Iconn4 on KFS
http://kfs.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/ ... 4091078913
posted:
“just saw this in the Not Yakfishing forum and thought it might better explain why I'm against having a lot of loose rope hanging around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvOWnfxtaOo “
My reply:
Fabulous video! And a great addition to this discussion.
I am an inland flatwater guy with almost no surfing background, so please forgive the generic terminology I use trying to grapple with this stuff. And please help pull apart and correct my tentative analysis, and answer the questions I pose if you have relevant experience.
Remember this is all primarily in the context of an exhausted, injured, or inexperienced kayaker faced with a surf entry challenge. Strong, experienced surf-savvy folks may or may not have any benefit from a series drogue - that's another question.
The way the series drogue is supposed to work, as I understand it, is for the rope to be down in the water column acting to keep the boat stern first into the waves while allowing the boat to keep forward way that can be increased by paddling / pedaling or decreased by not paddling / pedaling. You can still back paddle.
For kayaks the rope itself would be the "weight" keeping the individual drogue "cones" down in the water column, there is not anchor or other weight at the end of the rope.
So, if it works as advertised (and the point is to find out if it does, not to claim that it does) there would be:
(1) No loose rope (it would be below the waves acting as a stabilizing force), and,
(2) It would prevent the boat from being either:
(a) Pushed sideways to the waves and being rolled / maytagged (this is what was experienced by the Coast Guard in open ocean tests and by Stobbo and swellrider in the surf),or,
(b) Plunging over a wave crest and diving into a trough (submarining) or the beach (going endo).
If the open surf boats coming in the video coming in had been able to keep their sterns square to the waves, but mis-timed their approach, it does look like they might have filled with water as the series drogue would have let wave crests go past (effectively "pulling" them the into breaking wave crests). A relatively well-sealed kayak would hopefully better survive this problem.
I can't quite figure out how a boat with its stern kept square to the waves would act once the bow hits the sand. At first the series drogue, if it works as advertised (and the point is to find out if it does) would continue to stabilize the boat. But:
1. Because the series drogue is not a sea anchor or drift shoot, would it continue to come in with the waves?
2. If it continued to come in after the bow hit the beach, would it become the dreaded loose rope, life-threatening, saltwater anaconda, or by that point be irrelevant to safety?
3. Would the backwash of spent waves keep it active as a stabilizer, preventing it from coming in further? That is, would it effectively "stop" until those in the boat pulled it up the beach and out of the surf zone?
Going to be interesting to find out from the guys out there testing it.