Be CatamaranCruising · video

What this video covers

Garett and Carllie crossed from Cabo San Lucas to Hilo, Hawaii in March 2006 on their homebuilt 8,000-lb catamaran and encountered 1,000-mile-wide reinforced trade winds sustaining 35 knots for two weeks.▶ 6:02 They first deployed a 48-inch delta drogue off a single stern quarter without a bridle; the motion did not subside.▶ 9:19 At midnight they switched to a 12-foot Paratec parachute anchor off the stern on 300 feet of stretchy line with two 50-foot bridle lines, which held the bow into the waves and eliminated capsize risk.▶ 10:01 After 30 hours on the parachute anchor, wave impacts on the nacelle underside were loud and unsettling, and the stationary position offered no progress toward Hawaii.▶ 13:20 They retrieved it using a quarter-inch trip line to collapse the chute, then rigged the delta drogue on a proper bridle off the stern.▶ 14:41 That configuration locked boat speed at 4.7–5 knots with only 0.3-knot variation, eliminated surging and slewing, and kept the boat heading west toward Hawaii.▶ 16:02 They ran the drogue for two days until winds dropped to 25 knots.▶ 18:57 The transcript also covers parachute anchor chafe management, bridle inspection every two hours, trip-line retrieval technique, Pacific passage timing windows, and the difference between delta drogues and Jordan series drogues for survival conditions. For a light catamaran, a properly bridled drogue outperformed a parachute anchor in sustained heavy trade winds by maintaining headway and reducing motion.

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