Bottom hanging lanyard Drone Retrieval off the deck of a sailboat!!??

[Wozza]

Why are you imagining that the OP looks like this?
He hasn't said anything to suggest it.

"How'd you get the hook?"
"It were a fight with a Spaniard. Took me hand off with his cutless"
"And the eye?"
"It were a seagull. I looked up at the top o the mast and he crapped in me eye".
"But that wouldn't cause you to lose the eye".
"Arr, but it were just after I 'ad the hook fitted".

Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the veal, it's delicious.

 

[Touchsquid]

OK .. I'll bite
How does a one-handed person fly the drone at all?
Presumably you were meaning a sailor who is singlehanding?

Single-handed means one person. On a boat a "hand" is a crewmember. Single-handed means sailing alone. Doublehanded means a crew of 2.

 

[ExUmbra.Solutions]

I think this discussion is really overthinking this. I run a drone company with 15 full time pilots and nearly 50 aircraft. I say this to say we do some difficult flights in difficult circumstances requiring creative approaches all the time. But, I fly off my Catalina 22 on a regular basis and it is not a difficult process.

If you want to do it as safe as you can come up into the wind and when you’re bow on into the wind approach from astern. If you are bow into the wind this helps prevent any gusts that might cause a problem since they just push away from the boat. Though any modern drone is going to be pretty stable anyway.

You can set any of your C buttons to be a one touch turn off obstacles avoidance. If you aren’t comfortable flying without obstacles avoidance you need to practice more before flying off the boat and around water, it should be a nice safety feature t a requirement for safe flight. Then simply hover just above head height. You want to reach up to the drone not come down to the hand. For any of the Mavik series you just need to grab it by the belly and give it a quick flip over. Most drones are designed so that a quick flip upside down after you grab it will cut the props. This is way easier than trying to hold down a stick one handed if you are controlling and catching.

I’ve flown off the boat with at least 3 different models of mavik and at least as many FPVs when I am chasing boats during a regatta. In what must amount to nearly a hundred flights I have never had an issue with flying off the boat like this.