The untimate design
Dan: Did you ever look at a model radio control sailboat? These have a lead bulb at the bottom of the keel. This, of course, creates the righting moment that pushes the boat back up when the wind pushes the mast over. With a model sailboat, you can be rather uncompromising, because you can have a relatively deep heavy keel, and you don't have issues like standing head room, trailerability, and many other things to worry about. To me these little boats demonstrate the ultimate design for a keel and ballast. I think that the Volvo boats that raced around the world in 2001-2002 had keels similar to this. If you look at a keel on a swing keel Catalina 22, you will notice that it is much thicker at the bottom than it is at the top, where it is pinned to the bottom of the hull. This is a very good thing, and really helps with the stability of the boat. I once was on a Chrysler 22 of similar age to my boat, that had the thick part of the keel at the top, and it was MUCH less stable. (I think it's hull was also much rounder, which didn't help either). The thing with using water as ballast in my opinion is that you can't get your ballast down deep where you want it to create the righting moment. Since it's not deep, I would think that you would need more ballast (water) which would translate into a slower boat. When a (Hunter) salesman started to talk to me about this issue at an Annapolis boat show several years ago, the conversation ended up with his statement that if you are pointing into the wind, you really aren't getting anywhere too fast anyway, so you would probably just motor, so it doesn't really matter that your boat doesn't have enough righting moment to sail into the wind. I like to sail into the wind. It's the most challenging and fun point of sail, and a boat does need righting moment to be able to sail well into the wind. Aldo
