Quote:
Originally Posted by JomsViking
Smack,
When hit by a breaking wave in really nasty conditions, it will NOT be confined to the aft or the bow of the boat. It will probably also be a freak that comes from an unexpected direction, thus you might take it in the cockpit when using a chute (or viceversa). The weakest point on many yachts are the cabin, and a breaking wave that smashes the cabin top is going to ruin your day 
Talking about strenght, the bow and deck structure in the fore-triangle will probably be a little stronger than the cockpit, and the cockpit will contain a lot of water, but if you have a moderate size cockpit with a bridgedeck the difference should be negligible?
You MUST avoid breaking waves, and the JSD is probably the best device, yet, to ensure that. In non-breaking conditions a chute might be great, especially if you want to avoid a lee shore.
If you read Adlard Coles (my copy is rather old) there's evidence of streaming warps and using chutes, with no clear conclusion on what works. IIRC his conclusion were that "it depends" however many of the chutes broke their attachment points and lines. This is another thing that I do not like about chutes, the MASSIVE forces that they apply to the vessel, which the JSD or toher warps do not do to the same extent. |
Yeah Joms - I've got that book - AC's Heavy Weather Sailing 6th Edition put together by Peter Bruce. There's an entire chapter dedicated to the Pardey-style chute set up.
You are, of course, spot on that the whole point is to avoid breakers. And that waves can come from virtually any direction. Now whether the JSD allows you to actually AVOID those breakers might be another point of discussion since there's apparently no active steering with it.
Regardless, my hunch is that most people like me (i.e. - those that have an interest in the subject - but have no experience with it yet) initially intuitively lean toward the bow-on approach to heavy weather simply because that's the way boats are "designed to go". That's where the strength seems to be.
So, boiling it down to the above question helps shed some light on this perception (disregarding the devices altogether) and whether it has validity - all things equal.
At the end of the day, it seems to me that we need to keep this an objective discussion. That Lynette chick got a pretty good beatdown with the demand that she only provide info for which she had definitive data to back it up. That's cool I guess because she was a sales person - but that same standard should be applied here if we are going to make "definitive" statements about one device over another.
Personally, I think both have their pros and cons. And, to your point, that's why there are no real conclusions one way or the other. Hence, the reason "definitive" statements seem a little suspect.
(PS - so we've established that the bow of the boat has more strength, so what about the rudder issue in the scenario?)