No fixed keel on a 47" boat

[minaret]

Originally Posted by David M

There are also twin keel sailboats that can be beached. You kind of get the advantage of not having the complexity of a swing keel and yet have the righting moment of a fixed keel. The downside is not having the greater righting moment of a single fixed keel.

Another drawback is the added wetted surface area, often this arrangement almost doubles the wetted surface area thus greatly increasing drag and making for a slow boat.
A common problem with centerboards is that they work in the trunk, making noise. On some boats in certain conditions the centerboard can make LOTS of noise. I have known several people who sold their centerboard cruisers because they couldn't live with the noise underway...

[noelex 77]

There are a lot of aluminium swing keel yachts. In this size range
Ovni
Garcia
Allures
Boreal

Theses boats have an unbalasted swing keel, others like Atlantic have a ballasted lifting keel

The boat in the photo is a design I am not familiar with, probably a 1 off. There are lots of (typically French) boats like this. They generaly make excellent crusing boats, if it has been well designed and built.

[sarkastic]

What about "Lee Boards"? I have seen a boat or two for sail on the internet that had them and I steered clear out of shear ignorance of how safe one could be and have not gained enough interest to do more research on the subject than this comment. If it is not worth talking about then I apologize in advance.

[sparau]

Originally Posted by Bash

Confusion Alert!!

Those of us using ad-blocker software are not seeing the two boats the OP is referencing because he posted advertisements for the boats he's talking about.

Further confusion may be resulting from the thread title, which references 47-inch boats, which tend not to be very fast.

ah, thanks for clearing that up, i couldnt work out the early comment of "what boat are you talking about".

lesson learnt, dont link from yacht sites...

and after this being the 4th comment i think lesson learnt about those archaic foot and inches things

[sparau]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

The boat in the photo is a design I am not familiar with, probably a 1 off. There are lots of (typically French) boats like this. They generaly make excellent crusing boats, if it has been well designed and built.

yes i think its a 1 off, it doesn't even list a designer or builder in the ad.

Thx muchly to Andrew Troup for a great post, i'd connected the ability to slide off waves and pulling up boards in rough weather with cats, it just never occurred to me that such an approach would work well on a mono, reading about Seal now, nice boat.

[Andrew Troup]

Originally Posted by Andrew Troup

.... Damien II has been sailing pretty much continuously since the late 1970's...In extreme conditions, the keel is sometimes intentionally retracted.
.....

I relied for this information on my recollection of several late night conversations over 'un coup de rouge' with the skipper thirty years ago, so I felt a bit uneasy about writing the above.

I have certainly talked to other French lift-keel sailors over the decades (sailing shallow canoe-body draft vessels with no stub keel) who do use this technique, and up until now I was sure Jérôme (of Damien II) was one of them.

However I have just had the opportunity to check this out with one of his family who lived onboard throughout the eighties, and he reckons the keel on this particular boat was not raised offshore, and would not be.

Given he was a small boy at the time, one would think perhaps he was not informed of such potentially worrying practices, but having spent time around the family, I'm certain that he would have been entirely in the loop on such important matters, and would certainly remember it happening, unless it took place before he reached the age of four or five.

So I apologise for the misinformation, and hereby retract it.