Nylon Parachute Sea Anchor
Parachute Anchor with Shackle and Deployment Bag
Light, tough, and easily deployed, this modern parachute-style sea anchor is basically a drag device. A sea anchor belongs next to your life raft and EPIRB as the first defense in heavy weather, used off the bow to hold the boat for weathering the seas. Holding the bow into the wind and waves prevents knockdown, broach or capsize. Use also provides drift control and the necessary stabilization of motion to make repairs anywhere onboard, including the rig.
All forward motion is stopped, but a sea anchor allows for some leeward drift ideally, and no more than 1 or 2 knots occurs. Sometimes it doesn't pay to beat into heavy seas. The wear and tear on the crew and boat do not justify the handful of miles gained upwind. It may be wiser to lay to a sea anchor and wait for better conditions. To heave to without benefit of a sea anchor may mean losing in a few hours what you have spent days gaining. Using a sea anchor can reduce drift speed as much as 90 percent.
Deploying a sea anchor can buy you time for sleep or nourishment in heavy weather or let you wait until a heavy fog lifts or daylight arrives before making landfall.
Use for fishing applications, too. Deploying a sea anchor while fishing a kelp paddy or fishing along a kelp line, drop-off, or other type of basically linear structure can also allow you to spend more time fishing and less time repositioning the boat. A less well-known use of a sea anchor is to actually speed up the drift. Use in instances when the wind and current are moving in opposing directions and making it difficult to cover ground while drift-fishing, which happens frequently near the mouth of bays and harbors. A parachute sea anchor can actually pull a boat along with the current.
These sea anchors are made from high-strength Nylon fabric, having weight and strength more than four times that of surplus parachutes, which have been used as sea anchors for many years. Seams are reinforced with Nylon webbing. The Nylon lines have a minimum strength of 1,500 lbs. and are joined at the rode end to a shackle with a strength of 17,000 - 52,000 lbs.!
A correctly sized PARA-TECH Sea Anchor will likely never experience the loads it is capable of taking.
Packed in deployable stowage bag that includes: