comments/help with sailboat without a design

What's the point of this "keel"?

 

originally i intended the keel to provide for ballast and storage. batteries, water and precast moveable cement/scrapiron fitted shapes (about 250 lbs). the hull probably weighs 400 to 500 lbs without that weight. by now, from the various comments, its apparent that this was a major "design" flaw. that's why i'm probably going to just cut the keel off and replace with a flat bottom panel and centerboard trunk.

 

looks like a decent little boat. I would loose the keel and put in a simple dagger board, use crew weight to counter balance the heel from the sail. or use a steel center board, but that is costly and a lot of work, and adds weight to make transport more difficult.

As for sail, any size you want to put on there will work, I would go with a smallish simple cat rig. It will not move fast, but it is already a heavy boat, and a smaller sail will be easy to handle, cost less and make for pleasent sailing. You can always make a larger sail with a jib for it later. I like junk rigs, they are effient and easy to handle, will not flog and has lower loads on the rigging. A balanced lug rig would also look good on this boat, and be simple to build from flat sheets of tyvek or plastic tarp and duck tape. Once you experiment with the inexpensive sail material to get a rig you like, you can make a Dacron one.

It will be nice to see it on the water sometime, and you will be very happy to finally see it float. Keep at it.
good luck.