Downwind Sailing with a Parachute
ITEM 10113: Air Force 28 Foot Diameter WITH LINES & LINKS. Can also be used for DOWNWIND SAILING (SAILBOAT 28) (Article on Downwind Sailing) Air Force Surplus Issue 28' C-9, 4-Color . Parachutes taken out of Air Force personal parachutes systems and ejection seats. The condition on a scale of 1-10 is a 10. The Price $950.00, Shipping Wt 15 lbs Please add shipping, PARACHUTE COMES WITH EASY 'D' RING HOOK UP TO YOUR ROPE. Please Email me: donmayer@parachuteshop.com
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Downwind Sailing with a Parachute
Someone once said ‘Sailing is like standing in a shower while throwing 100
dollar bills over your shoulder’. I think whoever came up with this definition
for sailing had just completed a downwind sailing passage. Wind is directly
from the aft and is below 10 knots. You have you main and headsail up. There is
a swell from the side. Everything is rolling including the lunch you just ate.
Crew must hold onto anything permanent they can find on deck to stop from
sliding overboard. Your heart just about pops out of your chest
every time the
boom and all the running gear crash from side to side. The headsail collapses
and fills with such force that the whole boat shakes. With every bang, crash
and vibration of your yacht as you sail downwind you can feel every dollar just
floating away.
Or maybe you have your spinnaker up. Mostly you need two people for this sail.
Depending on what type of spinnaker it is you will need a pole. Unless you are
constantly watching this sail and monitoring the strength of the wind this is
one sail that can get out of control and end up a tattered mess on your
foredeck. If crew can’t get it on deck fast enough it can end up in the water
whereupon the boat sails over it. No wonder a lot of sailors
leave their spinnaker in the forward just so they can say that they
have one but in fact it has not seen the light of day since the boat was
purchased.
There is also the wing on wing option. This can drive you crazy. Unless you
have perfect sail balance between the main and the headsail the boat can easily
round up to wind. It puts more pressure on your autopilot and in some cases
depending on the seas the autopilot just can’t handle the situation and you end
up hand steering. With this sail combination you need someone monitoring the
sails, the autopilot and the seas at all times
And then there is the two headsail combination. This is not a bad option. Have
one headsail on the roller furled and the other headsail free standing. You
don’t have the banging effect anymore but it doesn’t stop the rolling of the
boat.
Or like a lot of sailors in order to relieve all the stress and tension on the
boat and their hearts there is motoring. But in today’s world this is not a
cheap option. And anyway aren’t we supposed to be sailors!
Downwind sailing can bring your dreams back to reality with every bang of the
boom to such an extent that you feel like putting your boat up for sale in the
next port. Why do you think there are so many boats for sail in the Caribbean?
Downwind sailing can be very tricky. The reason been most yachts are just not
set up for this type of sailing. Today yachts are so top heavy with all the
latest equipment on board radar, solar panels, wind generator and in light winds
this doesn’t help your downwind sailing experience. So what if I told you I had
the perfect solution to all your downwind sailing frustrations. A Modified
Round Parachute. Not just any round parachute. A parachute that you jump out of
a plane with.
Flying a
round parachute as your downwind sail of choice was first tested crossing the
Atlantic Ocean back in the year 2000. It was the brainchild of my husband
Peter. After hearing all the stories from previous cruisers who had
crossed the Atlantic with the large waves and wind from the back he swore there
had to be a better solution. And he found it in the form of a modified
round parachute which he flew the whole way across the Atlantic without once
taking it down. After getting his hands on a couple of different sized
parachutes he found the parachute that was the right size for our 11m wooden
yacht ‘Petima’. Our parachute has an 28 foot diameter and would be suitable for yachts between 10 to
13m. You can fly the parachute between 130 and 180 degrees and between wind
speeds of 5 to 35 knots. The parachute flies in front of the boat approximately
10 meters in front. It is attached to the spinnaker halyard at the top and
another sheet from the bow. The round parachute moves around but it does not
oscillate. A 28 foot round parachute has 28 lines around the cap. These 28 lines give the parachute its shape and strength. By splitting those 28
lines into two lots of 14 you get two holding points.
The beauty of this configuration is that the parachute pulls your boat and
doesn’t push it like a spinnaker. If you are in big waves you will ride the
wave and your bow will not dig into the wave as the parachute lifts up the bow.
You will never be out of control flying a parachute. It is perfect for cruisers
on a long downwind sailing passage with a small crew. You don’t need an
autopilot just adjust your rudder in the direction you want to go and it will
pull you along on this course. So no strain on the autopilot or drain on your
batteries which is a regular occurrence in downwind sailing. If you have solar
panels you will find that the solar panels are not in the shade of your sails so
you get more power into your batteries. Most importantly the rolling motion of
your boat, which can make most grown men cry with frustration will stop
immediately as the parachute stabilizes your boat. You will find no other sail
that gives you so much comfort by downwind sailing on a yacht.
Setting the parachute and pulling it down
The trick with flying this sail is to make sure that none of the lines get
tangled. There are 28 lines on our parachute, 18 lines to the top and 14 lines
to the bottom of the sail. When we bring the sail in we always tie the two sets
of 14 lines separately and make it ready for when we want to launch it again.
This makes your job of setting the parachute very easy. You also want to set
your parachute so it doesn’t get tangled with anything on deck. We normally set
our round parachute over the side of the boat and then set up the parachute and
our course once it is launched. As for taking the parachute down, this is the
part that most people dread when it comes to flying their spinnaker downwind.
There are a couple of ways you can get your parachute down. We use our genoa.
By rolling out our genoa the parachute comes in the lee of the sail and you can
easily pull it in on deck.
Tried and Tested
Flying the parachute has been tested on both catamarans and mono hulls. Speaking
to cruisers about our experiences with flying a modified round parachute they
are naturally very curious and interested. Most are so frustrated with downwind
sailing that they want to give it a try. Anything to stop the rolling and
banging. When they try it themselves they just can’t believe it. They could
never have believed that downwind sailing could be so easy and safe. We can
still see our friends Margret and Henning Kruithoff standing on the foredeck of
their catamaran shaking their heads in sheer disbelieve as they sail alongside
us with their newly acquired sail. ‘Diatethyl’ an 11m German catamaran sailed
parallel to Petima from Brisbane to Cairns as Peter explained to them how to rig
their new parachute over the VHF. They found it so easy to set and more
importantly bring back down and have raved about downwind sailing every since.
Other friends of ours on Canadian yacht ‘SDF’ sailed for 13 days consecutively
from the Galapagos Islands to the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia with
their round parachute set day and night. Skipper Jean Marie mentioned ‘we
didn’t have to adjust the sail once in the trade winds. Wind was a constant
15-20knots with occasional squalls reaching 30knots and the parachute handled it
beautifully. It was dream sailing’.
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