Sea Anchors

Holding a boat head-on to the breaking seas in ocean storms
The difference between a sea anchor and a drogue is mainly one of size. A sea anchor, in the shape of a cone or a parachute, should be large enough to hold a boat almost dead still in the water, whereas a smaller drogue towed astern will merely slow her down.The principle behind the sea anchor is that a boat held head-on to large waves has the best chance of survival in a storm. But the only boats that will lie head-on consistently are those with comparatively shallow hulls and no large keels, skegs, or rudders. This means that although most powerboats and many multihulls benefit from a sea anchor, most monohull sailboats don’t unless their underbodies are canoe-shaped.The famous small-boat voyager John Voss invented a conical sea anchor for his 1920s circumnavigation in his Nootkan canoe Tilikum, which was, of course, the ideal shape, and he misled generations of sailors into believing that their deep-keel, conventionally rigged cruisers would fare as well as Tilikum behind a sea anchor.

Sea anchor types. The two configurations on the right might also be used for drogues deployed from the stern, but a drogue should be smaller than a sea anchor.

But ordinary sailboats tend to lie broadside to the wind and waves in storm conditions, with or without a sea anchor streamed from the bows. Most sailboats, in fact, lie stern-on to a sea anchor with ease, largely because the windage on the mainmast blows the bows downwind. The problem then is that heavy waves break against the nearly stationary boat, stressing the rudder, flooding the cockpit, and battering the companionway.See also Drogue.

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