A swing keel is a just a fancy way of saying weighted centerboard. For a shoal draft boat, it is often a decent compromise at providing some good upwind performance, but I'm not a big fan of them. The real danger is most don't positively lock in the extended position. In a rollover or capsize, the board will retracted very suddenly, often doing quite a bit of damage on its way back in.
I am a big fan of centerboards, which in the case of multihulls, like mine, are generally unweighted and buoyant.
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Sailingdog Telstar 28
New England
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)
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I was unaware that most did not lock in the lowered position. The one on My Cal21 does and I'd think it would be a simple matter to fabricate a similar method of securing for most swing keeled boats.
I'm a fan of the set-up, obviously, for much of the same reasons stated by Jeff. It allows for a very light boat yet great stability in an easily trailered configuration. How many other similar size boats can be out of the water in an hour and on their way to another sailing location many miles away using nothing other than a light duty truck?
It seems from a design standpoint that, after the architect has designed a centerboard the next logical step would be to examine how he can get some weight on it. I think that's why you see the swing keel boat. The Cal20 is similar in many aspects to the 21' yet not nearly as flexible in usage. And I haven't even mentioned the gunkholing potential.
The only problem that I see with one is that associated with any boat you decide to put a hole in the hull. The potential for leakage is there. Not really a safety issue but a potential maintenance hassle.
__________________ The brain is merely a knot that keeps the spinal cord from unraveling.
Here is great example of a swing keel boat - A Walters 47. This is the same guy who designed the Holby Marine built Walters 35 back in the 1980s. The Owner is Jon Roop, a (very good) surveyor out of Beufort, NC.
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There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IV, iii, 217
The Nightwind is a pretty boat, but IIRC there were only about a dozen of the beasties made... so it isn't exactly an easy boat to find.
__________________
Sailingdog Telstar 28
New England
You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)
If you're new to the Sailnet Forums... please read this POST.
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