I wanted a sea anchor that would <br />1) keep my bow into the wind in case both motors failed or were out of fuel.<br />2) slow down drifting for fishing<br /> <br />I looked at some catalogs and found the "sea anchor" was 30" diameter for "up to 22'" boats and "drift socks" were only 17" diameter for 16' boats, 29" for 22' boats. I figured my pissant boat (13'4") would only need the smallest so I made the sea anchor 19" diameter.<br /><br />When I attached it to the bow in about a 15 mph wind, it was not big enough to keep the bow into the wind. It would keep the boat sideways. With nothing, the boat keeps the stern into the wind.<br /><br />It looks like I need to remake this thing about 30" diameter which should have an area about 2.5 times as big.<br /><br />There must be some formula based on hull size/type to calculate the size needed. It would have saved me a lot of work. 