Westerly Merlin

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jazdow

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Seriously considering putting an offer in on a 1985 Merlin Fin keel up here at Euroyachts Largs. We have recently sold our Sadler 25 and are looking for a slightly bigger replacement.
How does they sail? We are used to good sailing performance and enjoy a run round the cans as well as cruising up the West Coast.
I can't find a lot about them on the Web. Has anyone had experience of them? Accommodation seems good albeit she is not as good a looker as a Sadler 29, our other option.

Your comments would be most welcome.

Regards

JD
 
I've not sailed one but I think they do what it says on the tin. We had a Sadler 29 fin and the Merlin was about the same for speed.
 
I have had a bilge keel Merlin for some 4 years now. Often overtake Sadler 25. Won't point as high as my old Invicta, but will do 7knots on a reach. Spacious & comfortable cruising for 28'
 
I've never owned a Westerly Merlin but this was one of the boats that was in the frame when I was looking for a new boat five years ago. I looked at a few and liked the accommodation layout. I believe she was the first Westerly with the aft cabin under the bridge deck & cockpit. I thought they had a rather boxy appearance with the high freeboard for the length and the squarish cabin roof but the effect of this is lessened by the broad blue stripe below the gunwale and he blue stripes on the cabin sides that most of them have. From what I've seen they sail very well - not at all pedestrian - and I'm talking about the twin keel version.
 
There is a theory that the bilge keel version is stiffer than the fin keel version. Something to do with the mass of the bilge keels being grester than the fin keel with the result that the bilge keel can hold full canvas for longer. I am sure this is described on the WOA notes.
PS the one at Troon was in pretty good shape when I saw her last year.
 
Went with friends to look at one they were interested in based in Oban in 2010/2011.Was quite impressed with the good headroom inside although six big guys on board at the same time would be very tight.Not enough stowage space for six peoples kit but for 28ft it looked a well thoughtout design and well built.I think negotations were at the £18000 mark.One on ebay went in May 2013 for just over£17000.
 
jazdow said:
I'll check that out. Always assumed Fin would be stiffer.
Click to expand...

I have not been able to find the quote as I recall it but the mass of the bilge keels are greater than the fin as shown below. However it could be argued that the righting moment of the lighter fin with its greater depth would compensate. If I find the quote, I will forward it.

Keel:
Fin / Twin

LOA (feet):
28' 8''

LWL (feet):
23' 7''

Beam (feet):
9' 11''

Draft (feet):
5' 0'' / 3' 4''

Displacement (lb):
7,694

Ballast (lb):
2,987 / 3,329
 
Jcorstorphine said:
I have not been able to find the quote as I recall it but the mass of the bilge keels are greater than the fin as shown below. However it could be argued that the righting moment of the lighter fin with its greater depth would compensate. If I find the quote, I will forward it.

Keel:
Fin / Twin

LOA (feet):
28' 8''

LWL (feet):
23' 7''

Beam (feet):
9' 11''

Draft (feet):
5' 0'' / 3' 4''

Displacement (lb):
7,694

Ballast (lb):
2,987 / 3,329
Click to expand...

Maybe, you were confused by the Tempest.

From WOA
"The Tempest had been planned as a small sister for the Storm, which had opened to rave reviews at the 1986 Southampton Boat Show. However, we had been selling more Storms as cruising boats than as racers. The enormous majority were not raced at all.

This dictated a shift in marketing emphasis so she could be sold as a good looking cruiser, although a few were bought to race. Surprisingly the twin keelers could be as fast upwind as the-fins. Was this a breakthrough in twin keel technology? Sadly not, one can never move as fast with two keels as with one. My theory is that Ed Dubois simply got his sums wrong and gave too little ballast to the fin keelers. However, I'm sure he would dispute this and produce cunning reasons.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the twins have enough weight down below to hold them upright without a crew along the weather deck, and the fins don't. The net result is that a couple sailing a twin upwind can keep up with a couple sailing a fin. Of course, a full crew will redress the balance and allow the fin to walk away. The answer to this is to bolt on extra ballast in a bulb at the bottom of the keel, which stiffens her up and puts her back in contention in a racing environment."
 
alant said:
Maybe, you were confused by the Tempest.

From WOA
"The Tempest had been planned as a small sister for the Storm, which had opened to rave reviews at the 1986 Southampton Boat Show. However, we had been selling more Storms as cruising boats than as racers. The enormous majority were not raced at all.

This dictated a shift in marketing emphasis so she could be sold as a good looking cruiser, although a few were bought to race. Surprisingly the twin keelers could be as fast upwind as the-fins. Was this a breakthrough in twin keel technology? Sadly not, one can never move as fast with two keels as with one. My theory is that Ed Dubois simply got his sums wrong and gave too little ballast to the fin keelers. However, I'm sure he would dispute this and produce cunning reasons.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the twins have enough weight down below to hold them upright without a crew along the weather deck, and the fins don't. The net result is that a couple sailing a twin upwind can keep up with a couple sailing a fin. Of course, a full crew will redress the balance and allow the fin to walk away. The answer to this is to bolt on extra ballast in a bulb at the bottom of the keel, which stiffens her up and puts her back in contention in a racing environment."
Click to expand...

You are right, I was confused by the Tempest (but perhaps the wind will die down soon) :)
 
Jcorstorphine said:
However it could be argued that the righting moment of the lighter fin with its greater depth would compensate.
Click to expand...
I can't find it at the moment, but an American designer has an interesting site with many points in favour of bilge keels.
Whilst the fin may have more weight lower down, once heeled, the bilge keel hull has a lot of leverage from the windward keel, plus the leeward keel is nearer to vertical than the fin would be. Double whammy

Yes the fin may point higher, but the bilge may well be easier to drive on a reach.
 
Lakesailor said:
I can't find it at the moment, but an American designer has an interesting site with many points in favour of bilge keels.
Whilst the fin may have more weight lower down, once heeled, the bilge keel hull has a lot of leverage from the windward keel, plus the leeward keel is nearer to vertical than the fin would be. Double whammy

Yes the fin may point higher, but the bilge may well be easier to drive on a reach.
Click to expand...

If there's no weight in the windward keel, how can that have better leverage?
Also a fin is deeper, so when heeled, is a longer lever.
 
alant said:
Also a fin is deeper, so when heeled, is a longer lever.
Click to expand...

Aren't the bilge keels on a Westerly cast? I always thought they were the ballast. One advantage of bilge keels is that they don't attract the racing designers who (every bloody year) stand aghast when a lead keel set on a spacer with looong bolts fails and drowns the crew. The comment from Westerly is spot-on - put a heavy bulb on the bottom of a fin keel and she'll carry her canvas well without the extra drag of the second keel. As I understand it, the only reason most production boats don't havelead keels is the cost of the metal. My own preference is for an encapsulated lead fin, it also demands a stronger hull design with a wine-glass section making the boat directionally stable and sea-kindly.

Rob.
 
Getting back to the original question . . . .

I owned a fin keel Merlin for 5 years and loved it. For a family of 4 (2 pre-teen girls) the accommodation was good and the sailing performance was great.

We cruised from Dieppe to Trebeurden in the summer holidays and won several of the WOA organised round-the-cans races in the Solent. She sailed very well.

I can thoroughly recommend a Merlin.
 
Lakesailor said:
Why would there be no weight in a bilge keel? That's where the ballast is usually carried.

Have a read of the yacht designer's case http://www.brayyachtdesign.bc.ca/article_twinkeels.html
Click to expand...

If the ballast is the same for a fin/bilge, this in the bilge, is divided into 2 keels, which are shorter than a single fin.
I cannot see how, a shorter bilge of half the weight of a longer fin (& if one bilge keel is vertical, only the windward keel exerts any (if not all) of the righting moment), can possibly have a better righting leverage.
I would expect a bilge configuration, to be more tender than a fin.

This is from another forum, http://www.sailnet.com/forums/boat-review-purchase-forum/56336-twin-keel-sailboat-2.html
"Back in the late 1960's I worked as a sailing instructor in a sailing school that used Westerlys. The fleet was a mix of bilge keel and fin keel versions of the same boat. (I think they were roughly 24-26 feet but I can't recall the model although Centaur sounds right.)

There were clear differences between the bilge keel vs fin keel models, especially at either end of the wind range. The fin keeled boats sailed way better on all points of sail, but the difference was especially noticable in light air, a chop (the bilge keelers seemed to really roll more in a chop), and in heavy air, where the bilge keelers were slower, had trouble tacking through the wind and waves and so were prone to getting caught in irons and backing down and then take some scary knockdowns. We typically had to reef the bilge keeled versions before the fin keel versions.

The biggest problem that we had was freeing them when they grounded. Once planted they were really hard aground. We could always refloat the fin keelers by heeling them and backing out. That obviously did not work with the bilge keelers.

To be frank, bilge keels would be a deal killer for me in most areas of the world."

also, from same poster
"I will say that it is rare to have a chance to do months of side by side testing of different keel types on otherwise identical boats. My experience was with fin vs bilge keel versions of the same boat and essentially the model in question. My experience was across a wide range of windspeeds and in multiple groundings and that is the basis of my comments.

There was a very observable differences in speed and handling between the two models in questions. Since the sails were rotated between boats for a variety of reasons, but mostly because we taught new sailors to rig the boats from bare, so that sails did not make a difference, neither did which instructor was on board. I was one of the faster sailors amoungst the group and when sailing the bilge keel boats, I could not keep up with the slowest instructors on the fin keel boats, but I could easily run off and leave them when I was on the fin keel boat. One of the other more experienced instructors and I experimented sailing side by side on quite a few occasions, and the bilge keel boats clearly made a combination of more leeway, less speed, and could not point as high. (I say combination because you improve pointing angle a little but speed disappeared and leeway increased or head off a little and get a little more speed and less leeway at the price of pointing lower. Even so the fin keel boat was better at all three.)

While a bilge keel boat does not have to be less stabile, achieving an equal stability to a fin keel comes at the price of a combination of higher drag and more weight.

With regards to the grounding issues, I have seen versions the diagrams shown above. In reality, the Westerly's do not have BlueBird's widely skewed keel angle. The keel tips are closer together and at normal sailing angles the leeward keel was not all that much further down than the windward keel. In a grounding the leeward keel leveraged the windward keel into the bottom jambing both and making rotating the boat very difficult. We used these boats to teach how to free yourself from running aground. Whatever the throry, after dealing with the grounding problems with freeing the bilge keelers (even using the Boston Whalers to help tow them off) we stopped using them to teach freeing the boat from a grounding. "

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=b...0C8mshQetvYHQBw&ved=0CEUQsAQ&biw=1365&bih=527
 
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While this is probably valid for earlier bilge keel boats where generally the twin keels were not well shaped and often significantly less draft then the equivalent fins, later developments narrowed the gap by different designs and shapes to the keels and more draft. So later boats designed by Sadler, Feltham, Du Bois (as in the Merlin and Fulmar) and particularly Thomas narrowed the gap considerably. Stephen Jones Sadler 290 was also good, although there was not a fin keel equivalent to compare. A side by side "test" of the Martin Sadler designed 29 when the boats were new showed very little difference in overall performance.

The reality is that for general "family" cruising the greater potential flexibility of twin keels outweighs the small loss in outright sailing performance. However, if the requirement for regular drying out and shallower draft are removed, then there is little incentive to have twin keels.
 
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