Keel designs

[ProjectManaia]

Hello everyone!
I just recently hauled out my Catamaran Sea Nomad and realized there is a bunch of water in the keels.
Now those are rather unique design from the previous owner I would say. They are solid wood in the center (about 2inch wide) with boards on either side and a massive (2inch thick) piece of hardwod on the bottom, making the entire keel size something like 25cm wide, 4cm high and 3,7m long.
Now that the boards are off on the side, the centerpiece is still about 2 inch thick and the hardwood on the bottom is still on.
These keels were designed to beach the boat on a regular basis. Since I am not doing this I am thinking about redesigning the keels, but never attempted anything like this before.
The center piece is BOLTED onto the hull itself at the moment, so shortening it would create some extra holes in the hull.
There is some pictures of the keel (center piece only) here:
Refit | Project Manaia

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions for the most beneficial solution? Ideally nothing too fancy in terms of finances... we are in the end a small NGO running the boat, so we try cut down on extensive costs that are not necessary...

My first thought was: Leave the hardwood on, but trim it down to the width of the centerpiece and then put some glass around the entire thing, rounding the edges, so the draft would stay the same but the keel would be a whole lot slimmer than before... any thoughts?
Thank you all already!

[paxfish]

Big job there.

Doesn't look like you can remove them completely, or you'd only be able to sail downwind!

Gonna have to rebuild those keels....Your glass solution could work, but you're going to have to make it strong enough to handle a grounding.

[ProjectManaia]

Originally Posted by paxfish

Big job there.

Doesn't look like you can remove them completely, or you'd only be able to sail downwind!

Gonna have to rebuild those keels....Your glass solution could work, but you're going to have to make it strong enough to handle a grounding.

No, taking them off all the way is certainly not an option. One of the other guys in the yard said maybe take them off and make something new up out of plywood. Perhaps deeper but shorter. Right now we have serious trouble tacking her (pointing into the wind is hard in low winds) so shortening the keels in the bow a bit might help possibly. But as I said before.... not really sure and don't want to create more issues