Hi John: We carried both sea anchor and drogues. During our training on the sound (Long Island) we deployed both to establish procedures for launch and retrieval. Our first exercise we concluded was a disaster and in retrospect since there was really no emergency my wife and I had a good laugh and wished that someone was there to take a movie of our incompetence. By the 6th time we got it right and thus ended that part of the training. We never needed to use the drogues but we did have to use the sea anchor once. When we left Bermuda north to Nova Scotia we were off the Maine coast about 450 miles. We received notification that a squall was eminent in our area in the next 12 hours. Sometime later we felt it coming in and we were not making much headway. Rather than continue fighting our way my wife and I decided to deploy the sea anchor, keep the engine in idle and wait out this event. The anchor did it's job and although we moved a lot (we also took in the flopperstoppers) we were comfortable enough to maintain our watch routine which we changed from 6 hrs to 3 hrs. The next morning it was much calmer and I took morning sights. In this period of 12 hours we were only off from our previous fix by about 1 mile. We suffered no damage to any of the fittings. We never needed the anchor after that but it was sure necessary and we were grateful that we took the time to train ourselves in using it. Regards. Leonard Stern, Indifference.