Hi Karl,

My main is tiny, and very high aspect... And I have a lot of windage forward, with both the genoa and staysail on furlers. Happily, that combination seems to work fine for me...

What I do is probably technically closer to fore-reaching than heaving-to, and I pretty much discovered what works well by accident a few years ago. I was sailing back from Belize to Key West, uphill all the way into a stiff breeze out of the E & NE. Second night out of Isla Mujeres, I'm out in the Stream about 30-40 miles north of Cuba, and a lot of squalls are rolling thru with some impressive gusts... I was getting pretty tired, and making any real progress to windward was really beating up the boat - not to mention me - and I said "enough of this shit, time to park for awhile and get some rest, etc..." I'd just rolled in the staysail, got distracted by something crashing about below, when I finally realized that simply by sailing close-hauled under a double-reefed main (I have two very deep reefs), and letting the windvane do the driving, everything was just perfect... Probably only making about 1 - 1.5 knots thru the water, never wanting to tack... The big surprise for me was how well the vane held her feathered into the wind and seas, I'd just always assumed I would need more boatspeed for it to do that...

As someone over on CA described so well, it was "the Miracle Cure"...

In higher winds and bigger breaking seas, however, all bets might be off, it would probably be time to do something a bit different, certainly go to the trysail... Actually, the most serious conditions I've ever seen with my boat was, like you, on a passage to Bermuda, near the north wall of the Stream... On my way to setting the boat up for the classic heaving-to configuration, I simply laid ahull briefly... Again, my boat just happens to drift dead downwind, beam to the seas in such a situation... Of course, lying ahull is generally not recommended, but as I sat there for awhile, I began to appreciate for the first time how effective the slick to windward can be... For perhaps half an hour I watched breaking seas approach, then dissipate once feeling the effect of the slick, it was simply amazing... So, I figured I could live with that for the time being... Again, we're not talking Southern Ocean greybeards here, but they were still steep and fairly confused as you would expect in the Stream.. Still, after several hours of winds sustained 40-50 knots, I never once took any significant amount of water in the cockpit, and the decks remained fairly dry throughout... Again, it was almost like a revelation...

Of course, having so much boat and weight below the waterline helps greatly, I doubt many modern fin keelers would be quite so mannerly in similar conditions... (grin)

best regards,

Jon