People use them to keep sailing through horrible weather and the Monitor does fine. You are supposed to swap out the air blade from the big one to the smaller one when winds are over 40 knots, which makes me think it would have been fine in these conditions. The reason we didn't set it up to sail us back is a bolt sheared in it from a boarding wave, rendering the unit inoperable. When we made it back, I called the manufacturer and spoke directly with the owner of the company who walked me through setting everything back up and running.

Why not use it to sail through the storm and make some headway then? Could sail reefed until things got really bad, then heave to.

We were getting close to the Gulf Stream and didn't want to cross it during a storm. Our plan was to heave to and then cross it right after. We actually stopped sailing the day before the storm to keep from getting caught up in the current with the storm. Our concern was we would cross the stream and then get blown back into it on the other side if the storm got really bad and we have to. In hindsight, we should have sailed on, not crossed the Gulf Stream and made our way into the Outer Banks for safe harbor. At the time, this was just going to be a storm that would pass and we would be on our way, cross the Gulf Stream in good weather, and then make our way south to the Bahamas. Turns out it was much more powerful than predicted.

Thanks. Makes sense not wanting to get caught in the Gulf Stream during the storm. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I like your planning.

Me too. The problem with the anchor is something you couldn't foresee.

In less horrible winds we heave to with the two sails. In winds over 60 knots, we heave to with just the trysail.

Karl Friedrich see my commentary on Breaking waves, wave height vs. Capsize....

The anchor flew out of the anchor roller and chafed away on the headstay for about 3 days straight. Now we have a much better method of securing the anchor so that it can’t fly out like that and cause so much damage.

Thanks, we didn't go outside to film when the waves were crashing over the boat for our safety. We only went outside when it "calmed down".

+Adventures of Gypsy Soul the headstay was pretty badly chafed through because the anchor broke free and rubbed against it a lot. You're right! We are 100% Dyneema. I (Maddie) am having mixed feelings. The first few days were wonderful! The storm wasn't fun, but it was a learning experience for sure. I'm excited about what lies ahead for sure :)

The waves in the ocean are really spread out so they don’t show on camera. In the Mediterranean, the waves were only 12 feet tall but so close together that they looked massive on camera!

+onthebeaches1 thanks! Many adventures to come :)

+Graeme Henderson yes, there is. The problem with running with a storm is you will move with it and be under storm conditions for longer than if you drifted slowly while hove to. So if you have nowhere to go, heaving to is the best choice. If a safe harbor is less than a day away (say 8-10 hours) then that is a good time to start sailing and get yourself to safety. If your destination is further away than that, you will become exhausted before you reach it and may bring trouble onto yourself. 8 hours at the helm is miserable and hard. When we started sailing for shore, we were 50 miles out and I was at the helm for 25 hours. It was not fun and I wasn't thinking clearly by the end of it.

Thanks Herbie it sounds to me like you did everything right according to the information you had at a hand at the time. From what I understand fatigue is the real killer in survival situations - reducing your ability to think clearly and make sound decisions. Be at peace. Graeme

+Graeme Henderson Thanks :)

+Lotophagi I actually do carry a spare (I have an entire spare standing rigging in a locker since it weighs next to nothing and can be stowed easily) but I needed calmer weather to swap it out. At the time, the bow was getting washed with each wave as it would dip just an inch under the surface each time. I thought about waiting for the weather to improve but then I saw that a more powerful storm was coming behind it. My concern was that the time it would take to swap and tube the headstay could better be used getting to safety where I could carry out the repairs in tranquility. We don't have a series drogue (but they do look like a cool concept), instead we have a sea anchor. Our protocol for heaving to is: Winds 0-30 knots: staysail and trysail Winds 30-50 knots: trysail Winds 50+ knots: trysail and sea anchor

Sorry I wasn't criticizing - just curious. I meant a permanently rigged second forestay on a Highfield lever maybe. Great for having two foresails when running. But then I realized that you have a cutter so already have an an inner forestay. Surely that would keep the mast up with reefed main and staysail?

+Lotophagi not taken that way. I was actually pretty frustrated at the time because I had all the parts, I just didn't have the time or conditions to do it. If we were further out to sea I would have done it anyway because there were no other options. The inner forestay might be able to hold it up, but it doesn't have the sturdiest of attachments. It is only attached to the deck, no chainplate to the frames, keel, or stem like the other stays. The deck is almost 3 inches thick, but I still wouldn't want to trust my entire rig to just a few through bolts. For a good portion, we did sail under double reefed main and staysail, keeping the loads on the lower set of shrouds and stays, while the mangled headstay was still present and holding the mast forward. I just wouldn't fly the jib to keep the headstay from breaking completely and putting all the load on the inner forestay. When running in the ocean, we do set the jib on one side and the staysail on the other, lots of leehelm and no worries about jibes:)

This was filmed with a GoPro which makes it look calmer than it is and we only ventured outside to film when it calmed down. To see some good looking waves check out the videos from our last Atlantic crossing 👍

@@RiggingDoctor Yr vid title was, 'The Storm.' Are u sailors - or wot ?? 'Storm' is force 10 - that's 30 - 40 ft waves, wind roaring so loud u can't hear anything else, and flying spindrift. No - I don't want to look at other vids to know what a storm is like - I've been in one. The wind in yr vid is exceptionally manageable - it's not even a Gale (force 7). According to what I see, it's force 5, and the sea-state is excellent - perfect conditions for a good sailing. And u still don't say how these conditions damaged your forestay, which, I assume, is 8mm stainless wire ? I respect anyone who can sail a boat deep sea - but I'm not impressed with bullshit.

These were 40 knot winds and 30 foot waves the height of our spreaders. It was a storm. We’ve been sailing full time for a long time. If you’d like proof of the conditions, we provided a link in the comments to the online weather charts when this was filmed 5 years ago. We know what a storm is, thanks. We don’t need you on our channel. Please move along

@@RiggingDoctor I can only go by the video u posted. Storm 10 gives monstrous waves, and huge banks of tumbling water that give u the feeling of being inside a washing machine. U would also hv a raging wind, and spindrift flying all over the sea like a snowstorm. I was in a 10 one for two days, in a much bigger boat than yours, and occasionaly waves broke right over our decks and rushed us sideways down into the trough far below. In your video I don't see your decks even getting wet. If, however, u were in gale force 7, yr video would show a very excited sea with big white horses everywhere. But it shows neither of those conditions - it shows u perfectly able to talk, no wind noise, and a bumpy sea with only occasional white horses. That's what your video shows. It's force 5. Next - u say this perfectly ordinary and average sea somehow damaged your wire forestay. How ?

Giant waves caused the anchor to pop free and chafe against the SYNTHETIC forestay. I will say it again because either you can’t read or refuse to accept the fact that we did not film during the worst part of this storm and the part we did film looks much less impressive than it actually was because that is what a GoPro does.

They do not

Knowing then what we know now, we would never have gone out at that time in the first place! Yes, it is better to actively sail out of a storm. Even better to avoid it completely! This storm was 700 miles across and moving fast. We should have not gone offshore (and then stayed close to shore) at that time of year.

+buffettfanman not really, our old diesel motor didn't have the power to motor against these conditions either.

Rigging Doctor Didn’t have the power but would run longer than the batteries would have lasted.

+buffettfanman in that regard, there is no contest :)

And the down side is how dirty they are! Does your charging system have a shut off feature so that one battery doesn’t get over charged? I had one blow up on my boat almost in my face.

+buffettfanman it does not. The bank is set up in series, making 48 volts. I do check the charges in them every few months and each battery is very close in charge to the others. The charger simply pours in 14 amps at 48 volts. The charger does taper down and then float the batteries. The solar panels also have a charge controller to avoid overcharging. I hope I never have to deal with an out of sync and over charged battery in the bank!

We crossed an ocean with that genius electric motor

Never heard of that one. Thanks for the tip!

@@BarefootSailingAdventures Let me know if it works some swear by it...safe travels.

@@BarefootSailingAdventures - It apparently needs to be deeply embedded into the ear canal.. just in the outer ear won't cut it. Roll it as thin as possible to get it in deep.

We crossed the Atlantic already

Wisdom *IS* an RV.. just an ocean-going type, instead of being one of those boring land-going types!

They said they had a period of 30 ft waves, and came thru them unscathed.... It depends

+Wadlo thanks for the link, we have ear plugs in the boat for when I have loud jobs (drilling through steel or using the grinder) to do, but we have never tried them out for this. We will definitely give it a shot next time we get into a rough patch!

Rigging Doctor dont forget to use only one...... good luck 😉

No choice, it was a big storm and we got caught in it. There was no escape, we just had to ride out the storm.

The gopro makes the waves look flat. You should check out the videos from our last transatlantic passage, we upgraded our cameras and it is much better at capturing the height! This gale was pretty bad, but we were also very green. Five years later we have crossed the Atlantic twice (the second time without using electronic navigation) and I still would have considered those conditions rather rough.

+Captain 10Star we don't view the motor as a primary form of propulsion, instead we view it as an auxiliary system. We view it more as "at the mercy of the winds" as when there is wind, we set the right sails for it and sail along. When there is no wind, we are forced to sit and wait for the wind to return. The damaged headstay was a surprise and definitely threw a monkey wrench into our plans. I do carry a spare on board but I would need calm weather to replace it and that was not on our horizon. About the keel, we specifically chose a full keel boat to avoid that issue. We don't have keel bolts or anything like that. The keel is actually part of the hull and the ballast was then placed inside the keel shape. We have rested on our keel way too many times without fear of damage since it is all part of the hull. When this boat was made, sails were viewed as the primary mode of propulsion, and engines were optional. We chose an electric motor so that we could get in and out of marinas easier, otherwise we would have gone engineless. We never imagined that we would motor against a storm for 80 miles to get back to land. That was not the goal for the motor and that is why we chose electric. We view wind as our abundant and reliable source of power, the motor is just there for docking. While most people carry extra cans of diesel in case they run low, we do the same with our sails. On board, we have 4 sails that go behind the mast and 4 headsails, because we certainly view sails as our main power source on these voyages.

How about having a Dyneema spare innerstay, but store it vertical down the mast, then deploy as needed around windlass? Pair with heavy duty storm jib and hanks.

Electricmotor has much higher efficiency than diesel engine plus gearbox. In addition, torque is higher. The issue is the range - which needs to be overcome with a generator. That said, a 2kw electric inboard in a 38 feet boat which is normally equipped with a 40 kw diesel is rather risky in my eye. I am pla ning to change our yanmar to electric plus genny but make sure that rated rpm and Torque remains the same through the whole rpm curve.

Being a cutter, we already have a permanently rigged inner forestay with a staysail which is actually cut as a storm jib.