[WHOOSH]

Mike:

"Jeff, you mentioned that fin keels ''Can be as strong and safe in an impact as their longer keeled sisters...'' Can they be made that way? Are some allready made that way from the factory?"
It isn''t practical or cost-effective to try and reengineer an existing keel/hull structure so as to make it stronger re: a grounding. The answer is to buy a boat that is as well engineered for the various potential threats as you can. We viewed a newish H-R 36 with a bolted on lead keel on England''s South Coast this past summer, after it had been rammed dead-on into a rock at hull speed. A large chunk of lead was taken out of the keel plus a number of smaller ''missing and/or rearranged'' pieces, yet the hull showed no other damage. When you reflect on the quality of the H-R yard and the nature of the rocky Scandinavian cruising waters, I guess this isn''t a surprise...but it was impressive.

To attempt the ''Cliff Notes'' answer to your ''keel for offshore'' question, you will likely end up with an extended fin and separate (partially or fully skeg-hung) rudder with encapsulated ballast. This is simply because most of the boats that will otherwise meet your needs and which were built in the 80''s and 90''s fit this description. If you don''t, you''ll instead have a bolted-on (hopefully, lead) keel. Yet predicting this little piece of the future doesn''t help much, as it''s the overall nature of the design and build you need to consider (a point Jeff''s already made) vs. picking out a few of the nits and concentrating on those.

I realize ''collision bulkheads'' are in vogue these days, and you can even modify some existing designs to attempt to create this feature. But in reality, there are only two ways in which I would have confidence when dealing with a collision at sea with e.g. a container (tho'' keep in mind it could be something else like a large, unlighted sea buoy that''s gone adrift, such as the one we sailed right past at hull speed enroute the Azores, easily big enough to damage WHOOSH): either well-engineered, built-in floation (as e.g. in a Sadler 34 or any Etap) - or a good liferaft and 406 Epirb.

One follow-up on what I would call the Keel Sump, the box section created by the hull sides, the extended fin''s trailing edge (aft) and the ballast segment (forward): this can be a source of structural weakness given how hulls are sometiomes laid up in halves and joined/glassed over (perhaps not robustly) at their centerline. Boats that are unintentionally grounded, and work & pound a bit on their keel bottoms, often will split the centerline joint in the area of this box-section keel sump. Bristol 40''s are one example who have this problem. My point is that this nice, deep keel sump, while an advantage in some respects, can be a weak link in other circumstances.

Forward-looking ''sonar'' (depthsounder) gear is getting praise from some cruisers but in circumstances where they are feeling their way into shallow waters (e.g. via a cut in a reef) amidst murky waters. This kind of gear won''t protect you at sea or, most likely, along a foggy shoreline either.

Jack