Canting Keels In Production Yachts

Reply to Gina

You should address me because I answered you and not Mr Hamm.
Can you forward a practical design to back your reply up?

 

Canting cruising/small canting

If you look at the installation of the canting mechanics in the Schock 40 you can see that they take up minimal space. If you look at the design published in Sail the designers comments were that the boat was a 60 footer with the room of a well appointed 50 footer.
Part of the problem ,in terms of room , on canting keel designs applied to cruising boats is the choice of extra lateral resistance. There are two recent options that eliminate the extra lateral resistance as a "room" problem: fixed wings and retractable bulb/keel wings. Fixed wings have been thoroughly proven on boats like Atomic designed by Andy Dovell in Sydney Australia. kFOIL™ retractable wings have yet to be proven but show great potential.
These solutions can be adapted to low aspect ratio canting keels so that the boat can have a shallow draft in addition to some of the other benefits of canting keels.
Another area wide open for the application of canting/retracting keels(and wings for convenience) are small boats under 20 feet where the canting system is part of the overall righting moment with the crew. The canting keel can allow more performance with fewer crew making a boat that would "normally" be triple handed double handed or a boat that would normally be double handed single handed. These small boats can offer performance closer to an unballasted dinghy then a "normal" keelboat while retaining the advantages of the keel.
Canting keels are not limited to just racing boats by any technical limitation -or any other limitation. They haven't even come close to being used for every application they're suitable for...

 

Reply to Lorsail

Up to a certain degree I am with you. However, I prefer to stay in the range of 35-45 ft boats overall, being the most bought dimension.

The reference to the Shock is indeed something to consider however you forgot that the Shock is a gutted out light displacement design and not the heavier type cruising boat that needs sturder equipment and at least a good designed frame to get a solid basis for the keelsuspension. In the Schock the provisions could be slim because of the low ballast weight.

I still say it not very practical because the addition of a foil to increase the lateral surface is an option that the general cruiser certainly wouldn't like. We have pretty shallow waters here that are often fould up with plastic bags et.
Secondly, such a device is another added riskfactor for undesriable damage.

You must make a clear distinction between not possible and not practical.
There is need for extra electrical power - one of the week spots in any sailing yacht ( I sail regularly from Holland to France, 2000 nm open sea, so don't
tell me anything about electricity on a medium sized yacht).
You have another sensitive mechanical - electrical device in your boat, that needs extra electricity and charging on top of your regular (electrical) requirements - and that is already difficult to maintain.

What I will do however is to ask one of the most well known sailing magazines
in Holland to give me some space for an item on this subject. So we will learn
from say 30.000 - 40.000 sailors how they think about this subject.
And what the pro- and contra's are according to their opinion.

 

For an offshore boat, and with a canting keel I'd assume that's where it would be used, there is no such thing as extra space. Storage and tankage space is at a premium on all designs. Something has to be given up to add the space for the keel shifting mechanics.

The problem I'd have with these designs is the requirement to make it fail safe would take up alot more room. I'm sure for a coastal cruiser it can be done, not sure though it makes sense on a boat designed for extensive cruising.
Bill H.

 

i think the key-concept is completely different from saving inners space for this stuff.
I'll try to sum-up some ideas:
-Canting keels will never have success in cruising production sailboat as long as they're seen only as a way to improve performance.
-as a matter of fact, the first point is that canting keels improve righting moment, let's ty to focus on this point.
-improving righting moment, canting keel can make a boat quite more stiffer (less heeling) and therefore more comfortable and safer, almost for poorly experienced sailor.
-that is the ONLY way canting keel's technology may be promoted in production design: we have to demonstrate that it leads to have safer and more confortable boats!!!
Of course this means a bullet-proof engineering of all the mechanical parts!!!
but you have to think that for cruising boats weight is not a dramatic issue as for racing ones, so you can slightly downsize the bulb (considering that you'll cant it) and invest a part this saved weight in a really sturdy redundant canting device; in this way you'll get:
-a stiffer and safer cruising yacth
-a shallower all-canted keel, allowing you to enter more easily in little marinas
-a lighter or (at least) same weight cruising yacth with better comfort and probably slightly better performance.

Mistral

 

IN MY OPINION, the advanced technologies of canting keels, carbon fiber and the lot are going to have a depressing effect on the cruising sailboat market. As they drive up performance, they also increase cost, complexity, crew requirements, and crew knowledge requirements. In the racing classes, this is acceptable and expected, though not really desireable.

But when Mr. & Mrs. Cruiserperson go out to buy a boat, they find that a boat which they can afford and can sail by themselves is much, much slower than the racing boats they read about. Pride of ownership is hard to maintain when your max speed is 7 kts, and the boat in the next slip has a max of 20 kts. The fact that the boats were built for different purposes and different use profiles does not make up the psychological gap.

Back in the days of the CCA, a racing boat had about the same potential as a cruising boat. Perhaps less, since the cruiser was not constrained by the rule. So you can see the situation has changed markedly in the last 40 years. The performance gap has been steadily increasing due especially to high performance, high cost sail cloth, and designers' use of speed enhancing but cruiser unfriendly features such as deep draft and very light displacement.

 

ok, so let's ban F1 car, they make me feel slow in my little citycar, let's ban multihulls 'cause they make me feel slow on the water, now that i don't sail hobie16 anymore, let's ban boats bigger than 30 feet 'cause they outsail my dinghy upwind, furthermore let's break a leg of Bode Miller, Herman Mayer and all those guys who skys downhill at 60 mph, they make me feel very sloooooooow on the snow; and what about jet planes, Ferrari, Lotus, BMW cars, fast japanese motorcycles and all this speedy stuff?????????


There are prices that you have to pay to sail fast, if you think they're worth to be paid you can get a sport multihull or a new design monohull for a decent budget, otherwise get a good cruiser boat and relax sailing, while racers will be overstressed managing their rocket-boats trying no to break anything

Mistral

 

I didn't suggest banning anything; I made a prediction. Here is another: although the canting keel has brought multihull speeds to monohulls, I predict that multihulls will be more popular than canters as cruising boats over the next several decades.

 

multihulls keep on going six-eight knots faster than monohull
anyway you are right about canters and multihulls, multis are growing in popularity, while canters are still on the limbo of hi-tech solutions, with a halo of unreliability wrapping them

Mistral

 

Hi, this time is an surfer the fastest.
An same size multihull cost expensiv, and very cost expensiv in the port.

Mr d'Artois: i have question? What is your preferred sail-config? One 1/1 140% rollfock end
rolllmain in the mast?
I prefer 14-/15/16 105% rollfock, mail with lasyjak, 2-3 reef, genakker, rectractable genakker boum, code-0

Gina22

 

"Halo's"

"Halo of unreliability" surrounding canting keels is absolutely ridiculous-and you SHOULD know better Mistral!!!!
The problem with "cruising" multihulls is the propensity of those that buy them to abuse them by filling up all that space with whatever.
The canting keel cruiser won't ever have the room of a multi but I wouldn't be surprised to see a canter like the new Stimson(Stinson?) whup some of the more houseboaty cats: it is designed to have the room of a well equipped 50 foot monohull cruiser in a 60' hull and I personally would rather go to sea in the canter.
Just so the record is clear and so my multihullness isn't questioned-for coastal racing and inshore daysailing racing I'd prefer the multihull unless of course I could sail a foiler.

 

i didn't say "they're unreliable" of course i'm not so fool, but we have to admit that, if things keep going like last Sidney-Hobart, "canting keels break" may become a common speech hard to eliminate in pontoon rumors, such as "multihulls capsize in gale and are not seaworthy" or "racing trimarans split up very often" or "longkeeler are always seawothy" and so on; these are of course nonsense rumors, but anyway they exists and we have to deal with them; if you take a look at my previous comment in this same thread, you'll read that i think that canting keels may have a bright future as cruising boat technology!!!

fair wind
Mistral

 

halo of reliability

But you must at least admit: for one who says that canting keels have a bright future in cruising boats that saying something like they are shrouded in a halo of unreliability is not only not true,and unfair but fosters the kind of nonsense you mentioned in the last post,right?

 

Reply to Gina

Look Gina, I am a solo sailor, since '82 I sail most of the times alone, so I have to live with that. Large foresails are difficult to handle and therefore I like the Cutter rig the most although it comes second to the masthead rig in upwind performance. I don't like rollreefs. I prefer to change the sail, if I have to.

I believe that we are coming on a point that we still have our pro's and contra's.
Dusseldorf boatshow started today and I will go on Wednesday to have a chat with some of our suppliers and I will hear how the production boat mfrs think about this topic. Their answers -if any- will be put in this thread when I am back.

Mistral's reply that the cruising crowd might be annoyed by the fact that the difference between a cruiser and a racer is steadily growing, regarding to speed is something that might oblige the serial boatbuilder to offer the canting keels as an option to the standard packet.
To keep it affordable, he might overlook the safety factor and opt for a cheap design. I know at least one overhere that would do so.

In Dusseldorf, I will check also if there are already commercial canting keels available for cruising boats.

 

I web searched "canting keels" on the web and found a race rules forum section called "rumors and lies" about the wide spread use of them now in everything that sails. Seems they do not know how to handle the problem.