If you won the lottery

[Hudson Force]

What comforts and freedoms we have had with a modest income have been associated with owning less. If I were to have an enormous amount of money, I would be on board and piloting various boats at different times and likely with travel and time at shore locations too. I would choose the experiences without the burden of ownership.

[ALAIN97133]

Originally Posted by Tetra

I'd build an Alden-designed, Evening Star:

The sad thing about these gorgeous old ladies is that there're NOT good offshore all-weather sailboats ! Full keels are NOT VERY EFFICIENT to go to windward, but very efficient to trip the whole sailboat when surfing a big following sea such as the one in the roaring forties or screaming fifties (Or anywhere a freak wave crosses your path)! The mythical Moitessier's "Joshua" (Named in honor of Joshua Slocum) was a full keel steel "Sherman tank"! It was rolled over & over again as it sailed the first single-handed round the world race in 1968... 45 years later, François Gabart won the Vendée Globe race in 78 days** in an "Open 60" equipped with twin dagger-boards & a swinging keel, all very efficient to go upwind but that stalls very fast also, allowing the sailboat to skid sideways down the wave instead of being rolled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3on5CYbZP4

**Robin Knox-Johnston took 312 days in his 32 footer Suhaili
PS: The last picture has nothing to do with the topic... It's just to show you my 100 pounds "Choupette" watching over my bike

[SaltyMonkey]

Open 60 pretty. Wierd side fins. Surprise side poles don't drag n roll.

How do you rest?

[ontherocks83]

Originally Posted by ALAIN97133

Full keels are NOT VERY EFFICIENT to go to windward, but very efficient to trip the whole sailboat when surfing a big following sea such as the one in the roaring forties or screaming fifties

I get the windward part as it seems logical, but can you explain how that happens in a following sea? Do you mean boats like Island packets are more easily capsized in big following seas?

[ALAIN97133]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

I get the windward part as it seems logical, but can you explain how that happens in a following sea? Do you mean boats like Island packets are more easily capsized in big following seas?

Sailing downwind, in a following sea, the waves overtake you whatever. Suddenly the big one raise you to its top where from you start sliding forward/downward at downhill speed. The efficiency of a keel is function of the length of its leading hedge (Not its surface) but it's also function of the square of the speed of the sailboat!

Suddenly as you race downward your keel becomes far more efficient & turns hard your sailboat to port or starboard depending. Now the full surface of your full keel moves SIDEWAYS DOWNHILL against the water... Guess what ? It's like applying full brake under the water while being push by the top of the big one above the water !

Moitessier thought that he had been rolled bum over head, but this happening so fast, I think he couldn't analyse it clearly.

I personally think that his Joshua was going downhill at full speed on the slope of a freak wave, his keel became far more efficient because of the sudden increase of Joshua speed, so doing the keel turns Joshua 90° where the top of the freak finished the job by rolling SIDEWAYS Joshua. In any case ('cause I could be wrong in my analysis) all Moitessier's stuff that could stick to the ceiling where up there after the joy ride

With a fin keel -as you luff- the area of your keel is much smaller for the same upwind efficiency & therefore will represent less of a brake force as the sailboat & keel slide downward/sideways; this doesn't mean that the fin keel sailboat won't be rolled sideways, but this will happen far less often

PS: Pardon my English for I'm an almost bilingual frog...

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by ALAIN97133

Sailing downwind, in a following sea, the waves overtake you whatever. Suddenly the big one raise you to its top where from you start sliding forward/downward at downhill speed. The efficiency of a keel is function of the length of its leading hedge (Not its surface) but it's also function of the square of the speed of the sailboat!

Suddenly as you race downward your keel becomes far more efficient & turns hard your sailboat to port or starboard depending. Now the full surface of your full keel moves SIDEWAYS DOWNHILL against the water... Guess what ? It's like applying full brake under the water while being push by the top of the big one above the water !

So a full keel boat is necessarily more likely to broach or to be knocked down, or both? Might get some disagreement on that, however the boat you are describing, with its flat bottom, thin keel and two rudders, will certainly surf out ahead of a wave and avoid a broach much better, I'll grant you that.

[ontherocks83]

Forgive me for being slow on the uptake but why does it suddenly turn the boat one way or the other? Does it become a wing and whichever side has more water flowing over it creates more lift and pulls it or am I missing the mark?

[ontherocks83]

Also where would a shoal or wing keel fall in comparison to a fin and full keel?

I may be hijacking the thread with all this. Should I start a new thread or are we pretty much summed up?

[Stumble]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Forgive me for being slow on the uptake but why does it suddenly turn the boat one way or the other? Does it become a wing and whichever side has more water flowing over it creates more lift and pulls it or am I missing the mark?

In an ideal world the forces would remain symmetrical, in the real world the preassure become slightly imbalanced side to side, then the lift from the airfoil combined with the relatively high speeds causes the preassure to increase. Which causes the preassure to increase more, and you get into a downward spiral until the rudder stalls and the boat rounds up. Basically the boat trips over its own keel.

This is why full keel boats are unsafe when surfing and need drogues. Modern high performance boats become more stable as the speeds climb. Because they can climb out of the water and the high aspect foils create far less drag. This allows them to climb up the waves and surf safely, or even plane in the right conditions.

Frankly either can be safe is sailed properly. Modern boats can just continue sailing fast long past the safe point for older designs.

[ALAIN97133]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

Also where would a shoal or wing keel fall in comparison to a fin and full keel? I may be hijacking the thread with all this. Should I start a new thread or are we pretty much summed up?

I've been sailing since the '70 & my "ideal" sailboat has gone from full keel (My first offshore cruiser C&N 31**) to centerboard shallow draft, to catamaran since I spend much more time at anchor than passage making but in reality I went from a C&N 31 to racing fin keel Chance 33' to my current Ericson 34' both third hand for money reasons Alas, you can't get a decent catamaran for less than $100K

Shallow draft are not my cup of tea (Poor windward sailing) while I like wing keel as a good compromise: the wing working like airplane winglets... The older sailors will remember when the 1988 America cup was won by Australia with a winged keel sailboat designed by Bob Miller (Ben Lexcen) who also designed the one man Contender dinghy, sailed with a trapeze

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdVIks6EP7w

"...the biggest news of 1983 was when the 12-Meter Australia II defeated Dennis Conner’s Liberty off Newport, RI, taking the prestigious America’s Cup from the United States for the first time in 132 years. But how did the Aussies do it? A radical new winged keel design was largely credited for Australia II’s win, and it changed the face of sailing yacht design for the next three decades."

** NICHOLSON 31 sailboat specifications and details on sailboatdata.com