Can somebody pro/con a full vs. fin keel for a newbie (will learn to sail on said boat) and taking it thru the Caribbean? All I can seem to come up with so far is fin keel is better to the wind, and a full keel will protect your rudder.
Yes, sailors buy the boats that they want to buy, no doubt about that and most of them buy the best their money can afford. Only some lucky ones buy just what they really want (I am not one of them).......just look a what people buy across the board and where peoples material priorities lay.
Yes, lets agree to disagree... without calling each others boats derogatory names. Some cannot manage to do this unfortunately.Reality is, as I have said before, the proper Keel of a given boat, on a proper scantling built boat for the purpose etc, is the way to go.
As also mentioned, we ALL hopefully buy a boat to use base on our needs. Yeah I could have bought a full keel boat for the same cost as my mid 80s Jeanneau. Reality is, I would NOT be happy here in pugetsound with a full keel boat! A fin keel for me is the way to go for how I sail, about 70% racing, 30% cruising or daysailing. With winds down in the less than 10knots a lot, works well. I would imagine if the full keelers I compared my boat too earlier, could get into the 24-1 SA disp ratio, they too "might" be fun in the lighter winds. If not, not as much so. You also get the takes 20 knots to get something moving from boats like the two I compared too, As they are in the 12 or 15-1 range with 6000 lbs of boat. Granted in 30 knots of wind, I have a double reef in, with a 110 , they are still sailing barely with a full main and 110....but compare teh SA/disp of the three, they are about the same!
Not sure the other two would also sail into their slip in less than 5 knots of wind with a main alon at 1-15 knots of boat speed. 40-45 knots of wind, 4-6' seas, no issue for my boat either. Can not remember how mine is vs a westsnail 32 I was on in the mid 70s in the sound with 40-50 knot winds. both do fine. The Westsnail was double reefed with a staysail up. Plowed along in the 4-6' waves too.
Reality is, one needs a boat for their own needs. Some like paulo and I, will take a fin. Others have spoken about prefering a fin even those that go across oceans etc. If I were to head across an ocean today, it would not be a full keel. MOre than likely a fin, maybe a moderate. Probably not. The new HR looks like a sweet sailing machine, as do the Hanse's etc.
With that, we should all agree to disagree!
Marty
I'd love to hear your opinion on this particular one (I mean the first part, not the 'how do they market themselves') because I almost bought one last year but then decided that I don't need a full keel for the Long Island Sound.• Why Island Packets are not a good example of either traditional full keeled cruising boats nor of modern design principle, but somehow seem to be able to market themselves as both.
You must not have been exposed to many full keel boats. The Westsails at least had 3 different lead castings that were also "precision cast"And for the record since this does relate to the original topic, at least when I was associated with the boat building, a well engineered fin keel boat is actually quite a bit more expensive to build than a full keel. The requirement of a precision ballast casting, more sophisicated framing, the requirer higher strength keel bolts and backing plates all add to the cost of building a fin keel boat.
Inexpensive boats typically had longer keels with encapsulated non-cast ballast until coastal sailors came to expect more performance out of their boats.