Flopper Stoppers

Are you looking for information on Towed Passive Stabilizers (Paravanes)?  This page is about the device that works only at anchor. 

I found that keeping Jenny from rolling at anchor is just as important as keeping her stabile underway.  However it took until April, 2009 before I worked out a good solution.  First I changed the rigging of the down hauls on the TPS booms so that I could use them to haul a boson's chair to the end of the boom for maintenance.  Then I bought a pair of Magma Rocker Stoppers.  These are very powerful roll dampers.  I liked the idea of attaching them to the downhaul rigging.  This approach allowed me to use the TPS rigging without having to change anything.  Deployment and retrieval was very easy so I could drop or pull the flopper stoppers at will using their trip line.  I also found that two were much better than one, reducing the workload on each and providing significantly less roll.

When I first used the Magma's, I found they delivered a huge shock wave through the rigging and boat as the doors opened.  They are very powerful but the shock was too much and I had to pull them in.   After some thought and engineering, I rigged a shock absorber into the Magma rigging and all is well.  At first I used some bungee cords that I had onboard and later made some better ones from Tuna shocks from Seattle Marine.

 

Magma hooked to TPS rigging.  Shock absorber. Tuna shock from Seattle Marine.