Keel discussion

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by Rockinar

Im full keel for life. I may not be able to navigate a marina with razor precision, but I can hit sandbars, reefs, crab traps and dead whales and nothing happens other than "oops" and I keep gong. I can let go of the steering, and run up to the bow to fix tangled ropes, pick up fenders, prep docking lines or whatever and the boat wont try to spin 180 degrees like a top, it will just drift off course a bit. It might not be the fastest, but thats why its called cruising.

I just find full keel more enjoyable and relaxing to sail.

No type of keel can run into coral reefs without consequences. Best to bone up on ones seamanship and not hit anything.

[Jeff H]

I have to admit that some of the responses are some of the strangest discussion points that I have ever seen.

Speaking as someone who has actually designed boats and studied the science, and who has owned absolutely full keeled, long keeled, and fin keeled boats over the past 6 decades, while emotionally some people feel safer in a full keel boat vs a fin keel boat, scientifically there is absolutely no structural, ease of sailing, motion comfort, seaworthiness, balance, rudder protection, or tracking advantage to a boat with full keel over a well designed fin keel with either a post hung spade or skeg hung rudder.

Similarly, there is no structural advantage of an encapsulated keel, and when you run aground with an encapsulated keel, you are literally hitting bottom with the skin of the boat that is supposed to keep the water out.

But in exchange for that emotional comfort, the boat ends up being harder to sail, harder to maneuver, more vulnerable in a hard impact and much slower than it needs to be.

And as far as balanced hull vs balanced keel, a balanced hull is a hull that does not change trim with heel angle. A balanced keel is not really a thing except as the keel works in concert with the rest of the boat to provide a balanced helm or a end up with a boat whose weight and buoyancy distribution results in the boat sitting in trim.

Back to the show in progress.

Jeff

[Ibetitsthisway]

Originally Posted by river251

Good point. Have you ever sailed an enclosed ballast fin keel, with a skeg hung rudder? How much difference in performance compared to the full keel?

Well all boats i sailed before were Standard mass Produced plastik charter. After buying the Full ... which at that time Was not in Focus and came more by Chance... i Was realy Struck about the Difference.

As said before... you can run around deck for a period of time... its less Nervous... going backwards without bowthruster is an adventure... and thinking about underwater obstacles relaxes you very much.

Most full keel boats are much heavier condtructed than modern fin Keelers.
They are slower. How much of the loss goes to the keel and how much to the larger wetted Surface i xant say.

After all i Belong to those who think speed is not the key issue in cruising.
For security speed there is an engine!

[MicHughV]

One must ask THE most important question.....how is the keel attached to the hull ???

Fin keels are invariable bolted on....

Full keels, generally speaking, are part of the hull with cast in place ballast...
Semi-full keels much the same.

Center-boarders, off course, have a trunk, occupying prime real estate in the center of the boat, to contain the centerboard in the up position, but generally swivel around a single pin, and also typically, have a single hoisting system to raise or lower the keel and can be noisy or get stuck, either up or down.

Dual Fin keelers, while popular abroad, are rarely seen in the Caribbean, but are typically also bolted on.

Whether the keel is deep, shallow or has bulb or not, keeping it attached to the boat is generally assumed to be a good thing, as sooner or later, you will run aground.

While the keel is the topic of discussion here, some thought should also be given the rudder.....which can also come in all shapes, sizes and attachment points.

Food for thought ???

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Jeff H

Similarly, there is no structural advantage of an encapsulated keel, and when you run aground with an encapsulated keel, you are literally hitting bottom with the skin of the boat that is supposed to keep the water out.

But in exchange for that emotional comfort, the boat ends up being harder to sail, harder to maneuver, more vulnerable in a hard impact and much slower than it needs to be.

Jeff

hmmm, so I have one of those encapsulated keels and I tend to doubt that my keel is more vulnerable to hard impact than my friend's Catalina. Yes, the same skin that wraps around my keel is my hull, but if and when I hit something my worry meter will not spike, but in my friend's Catalina I think it will a bit. The top of the lead ballast is well sealed. Anectdotally I know of one of my boats that hit a rock, punched a hole in the keel and then continued across the Atlantic. My only concern would be that if I hauled out in winter in areas where it freezes, the trapped water might freeze and expand. Now I certainly have seen fin keels very stoutly attached so I am not trying to challenge what you say about fins necessarily. And I will certainly grant you all the other points; my friend in his Catalina can sail faster and point higher (if he knew how to sail a bit better hope he's not reading this) but there is also a question of motion and that is a purely personal thing. I prefer the motion of my slightly higher displacement hull; I get a little queasy on his boat. And I think I am respectably fast off the wind for an older design so I am not sure I'd go along with "much slower," at least in my case.
But if I ever smack something really hard and end up swimming home I'll come back here and let you know.

[MicHughV]

these threads always interest me..

there are 1,000's of makes and models of sailboats out there, with just as many keel and rudder options..it simply is not a one size fits all......plus what one person may like may not mean another person will like it.......etc ad infinitum...

but...back in the day...I also had these concerns...and for me, once I had mulled thru' all my options, there was but one solution....
STEEL !!
My first boat had a shaped steel foil keel fin, that was so solidly welded to the hull, plus interior frames, that breaking it was simply not going to happen. I had the best of both worlds. A fin keel built like a tank.

If your goal is to traipse about the globe....my vote would be to go steel....be it fin, full keel, whatever...pretty simple when you get down to nuts and bolts of the matter...

[Jeff H]

Originally Posted by Don C L

hmmm, so I have one of those encapsulated keels and I tend to doubt that my keel is more vulnerable to hard impact than my friend's Catalina. Yes, the same skin that wraps around my keel is my hull, but if and when I hit something my worry meter will not spike, but in my friend's Catalina I think it will a bit. The top of the lead ballast is well sealed. Anectdotally I know of one of my boats that hit a rock, punched a hole in the keel and then continued across the Atlantic. My only concern would be that if I hauled out in winter in areas where it freezes, the trapped water might freeze and expand. Now I certainly have seen fin keels very stoutly attached so I am not trying to challenge what you say about fins necessarily. And I will certainly grant you all the other points; my friend in his Catalina can sail faster and point higher (if he knew how to sail a bit better hope he's not reading this) but there is also a question of motion and that is a purely personal thing. I prefer the motion of my slightly higher displacement hull; I get a little queasy on his boat. And I think I am respectably fast off the wind for an older design so I am not sure I'd go along with "much slower," at least in my case.
But if I ever smack something really hard and end up swimming home I'll come back here and let you know.

The worry meter comment clearly shows how intuitive emotional comfort can run counter to reality. The S&S designed Columbia 29 was one of the nicer designs built by Columbia. Like most S&S designs of that era, the laminate schedule remained the same from the waterline down to the center line where the laminate from both sides of the boat interleaved across the center line. That results in a laminate thickness between 3/4" and 1" at the bottom of the keel.

But having repaired keel bottom of boats of this era including Columbias, the laminate in this area is very crudely laid up. That is understandable since in order to laminate this area, the worker is working at the bottom of an 28" to a couple feet deep, narrow cavity surrounded by wet laminate.

When I have ground out this area on boats that hit something hard what I have found is a mix of lenses of unreinforced resin, dry cloth, voids, lots of non-directional fabric, and roving to roving layups. None of these should be confidence building, especially in a nearly 60 year old boat.

Once the shell was laid up, the ballast keel was placed in the keel envelope and held in place with a polyester slurry. Typically, a dealer membrane consisting of a layer or two of mat and roving are laid over the bilge and that is the keel structure.

If the boat hits something hard, the glass encapsulation is pretty easily sheered, and the ballast keel gets pushed aft, The aft end of the ballast keel has no where to go but up through the sealer membrane.

When the boat was new, the slurry provided a bond between the ballast keel and the encapsulation envelope. But with age that bond breaks down. Years ago I walked through a boat yard knocking on encapsulated keels and taking notes. More than half the boats had an area in excess of 18" in diameter where the ballast was unbonded. In quite a few cases it appeared that no bonding existed at all.

That might be an acceptable condition if the sealer membrane was heavier and there was an internal framing system to distribute the loads around the bilge and up into the hull and topsides. But encapsulated keels of the era literally had no internal framing. In the absence of internal framing and the ballast to shell bond, this results in concentrated flexure at the turn of the bilge. Flexure in fiberglass causes diminished reduction in strength due to fatigue.

In comparison, virtually all bolt on keels have a system of internal framing that distribute loads through out the hull from the keel, This tends to produce a stiffer, stronger, less fatigue prone, longer lived construction.

So maybe it might be time to recalibrate the ole worry meter.

Lastly, while the Columbia 29 might have a motion that you like or are used to, it's not because the Columbia 29 has more displacement than the same length Catalina since the 29 foot Catalina 28 weights 1400 lbs more than the Columbia 29.

Jus say'n

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Jeff H

Lastly, while the Columbia 29 might have a motion that you like or are used to, it's not because the Columbia 29 has more displacement than the same length Catalina since the 29 foot Catalina 28 weights 1400 lbs more than the Columbia 29.

Jus say'n

Maybe I should clarify, beam and hull shape, distributing that displacement. The CAtalina 28 has over a 10' beam and over a foot more of wl with 1000# more yielding a d/l less than my boat, even the 27 has almost 9' of beam at 900# less. Mine has a deeper v in the bow and maxes out at 8' beam. Very tender to some sensibilities. Actually the d/l of the Cat 27 is closer to mine than the 28, but how that displacement is spread out yields the motion I believe.
I will certainly concede I have not tested my keel to see if I can dislodge the ballast, I will defer to you on that one. Have you seen ballast dislodged within a keel and free to fall out in the event of capsize or cause a leak? I have banged around on my keel while she's hauled out and it still sure sounds all connected and voidless.
my worry meter needle hasn't budged yet

oh, forgot, I know of the flexure you speak of, I have heard of that in Cal 28s. But they have a flatter hull and the hull/keel joint is more abrupt than mine. I have zero in that flex dept. Still, there are still quite a few Cal 28s around and I haven't heard of their keels falling off yet.

[Jim Cate]

^^^^

Don, what I think Jeff is getting at is that the oft-quoted "advantage' of an encapsulated keel is somewhat flawed. When well constructed, both designs can offer strong, damage resistant keels, and when poorly constructed, either can lead to tears (both meanings of that word!).

We've often seen folks here on CF eliminating boats from their consideration solely due to a bolt on keel, claiming greater safety and structural integrity are inherent in encapsulated ballast hull. Jeff says, and I agree, that this is not a given, and should be discarded as a criteria when choosing a boat to go offshore in.

Jim

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

^^^^

Don, what I think Jeff is getting at is that the oft-quoted "advantage' of an encapsulated keel is somewhat flawed. When well constructed, both designs can offer strong, damage resistant keels, and when poorly constructed, either can lead to tears (both meanings of that word!).

We've often seen folks here on CF eliminating boats from their consideration solely due to a bolt on keel, claiming greater safety and structural integrity are inherent in encapsulated ballast hull. Jeff says, and I agree, that this is not a given, and should be discarded as a criteria when choosing a boat to go offshore in.

Jim

I completely agree. I was just responding to the idea that any encapsulated ballast, as in, like mine, was more vulnerable as a rule. I don't really like the idea of opening up the cabin sole and watching the encapsulated ballast make a keel sway side to side, as I have heard can be seen in a Cal 28, and I bet that flexure cannot be a good thing. My worry meter would definitely ratchet up if I were watching that but they still seem to have stood the test of time. And then there are bolt-on fin keels that I suspect were not engineered as well as Jeff describes. So like I say, in my limited experience I have seen stout bolt on keels (a little Yankee I saw comes to mind, and probably your old 30 too) and old encapsulated keels that I believe will survive a good whack. S2s also have pretty stout encapsulated keels too, no? I would agree that bolt-on keels aren't necessarily bad and all encapsulated aren't necessarily superior in the real world. I had never heard of ballast coming unglued in an encapsulated keel after a smack though; I honestly would like to see what that looks like. I hope we get some photos of keel damage!

...but mine's still the best..

[wingssail]

My choice was for a ultimately strong keel but which provided excellent sailing characteristics.

I've selected bolt on fin keels boats since my first sailboat in 1970's.

I've never trusted encapsulated keels because I knew that laminating that keel inside of a mold was going to be difficult, so it wouldn't be strong, and a perfect shape was not going to happen either. A hull without a keel was going to be more easily constructed and stronger. Then build the floors to hold a bolt on keel: easy. The bolt on keel than can be prefect in shape as well as strong.

The fin keel is going to be the best for performance and handling in rough weather since the aft hung rudder provides much more rudder power and more responsiveness.

I've sailed them all and I know that a fin keel is the easiest to handle in rough weather and good weathern and the fastest AND MOST FUN SAILING IN ANY CONDITIONS. That's my choice.

If your priority is which type of boat will best withstand a terrible grounding, maybe you want a floating concrete Sherman tank. My approach is to count on my ability to avoid those type of groundings and and have a nicely performing sailboat which is fun and rewarding to sail.

[Don C L]

So I am curious, and I hope Jeff will indulge me a little more here, which boats carry full or fin keels that don't show superior design and construction and which boats and keels that you have inspected were sufficiently well built and impressed you? I can see what you mean about hitting something hard enough with an encapsulated keel that if the ballast became dislodged and pushed the seal up and compromised it, there could be, would be, a serious leak if there was also a puncture in the keel. I have never heard of that, I wonder if anyone else has?

[Jeff H]

Originally Posted by Don C L

So I am curious, and I hope Jeff will indulge me a little more here, I can see what you mean about hitting something hard enough with an encapsulated keel that if the ballast became dislodged and pushed the seal up and compromised it, there could be, would be, a serious leak if there was also a puncture in the keel. I have never heard of that, I wonder if anyone else has?

I am a little short of time here so I will answer this part of the question. It so happens that I have followed the encapsulated keel issue closely since I was personally impacted by this type of failure.

This was my family's Pearson Vanguard.
Windrift 1963-64_001 by Jeff_H,

We hit a rock with the tip of the encapsulated keel in light air. These were the days before knot meters so I can't tell you the actual speed, but it was probably less than 2 knots. The force of the impact drove the ballast keel up through the encapsulation membrane. When I went to pump the bilge dry it was full of water. Then I notice water up around the floor boards. At first I thought the boat was sinking quickly because the bilge kept filling after I pumped the boat dry. But eventually I was able to pump the water down to the bottom of the sump and the leak seemed to slow.

I was living on the boat at the time and that evening I realized that the water tank was leaking and run dry when I went to pump out some water and found that the tank empty. It later turned out that the ballast keel had pushed upward cutting through the encapsulation membrane and damaged the water tank. While the leak slowed once the tank was empty, it was still persistent filling the bilge with water pretty quickly and increasing in intensity over the night.

By morning I was not able to keep up with the flow with the manual bilge pump and we emergency hauled the boat that day.

This next picture is a different boat (not our Vanguard), but the damage on our Vanguard looked pretty much like this photo except much shorter in vertical height (in our case the badly damaged area initially appeared to be maybe 6" vertically and a foot horizontally) Encapsulated keel damage 6-7-11 by Jeff_H,

If you look at the picture you can see that the ballast keel is pushed aft from the laminate roughly a 1/2". If you blow the picture up, you can also see lenses of unreinforced resin, dry glass, loose and shattered slurry, as well as voids between the sides of the encapsulation and the ballast.

On our Vanguard, the initial repair was cutting out the cabin sole and sending out the water tank to be repaired and an attempted quick repair made by cutting away the damaged glass. It turned out that the damage to the encapsulation envelope extended far beyond what we could see, and that the sealer membrane was sheered through on three sides near the aft edge of the ballast. It was believed that the increasing leak was from the ballast shifting back into place creating a gap that the water could freely flow through. This being still part of the short summer season the hole at the bottom and in the sealer was temporarily patched, the tank reinstalled, and the boat launched.

After the winter haul out, the sealer membrane was cut out and the damage to the keel cut away to allow the boat to dry out over the winter, with a repair made in the spring. A year later, that boat was supposed to have been hauled for the winter. She was placed on a temporary mooring until haulout. A storm came through and she broke free from her mooring and ended up on the beach near Fort Totten. She dropped her ballast keel and capsized, fortunately before anyone could get aboard. We can only conjecture whether or not the fist grounding reduced the bond between the ballast and envelope allowing the bottom of the keel to fail in a way that the ballast was lost.

While I was in college in 1969-70 I worked at Direcktor's in Dana. My assignments varied but they often included grinding out damaged fiberglass so that the glass crew could make repairs. A few of those assignments were grinding out damage to encapsulated keels that had hit bottom in the Keys or Bahamas. One of the boats that hit coral in the Keys was brought in on a barge. The damage to the keel was extensive, peeling away much of the bottom of the keel and exposing the ballast. That boat had actually sunk and was later totaled. Its a long time ago, but my recollection is that one of the boats was an Islander (probably a 32), another was a Bristol (probably a 29 but possibly a 35) and there was a smaller boat that was Columbia (probably a Challenger but maybe a Defender). Part of the repairs on these boats was to drill small holes in the sealer membrane and in the sides of the keel envelope to allow the voids to drain more quickly. That gave me a pretty good sense of the thickness of the sealer membranes and keel encapsulation envelope. While the encapsulation envelopes were around a 1/2" to 3/4", the sealer membranes were around a 1/4' and badly laid up.

Because this is an area of interest, over the years, I have come across quite a few examples of encapsulation keels that have failed. In the recent study work on keel failures, while most of the research focused on failures that occurred in race boats with and without other contributing factors, there was also a group looking at the encapsulated keel failures. In conversation with a member of that research group, the more frequent encapsulated keel failures were thought to be structural failures of the laminate in the area of the stress risers just above the top of the ballast keel causing fatigue in this area of the boat. The fatigue generation was thought to be in part exacerbated by the loss of bond between the ballast keel and the encapsulation envelope.

Back to work,
Jeff

[Don C L]

This is great stuff Jeff, thank you so much. I had not heard of any of this research. I am wondering if there was any significant difference in layup schedule between east and west coast Columbias and Pearsons. The Early Pearsons, Bounty II and First 3 or 4 hulls of Columbia 29 were built or influenced by the team at Aeromarine in Sausalito in the late 50's early 60's. The Columbia 29 mold then went south to Costa Mesa and Glas Laminates took over. Pearson built Vanguards and Tritons and maybe Ariels back east too, I can't recall where. In any case I wonder if you ever looked at Bounty IIs or Rhodes 41s in your research. In any case though my ballast seal LOOKS good to me I have never cut into it. As you know the Triton and Columbia 29 are very similar so I will look at what might be done to beef up the seal and especially the aft where it meets the water tank. My knotmeter spinner is still in there, still works perfectly too amazingly enough, I think it is original, so I would lose that in any beefing up of course. I wonder if while they were building them they were anticipating this kind of ballast and keel failure.
I wonder also if the problems in ballast adhesion were more often in boats like the Cal 28 where there is flexure in the joint? I really don't think I have any, and I suspect the Tritons and Vanguards and Bristols didn't either, but I have no way of measuring it if it exists. My friend has a Cheoy Lee Luders 30 with the similar keel. I wonder if you looked at those or S2s? Were these issues limited to the long keel, cut away forefoot boats of the 60s only like the Pearsons and Columbias etc?
Again, thank you for this info! More food for thought. My worry meter may have registered an infinitesimal blip...

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Jeff H

.

Lastly, while the Columbia 29 might have a motion that you like or are used to, it's not because the Columbia 29 has more displacement than the same length Catalina since the 29 foot Catalina 28 weights 1400 lbs more than the Columbia 29.

Jus say'n

Sorry Jeff but I tend to disagree with your assessment. As a retired shipwright myself .
You are not correct my columbia 29 is actually 1100 pounds heavier than the catalina and my fully encapsulated keel is actually fully encapsulated to and including 2 layers of mat and a layer of 24 oz roving spanning across the keel and approximately 2 feet up the turn of the bilge . And yes that is from the factory .
1963 columbia defender hull #60 SV Stephfen Ulysses.

Sorry to hear of your issues with the vanguard however the issues with their keels is and was a well known issue .


https://www.practical-sailor.com/sai...arson-vanguard

The one real problem with the Vanguard’s basic structure is the keel (it’s not a problem as long as you don’t hit anything, but groundings, for the curious cruiser, are as predictable as the tide). The lead ballast castings were set in a bed of resin inside the hollow keel, which is part of the hull mold, then glassed over so that water entering the keel cavity will not enter the cabin. Without fiberglass reinforcement, the resin bed is brittle and provides little added protection from a grounding. Voids between the ballast and keel sides were filled with various types of material over the years, including sheets of balsa, which can soak up water like sponges if the keel is holed.


A problem that many better built full or 3/4 keel boats don't suffer from .
It all comes down to quality control