This page is devoted to feedback and other's experience with a series drogue.

Report by silascrosby » Sat Apr 30, 2011 2:16 pm

"I was able to deploy a Series Drogue twice on a recent trip from Easter Is. to Valdivia ,Chile. It is an excellent piece of gear. 124 cones from a Sailrite kit.
The attachment on my boat , a 36' steel built to a Brent Swain design aka Louis Riel , is to 1/2" SS chain plates that I welded on edge to the top of SS samson posts that are welded to and through the deck onto the hull. The large galv thimbles in the bridle are shackled to the chainplates. There was no chafe. If there had been I would expect failure very quickly. Lots of movement , stretching ,pitching and some yawing (too much gear windage on our boat).
Even in the relatively moderate conditions we experienced , the load on the gear was big. The bridle lines came bar taut and water squirted out of the rope.
The conditions on the first deployment were 35 -40 knots with steep breaking seas. No risk of pitchpoling but certainly of knockdown. We slowed from 6k with no sail up to 2.5k with the drogue out. Had a good night's sleep
It was easy to deploy and really quite easy to retrieve. I had tied on a 30' piece of line from the boat to the outboard end of the bridle to help retrieve. The retrieval took about 20 minutes in 12' seas and 15 - 20 k wind.
Because it was so easy the first time, we deployed it a second time just a day away from arrival in Valdivia when a very energetic front passed over us. The baro went from 1015mb to 985 in about 18 hrs. It blew hard. A lot of tree and other damage ashore , 70 miles away. However it didn't last more than 2 hrs and we retrieved the drogue this time in 25 - 30 knots of wind , again surprisingly easy. I had forgotten to tie on the retrieval line ,but a series of rolling hitches added about 10 minutes to the process.
Brent has suggested using the bridle line in some situations to make the bridle asymmetrical which would present the stern at an angle and reduce rolling. In our case the rolling became uncomfortable when the wind backed off in the wee hours of the morning.
The edges of the fabric cone are now a little frayed so I will now heatseal with a solder gun , another good winter project by the heater.
This JSD will be something I will use in much less than survival conditions, as well as in more severe
conditions".
 

Video of the series drogue deployment is on Meredith Lewis' website under "windy days".

The whole story of Silas Crosby can be viewed here.

Report by Hans from Lübeck-Travemünde, Germany, November 2011.

"I ran into 50 knots of wind in the Davis Strait (between Greenland and Labrador. It was blowing out of the SE and that was my heading, so I hove to at first but didn't feel safe after the seas started to really build. I could have run before it, I suppose, but it wasn't my direction (and maybe I wanted to try out my new drogue - many hours of work involved last winter). Anyway, I deployed the drogue and after a bit of hassle  - one of the bridle arms hooked under the rudder of the windvane gear -  it worked as predicted, held the stern to the seas. Retrieval after 16 hrs was easier than expected, took me half an hour - I'm singlehanding. Just winched it in , used a helper line to get the "junction point" of the bridle beyond the winch drum".