Will you accept heaving to in a Catalina 25?
I practice heaving to in my C25 several times this season. It drove my girlfriend (the boat's true master) nuts until we actually needed to be able to do it to recover our wits one day. I do it bow into the wind. strike all or most of the genny, haul the mainsheet tight and the travler full to windward, and lock the tiller-tamer with the tiller to the leeward rail. The boat will hover about 25 degrees of the wind drifting very slowly directly downwind in a flat posture. I now use a varriation as my anchoring technique. The difference is I let a little more genny out as I approach my anchoring run. I then heave to above my chosen drop spot. Just before the boat come to a stop, I let off on the tiller, and wind-up pinched hard. In that attitude I drift dead downwind by pinching higher, or crab sideways by starting to fall off, but not quite going far enough to be close - hauled. Its great. You feel like a helicopter in the anchorage. We got good at this mid-summer when I killed our outboard and we were doing it without power for a while. I am very glad we have the technique down. Several weeks ago we were out and got the snot knocked out of us trying to get back in. We had to go dead -down wind into a tight pass with a strong outgoing tide and a river bar. The combination led to big standing waves with some breakers. (For anyone who knows Casco Bay, this is right outside Chandler Cove in the Hussey). This is first time I really started to question my boat. Anyway, we got through it fine, but hove to for a while to calm down before getting back underway. 30 knots plus and we just sat there. Lin and Larry Pardy's book on heaving to is required reading in my opinion, by the way. It interesting as instead of only giving statistics, they give accounts of boats surviving storms hove to, primarily from the perspective of those on board. Justin - O'day Owners' Web
