Winching boulders with a sea anchor and water current?

[Erect and Caffeinated]

Anybody ever heard of using a sea anchor as a winch? Sling up ur Boulder, attach via mooring hitch or trigger hitch/Slipknot, deploy, and viola! Could be retrieved easily by attaching a weight on one side of the canopy and a float to the other possibly. Using anchor bolts and pulleys/blocks u could redirect your pull direction. Shock loading may be a problem in some situations, and canopy might snag in shallow waters but seems worth a shot right? At almost 800x the drag coefficient of air u gotta figgure if anything you're gonna be fighting to keep hardware from vaporizing under loading conditions. Would rather try rope instead of cable but abrasion resistance and WLL are critical in this application imho. Would love to hear Any thoughts you guys have about this. Let's say for the scope of our conversation the sea anchor in question is a 22' half dome reserve parachute.

 

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[CGC Miner]

We've thought about this a bit. The idea is plausible. Just have see if a roughly 5 foot water sail can move lets say a 1 ton boulder in a medium slow current. If so then this might work. Detaching the sling from the boulder needs to be quick and easy too.
A 22' sail is way too big for most rivers.

 

[akflyer]

lots of jet boat drivers have used tarps and various other items to make a "sea anchor" to pull the boat off gravel bars etc when they blow a corner and get them stuck. Sized right I am sure that you can move a boulder with one but controlling it would be a challenge cause once its deployed things tend to happen fast. you need a way to pop one side loose so it will just flag out in the current instead of scooping the water.

 

[blackchipjim]

They make rock slings with wire rope.

 

[Bonaro]

I have messed around with using a surplus parachute and lots of rope. It works but you really have to have your **** together because things get out of hand really quick and you dont just turn it off.
IMHO packing in an electric winch and battery is far easier than the hassle of all the ropes and rigging...safer too