Keels

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DRH

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Considering our first yacht, so could i kindly ask some opinions as to which keel type is best for sailing in the Solent?
Deep for stability or shallow for ease & safety?
Thanks
 
It must at least partly depend where you are going to keep the yacht. Moorings are expensive and marina berths incredible, so if you go for a drying mooring then twin keels are probably best bet. A twin keeler may not sail quite so well as a deep fin boat, but there are good twin keelers around. The new Sadler 29 has had very good reviews.
 
Shallow - cos you can get more places - Bilge or even better a lift keeler is my preference - However if you are going marina to marina - it doesnt matter.

Personally for a first boat I went cheap and cheerfull - so it didnt matter if i pranged it. But then I sail out of a muddy creek - I have found the mud a fair few times - now with my lift keeler - I just lift up the keel a bit and slide on.

I supspect most people will tell you to get what they have. We all like to be right! Good luck
 
Safety in as much as if you run out of depth she'll sit better on wing keels I guess, plus the draft would be a bit less anyway.
Also, would you consider a vessel which has had hull damage but been repaired with a survey?

Thanks all for the the replies.
 
When you say wing keels, I suspect you mean bilge. Wing keels (which are like a fin with wings at the bottom of it) always struck me as an extremely scary thing to dry out on - I wouldn't dare to breathe for fear of overbalancing the yot.

Drying out on a fin keeler isn't normally dangerous (tho' as with any yot it's preferable not to do it on an exposed rocky lee shore in a gale, and make sure that if the ground under you is sloping, you're leaning to the uphill side), it's more an issue of how comfortable you are when dried out.

Personally, if I were wanting to cruise mainly areas in and near the Solent I'd definitely get a centreboarder, because it extends SO much the places that you can explore. If you get a well designed one, they're also great fun to sail and fast, like a big dinghy. We used to have a Superseal 26, which sailed really well, especially off-wind (wind up the daggerboard, and...whizzz).

But if you want to be able to hop across to France or the West Country without scaring yourself to death, get a fin keeler. This extends the places that you can sail in a different way.
 
The ability of a twin, or bilge, keel boat to take the ground is vastly overrated. There are many with serious problem with the strains on the keels causing them to fracture, leak and eventually fall off. Yes - seriously - 4 in our club alone. No keel should be expected to bounce on the ground, especially if it has narrow attachements to the hull.
 
Snapdragon - vertical, encapsualated keels (two! /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif ), So no problems with the keels falling off (nor do many boats unless they're REALLY abused. Early Centaurs had a weakness. Any still around will almost certainly have been fixed. I don't know of any others except a certain racing AWB, but that's a fin... - and another story) .

Shallow draft, so cheap mooring.

Built like the proverbial brick shh - you know what, so if you don't make it out of the way of the S**sail fleet, they'll come off worse.

Cheap!

If you can afford something a bit newer, there's no end of choices, but Pisces' suggestion of cheap & cheerful makes sense for a first boat, and shallow draft twins do have advantages - there are more places you can go 'cos you dry more or less upright. If you do it accidentally, it's (slightly) easier to pretend you meant it /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

FWIW, here are a few ideas:

You probably don't want a blue water cruiser or an out & out racing machine - if you did, I don't think you'd be asking the question.

Bilge keelers generally aren't quite as fast or as good to windward as a deep fin, but have the advantages mentioned above. Shallow fins are probably going to have similar performance to bilge keelers, but need legs to dry upright. Lift keels have lots of fans - and critics, just like the rest. They tend to give a very shallow draft keel up, but can then be a bit of a handful. Keel down they're closer to fins in performance.

You want standing headroom, unless you really need a trailer sailer.

Trailer sailers tend to get left on moorings, 'cos it's hard work putting the mast up and down, so why get one?

There ain't no substitute for cubes - get a boat with a decent engine: Fighting the tide in an underpowered boat is a refined form of self-torture.

When you're looking at boats, take your time to find the right one. Anything - well almost - can be put right, but wouldn't you rather be sailing it than fixing it?

Rich people buy boats, poor people own them - When you're working out how much and how long to put something right, think of a number and double it for the cost, multiply by five for the time. Now double both to be on the safe side.

The to do list will never get any shorter...

Sailing isn't a hobby, it's a disease. It's rarely fatal, but causes considerable mental, physical and financial hardship to those afflicted and their families. With a bit of luck it'll prove to be incurable.
 
As the UK is tidal, surely there is no question which is the better choice!

I am always bemused that people in the UK choose boats designed for the Med. Why buy a boat and limit yourself to a quarter or less of the available places to go, some of the most beautiful harbours in the country dry and you will have to stay 10 miles up the coast and get a taxi to them, no brainer!

The constant fear of touching bottom and racing to get to an entrance by HW ± 20 mins is crazy IMHO.
 
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