Why have keel preferences changed for cruising boats?

[HeinSdL]

I am in the performance, not cost, camp. I graduated from dinghies to racing yachts via more traditional (and hence pretty, nice lines, etc) long keel cruisers. The traditional yachts were a nice experience but so slow... Nowadays, I do like to get somewhere relatively quickly, especially with family on board.


As to why this performance wasn't incorporated pre-1980's I think is a matter of construction techniques. The shape of my current boat is not dissimilar to the planing dinghy hull but then with a keel bolted on. The material choice of today allows this.

[TeddyDiver]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

I am in the performance, not cost, camp. I graduated from dinghies to racing yachts via more traditional (and hence pretty, nice lines, etc) long keel cruisers. The traditional yachts were a nice experience but so slow... Nowadays, I do like to get somewhere relatively quickly, especially with family on board.


As to why this performance wasn't incorporated pre-1980's I think is a matter of construction techniques. The shape of my current boat is not dissimilar to the planing dinghy hull but then with a keel bolted on. The material choice of today allows this.

Some Herreshof designs dating back 150 yrs had foil keels and broad & shallow hull shapes so there's nothing "new"..

[Joh.Ghurt]

Besides the fun part, there have been big advances in understanding the capabilities of materials and building techniques have become more scientific with CAD / CAM CA-whatever. This allows to verify many things which in the past had to be taken as gospel or learned the painful way over generations. And a lot of radical concepts became business as usual.

There also were a big change in material themselves, specially for adhesives and foams. Nobody would thing it today a good or cheap idea of build commercial boats out of concrete.


An then we also have that the way we cruise today changed a lot. Fly to the BVI / Croatia / whatever, charter a nice 50' yacht you can solo if needed, enjoy your week of vacation. And yes, people like to have a big swimming platform, an ice-maker and internet onboard.


This all affect the design of the boat, down to the keel. In general, todays boats are far superior to those from 30 years ago if you compare like for like. I'll take a 2020 Boreal over whatever you come up with from 1985 for a trip to Patagonia.


Sitting on a boat dating from the 80ies, I don't want to say everything old is garbage. They knew how to build yacht back in those days too, and many of those boats are still a good choice. But today the same money (adjusted for inflation) just buys you something better.

[valhalla360]

Technology and materials.

Try to bolt on a short high aspect keel to a wood boat.

It took a while for the old salts to die off so you see some full keel boats in fiberglass but in new boats they are all but non-existent.

[Chotu]

An earlier post suggested a symmetric waterline silhouette both bow and stern would provide for less hobby horsing.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

The oscillations of hobbyhorsing work because there are equal pushes up and dips down with a symmetric water plane, relative to fire and aft displacement, at both bow and stern.

An asymmetric water plane damps the motion and stops hobby horsing. So the wide sterns help cut out hobby horsing just like the reverse bows on my cat do. They upset the fundamental frequency and derail the oscillation

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Chotu

An earlier post suggested a symmetric waterline silhouette both bow and stern would provide for less hobby horsing.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

The oscillations of hobbyhorsing work because there are equal pushes up and dips down with a symmetric water plane, relative to fire and aft displacement, at both bow and stern.

An asymmetric water plane damps the motion and stops hobby horsing. So the wide sterns help cut out hobby horsing just like the reverse bows on my cat do. They upset the fundamental frequency and derail the oscillation

Not sure what post you are disagreeing with. Is it this
"The older designs are not more comfortable. They tend to have long overhangs that hobby horse in seas"?
The classic designs, like the Albergs, often built to CCA rules, have long fore and aft overhangs. These are susceptible to hobby-horsing in steep seas.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Not sure what post you are disagreeing with. Is it this
"The older designs are not more comfortable. They tend to have long overhangs that hobby horse in seas"?
The classic designs, like the Albergs, often built to CCA rules, have long fore and aft overhangs. These are susceptible to hobby-horsing in steep seas.

Nope. Wasn’t that post. The overhangs are bad news left over from racing rules of the day.

I didn’t quote it because I didn’t want to get into a long slog with the poster.

But asymmetry in the fore and aft waterplane reduces hobbyhorsing. Those new style monohulls have that asymmetry in spades.

[pcmm]

Originally Posted by Emoyeni

Well didn't people care about having fun in the 60's? Why didn't they build faster big boats previously? I don't understand why the shift has been so massive...

Technology is the answer. You have to remember that in the 60's fiberglass was a new material and the first generation of boats were molded using designs that had previously been used for wood boats. Wooden boat design was a slow evolution. Building a wood boat (comparatively) took much longer was more expensive in labour hours so designs changed slowly over time. Fiberglass made production much less expensive and allowed mass production and with it in-line design improvements were easier to execute. Want to change the stern ( make it wider) it can be as easy as cutting the mold and adding a wedge section to the hull and deck (gross exaggeration here)

In its day an Alberg 30 WAS a fast boat! but as fiberglass sped up the design cycle the ideas that were able to be experimented with grew as knowledge of the materials grew.

[Bill O]

Originally Posted by Paul L

Not sure what post you are disagreeing with. Is it this
"The older designs are not more comfortable. They tend to have long overhangs that hobby horse in seas"?
The classic designs, like the Albergs, often built to CCA rules, have long fore and aft overhangs. These are susceptible to hobby-horsing in steep seas.

I think it was #7 and not yours.

[rslifkin]

On the hobby horsing thing, symmetrical ends and long overhangs will tend to hobby horse. Asymmetrical ends with short overhangs may still pitch significantly, depending on how buoyant the bow is.

But instead of rotating around a point in the middle of the boat in pitch, it will rotate around a point further back. That gives more vertical motion up forward in some cases, but less while sitting in an aft cockpit. And the motion will be better damped, so there will be less momentum to the pitching.

It's somewhat a matter of preference, but many will find the second type of motion more comfortable.

[zeehag]

i love my formosa ..she sails well in winds and seas... no issue. and interior is perfect.
comfortable and stable. donot overload bows and no hobby horsing or plowing.. she doesnot pound nor oilcan. boat loves heavy winds.. makes me happy.
not everyone is happy in a wannabe race boat. too much interior open space means flying across a cabin in a sea.
i chose well.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Emoyeni

I was wondering if anyone out there knows why there has been such dramatic and industry wide shift away from fuller keels with more comfortable but narrow hull shapes in the pre 1980's to the fast, voluminous, but pounding shape of modern boats. I mean it's not like the cruising destinations are different. It's not like sailing is any different. And it's not like people can't afford to buy one kind or the other (even though bolt on has become more economical - people are still spending 2 million dollars on a new Amel 60, for example). So why has the shift been so complete and virtually unanimous?

because the newer designs sail faster, more comfortably, and the living space is better


I didn't read any replies to post #1

[ohthetrees]

The guy who says modern cruising (non-race) boats are slow and have poor sea-keeping properties is just wrong. I grew up on a full keel boat, and now have a modern production boat (Hanse 505) so understand both. My boat has twice the volume, triple the light, and is way faster on all points of sail, and can point much higher. The wide hull form allows me to to carry plenty of sail, with only moderate heeling. Just last week we took our fully loaded and provisioned cruising boat (we cruise full time) beer-can racing, and we beat what appeared to be a true race boat (had grinding stations) around the course. We won in the upwind leg, outpointing them. Nothing is free, there are a couple of downsides. In following seas on the aft quarter, the width of the stern works against us and we get lifted and twisted a lot. Inherent directional stability is low with the high aspect keel, so I fear surfing too fast downwind in heavy weather, but no problems so far.

To address the original question, my take is that while boat-building is an old technology, and “mature” the new materials available beginning in the 70s and 80s allowed rapid progress, and new concepts that just would not be practical in wood. The pros of these new designs far out-weigh the cons, so naturally most new boats take advantage of these developments.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Emoyeni

I was wondering if anyone out there knows why there has been such dramatic and industry wide shift away from fuller keels with more comfortable but narrow hull shapes in the pre 1980's to the fast, voluminous, but pounding shape of modern boats. I mean it's not like the cruising destinations are different. It's not like sailing is any different. And it's not like people can't afford to buy one kind or the other (even though bolt on has become more economical - people are still spending 2 million dollars on a new Amel 60, for example). So why has the shift been so complete and virtually unanimous?

The overall design process is slow. Yes, designers come up with new, radical ideas, but it takes time for widespread adoption. Boat designs evolve, they don't leap. Tradition is a powerful force but it eventually gives way.

Designers design boats to make them appeal to buyers, and this means make them better. The modern boats are better in almost every way, roominess, cost to build, looks (in many eyes), and most of all sailing prowess. The features mentioned by the OP all contribute to this. The supposed benefits of older designs are mostly mythical. The adoption of the modern boat is widespread because the newer designs just work.

There are cynics which attribute these trends to racing rules:

Originally Posted by u4ea32

The racing sailboats are entirely shaped by racing rule.

This is old thinking. It might have been true for decades, from the meter boats through IOR and IMS, but now it is reversed, the designer makes the fastest boat he can and the rule tries to rate it fairly.

And there are those who attribute it to marketing:

Originally Posted by Benz

Marketing, mostly.
Fads.
Designers needing to eat, so designing new things.
Newbies listening to brokers who have to move old IOR boats.

Read the marketing. It focuses on the advantages and features of the new boat. There was never a marketing strategy like the WestSail marketing of the 70's which promoted traditional, heavy, boats to new sailors as being so safe that they could feel secure against all the dangers of the sea.

The new designs are simply better.

[boatman61]

The modern boat is better for builders..
Production lines, minimum standards, simple bolt on keels, bolt on engines all going to create a maximum profit product to sell to an eager market hooked on IKEA products.
I would like to see how these boats would fare against the old Lloyd's +100A standard that Westerly, Swan and a few other Brit builders built to.. and I believe Oyster still does.