Tom you said ------------------------ ****Actually the Coast Guard seems to have done the study, the retailer only refers to it on their web site. (I have no interest in this other than to forward information that may or may not be of use, that is for you to decide) *** if you read the report, the CG used a 42' POWER research vessel to test the system, I couldn't find any thing that says it's only for sailboats. ---------------------------------------- When I read a report I always like to know the self interest of the author. I started at the top of the report, and on the first page it lists Donald Jordan the designer of the JORDAN series drogue. >From the report "U.S. Coast Guard Research and Development Center Avery Point, Groton, Connecticut 06340-6096 and Donald Jordan Consulting Engineer " -------------------------------------------- At the end of the report In the recommendation page (that's the part of the report that is probably the most useful for us...) It only mentions sailboats. >From the report: "it was found that for a small sailing yacht with a displacement of 7500 lbs" For extrapolating the data they use a 60 ft 60,000 lbs displacement boat. I do not know of any production built ocean going power boats that displace only 60,000 lbs. Most 60 footer ocean going power boats displace about twice that! That is closer to the weight of a sail boat. Tom also stated "the multiple small chute system will keep a constant tension on the line and be easier on the vessel and the occupants." I do not know if the shock loads would be any lower. The sea anchor recommendation I got from Para-tech was to stick a couple of hundred feet of chain in the system with 400 feet of nylon line. The chain will sag and provide lots of shock absorption. The question about the load is at best confusing. ---------------------------------------------- About Bob Austin's comment, "Also a boat designed for offshore voyaging should be built so that a boarding sea aft will not compromise the integrity of the vessel." I agree, but I have never seen a boat with a stern as strong as the bow. The bow is pointy so it faces less load since the angle of the seas impacting it is lower. In addition the bow structure will experience far more of the load in compression then in tension. Bob also said "I am not sure how to equate fluild dynamics in the human circulation--an area where I have considerable expertise in some of my cardiac research" I never did anything with human circulation, we design filters and cardiac pumps, blood reservoirs and model the flow of fluid thru the open heart/lung circuit used in cardiac surgery. I think modeling human circulation to predect turbulet flows (or forces acting on a vessel wall) would be insainly difficult. My point was using have more advanced techniques trying to model simpler fluid flows was not very accurate. In in our blood labs they compare the actual results to our prediced results. Hence we know that the models are not super accurate. In the USCG report they do not have the benefits of this type of real world resuls verses predicted results. Yet they have to predict forces on a boat in turbulent flows.