Race winning and life saving equipment on an ocean rowing boat, sea anchors and drogues, how have you employed these items and under what circumstances?
Andrew Giles - By profession I am a mechanical engineer. I had some prior experience of endurance events such as 1000 mile push bike races, various marathon distance running races etc, but had zero rowing experience before embarking on the challenge. All that changed quite rapidly once we were committed to the 2003 Woodvale race! I completed that race with Faye Langham in 56 days and 4 minutes.
Andrew Wrote:
Very very very important!! We had the sea anchor out 3 times in the race
and the drogue out twice. Practice rigging it and retrieving it before
the race, because when you have to use it in anger from the moment you
make the decision to deploy it you have very little time to get it out
before the situation gets dangerous. The sea anchor is a vital piece of
kit and you need to think very carefully about where you rig it from and
how you rig it. My overwhelming preference is to rig it from the bow so
that when deployed the bow faces the oncoming waves, I would not even
consider rigging it from the stern due to the transom would take. You
need a very sturdy, reinforced mounting point too, and I would always
have the sea anchor attached and ready to deploy - the last thing you
want when a storm gets up is to be crawling on the bow of the boat
trying to attach shackles etc.
I would go for a bridle arrangement to rig the drogue from the stern,
and again, always have it rigged and ready for deployment. Have a nice
long line for it to attach to, because the shorter it is the less
effective the drogue is at maintaining your direction. Ours was 80m, but
we also had another 20m so we could play with length to suit the
conditions. You can also just deploy the line if you feel the drogue is
overkill for the conditions, or you can deploy just the line with knots
tied in it at intervals of 1 or 2m and this slows you down a lot.
