L'Eau Commotion Westabout

After an uncomfortable night the wind did ease down to around 20 knots and so I went about deploying the 9ft diameter Fiorelli Para Anchor. This looks very much as you would expect a standard parachute to look but of course much stronger and tougher. It looks very well made and fit for purpose. The drogue line is 100 meters of three strand nylon 12 mm diameter on which I had previously put an eye splice in each end and fastened one end to a strong point in the cockpit floor. The chute was easily deployed on the weather side over the starboard cockpit winch and underneath the guard rails. The boat was running under bare poles maybe doing three knots and after about 30 meters was run out the tension was taken on the winch and L'Eau Commotion was pulled up with a jolt! I had hoped that being offset and the rudder hard a starboard the yacht would lie almost beam on to the quartering seas as had happened when I deployed the Jordan Series Drogue from my previous yacht Katherine Ann. This was not to be with the boat now running almost dead downwind and the increasing wind and chop sending spray and some solid water into the cockpit. Lots of improvisation ( stuffing up ) had the boat beam on which wasn't too bad but further work had an auxiliary line off the bow so the boat is now laying about twenty degrees off the wind. This is rather promising as in a recent squall of maybe 40 knots the hail and spray just went clean over the top and I was able to view all this from the security of my "Meerkat Mansion" so described beautifully by my daughter Helen. Oh yes and I did manage to run the line out " to the bitter end " Here's to comfortable night going nowhere and up and at 'me in the morning.