why do (some) people hate bilge/twin keels

I have never owned one, but with 2.4 meters of draft I often have to stand off and watch with pure envy as bilge keelers tuck into places I would love to go, but can't even get near.

For tidal areas like the English Channel, I would love to have a bilge keel boat, if I were rich and/or crazy enough to keep two boats. I used to have quite a lot of fantasies about having one, and where I would go with it, and what I would do. It probably doubles or triples your cruising area, compared to a deep fin keel boat like mine.

It's the ideal type of boat for this area, in my opinion, if you don't care about ultimate sailing performance. Considering how few sailors around here really work hard upwind ("gentlemen don't go to windward"), I am surprised that bilge keelers don't make up the majority of the fleet.
 
Tomahawk said:
Few years ago I saw an article about a French boat... (it would be French as they like to inovate) designed for a three peaks type race.. where one has to run ashore and up a hill for some odd reason... The design issue was that there were no marinas. only drying beaches and inlets

It was only 24 feet long but had a mini transat type hull form but with swinging twin keels some 2m long.. She could sit on the ground with the keels up then deploy the leward one for beating... apparently it was very fast...
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Heol 7.4 ?

Heol-7.4-Altona-Echouable-Beechable-2.jpg
 
The first boat I ever sailed on as a boy was a Robert Tucker designed Mystic plywood twin keeler.

She was achingly pretty, red white and blue, her owner our friend Charlie Solley was a veteran of the Murmansk convoys, in those days I'm sure he could never have dreamed of his own 'yacht', this is where such 1st generation twin keelers scored, getting people afloat who couldn't have gone the old route with Vertues & similar.

However she sailed like a house ! We tacked up and down the Solent seeing the same mark each time...

Much later my Dad had a Centaur; it was a very capable, go almost anywhere boat, BUT, and here is I think a source of some of the prejudice, the handling / feedback was terrible.

It would do anything asked of it, but there was absolutely no feel, feedback or enjoyment to be had from the tiller.

Alright dad had been spoilt by my boat which has a particularly rewarding feedback, but even so I'm afraid the Centaur was a travelling machine, not a fun boat.

I believe boats like a Sadler 29 or Fulmar twin keeler would probably get over this and they certainly sail well; over about 26' it becomes hard work to design and operate lift keels, so if looking for a boat around 30' it would certainly be a Sadler or Fulmar for me; even if I had a deep water mooring / berth I'd still go for a twin keel job, though I'd want to sail it first to check the feel on the helm...
 
DJE said:
It's all been said before many times. Some people listen, others don't want to hear it. There is a huge difference between the early bilge keelers with two stubby vertical keels and internal ballast (which were designed to keep the moulds simple) and modern designs with high aspect inclined keels like the Sadler 290 or RM880. But for some people a bilge keeler is a bilger keeler is a bilge keeler and that's all there is to it.

The Sadlers are somewhere inbetween the two extremes but fairly sophisticated as the keels are fairly deep, inclined, and of assymetric section so that they develop lift to windward when heeled. Ours has been know to give bigger fin keeled boats a run for their money to windward (ask Galadriel :eek:)!

Ours lives on a deep water mooring and we rarely dry her out completely except for a scrub or to visit places like Brignogan Plage or Sauzon! But the greatest benefit in crowded waters is the ability to anchor in the shallows and happily take the ground for a couple of hours at low water.
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I have said it before and I will say it again......my RM suits me just fine, for all the reasons pointed out in this thread. And, although she loses a bit on pointing ability, but goes like a train just slightly off the wind
 
galadriel said:
I'd say there is a big difference between bilge keels and twin keels. Bilge keels Kingfisher 26 (?) sails sideways a lot, or twin keels Sadler 26/29, well DJE can tell you better than I can, (psst, sail pretty well)
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A Kingfisher 26 won the OSTAR in 1972 on handicap by going 'sideways'. BTW - there is no bilge so therefore Twin Keel would be correct. Deep aerofoil keels with skeg, lots of bite.

Owned one for 14 years - great little boats.
 
They dont "hate" them Dylan. You are suffering from headline syndrome where no one had a "dislike" - they only "hate". No one has a "minor problem" - only a " disaster".
 
old hack disease

wotayottie said:
They dont "hate" them Dylan. You are suffering from headline syndrome where no one had a "dislike" - they only "hate". No one has a "minor problem" - only a " disaster".
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aplogies for the hyperbole

old hack syndrome

I once got into a lot of trouble

it was an item about glue sniffing among teenagers

I headlined it

"UHU Hoo-Ha"

the boss had a class A rant at me

and it really was a rant

his reason....

every fule kno that the second H should be lower caps

Dylan
 
I used to sail out of Christchurch on a Centaur and really loved going to the shallow places like through Poole Harbour to Wareham, up the Medina to Newport, the Beaulieu River Etc. Been to loads of placed the other side of the Channel as well on the Centaur.

It is great fun sailing on 50 footers but sometimes it is just a different to slow down and have a little one again
 
dylanwinter said:
aplogies for the hyperbole

old hack syndrome

I once got into a lot of trouble

it was an item about glue sniffing among teenagers

I headlined it

"UHU Hoo-Ha"

the boss had a class A rant at me

and it really was a rant

his reason....

every fule kno that the second H should be lower caps

Dylan
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There are twin keels and twin keels. Some of the recent ones such as the RM series or Surprise have high performance profiled twin keels. One RM owner told me however that they weren't too good downwind.

It's perhaps interesting that two leading architects: Michel Joubert and J-P Brouns both have twin keelers for their personal boats.
 
FWIW, the inventor of twin keels (& they always were designed to an aerofoil section) was Lord Riversdale with his various "Bluebird" & Bluebird of Thorne" boats from the 1930's on. The last of these was designed as an ocean going yacht & was cruised extensively around & across the Atlantic (North & South).

One of them was spotted by D A Rayner at Beaumaris shortly after the war & he spent a bit of time studying the hull form & chatting to he owner & designer. The result was the Westcoaster & then the Westerly 22, 25, Nomad, Windrush, 30 et.al. All of these boats had swept back cast iron keels slightly toed out & with a distinctive aerofoil section (curved outside & flat inside). The also sailed quite well, especially when compared to the more traditional long keelers.

Uffa Fox went for narrow deep keels which are more efficient - but restrict the owner to deep water, which is no problem for teh racing man, but of no interest to a shoal water cruiser.

The later stumpy flat GRP keels were designed by people who simply didn't consider what the keels were for & just assumed that cheap little moulded legs would suffice.

It's horses for courses, if you like shoal water, you need shallow draft & twin keels offer that without the risk of a lost or jammed centreplate & the intrusion of a large centre board casing into the cabin.
 
dylanwinter said:
aplogies for the hyperbole

old hack syndrome

I once got into a lot of trouble

it was an item about glue sniffing among teenagers

I headlined it

"UHU Hoo-Ha"

the boss had a class A rant at me

and it really was a rant

his reason....

every fule kno that the second H should be lower caps

Dylan
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Dylan,

I remember seeing a 'Punch' front page when glue-sniffing first appeared, with the 'Bisto Kids', noses in the air, " Ahhh, Bostick ! " :)
 
dylanwinter said:
and I am sure you inhabit that lovely middle ground

but I think there might be some people who hate the whole idea

not hate as in "I hate people who flog horses or dogs"

but hate as in

"I would never ever buy one as all bilge/twin keelers sail like dogs and should never go more than two miles from shore because they are dangerous and should really be banned"

sort of hate

Dylan
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I'm afraid I don't think I would ever buy a bilge keeler , but best wishes to anyone who wants one whatever sailing they do, so no 'hate'. Even though I'd be aground in your more or less 2m of depth in the channel.

And anyway, if I wanted shallow draft I suspect something like this is more likely to appeal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkrOphtlcrw

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?CLASS_ID=5465

As others have pointed out, the French do seem to have the initiative with shallow draft boats.
 
dt4134 said:
I'm afraid I don't think I would ever buy a bilge keeler , but best wishes to anyone who wants one whatever sailing they do, so no 'hate'. Even though I'd be aground in your more or less 2m of depth in the channel.

And anyway, if I wanted shallow draft I suspect something like this is more likely to appeal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkrOphtlcrw

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?CLASS_ID=5465

As others have pointed out, the French do seem to have the initiative with shallow draft boats.
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I know the person who demonstrates these Pogos. He's in his 70's looks 50 and has a boat freely at his disposal on condition that he is available for demonstration sails. Now there's a retirement job!
 
Searush said:
FWIW, the inventor of twin keels (& they always were designed to an aerofoil section) was Lord Riversdale with his various "Bluebird" & Bluebird of Thorne" boats from the 1930's on. The last of these was designed as an ocean going yacht & was cruised extensively around & across the Atlantic (North & South).

One of them was spotted by D A Rayner at Beaumaris shortly after the war & he spent a bit of time studying the hull form & chatting to he owner & designer. The result was the Westcoaster & then the Westerly 22, 25, Nomad, Windrush, 30 et.al. All of these boats had swept back cast iron keels slightly toed out & with a distinctive aerofoil section (curved outside & flat inside). The also sailed quite well, especially when compared to the more traditional long keelers.

Uffa Fox went for narrow deep keels which are more efficient - but restrict the owner to deep water, which is no problem for teh racing man, but of no interest to a shoal water cruiser.

The later stumpy flat GRP keels were designed by people who simply didn't consider what the keels were for & just assumed that cheap little moulded legs would suffice.

It's horses for courses, if you like shoal water, you need shallow draft & twin keels offer that without the risk of a lost or jammed centreplate & the intrusion of a large centre board casing into the cabin.
Click to expand...

A good compromise might be a Scheel keel which is reputed to have about the same performance as a deep keel. For drying out, twin skegs? Or possibly the Collins tandem keel?
 
Sybarite said:
A good compromise might be a Scheel keel which is reputed to have about the same performance as a deep keel. For drying out, twin skegs? Or possibly the Collins tandem keel?
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The Scheel keel seems to have gone out of fashion along with wing and tandem keels. Long bulbs were popular for a while with some builders like Beneteau to get shallow(er) draft. My Bavaria has 1.4m draft and a long bulb to keep stability the same as the deep keel but loses performance as it is not a good foil. Does enable transit of Canal du Midi though!
 
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