Raw water intake, will this work?

I'm fitting a new engine on a boat that has keel cooling. I will keep the keel cooling but I will also add regular cooling by sea water and heat exchanger. (This because I need time to properly set up the keel cooling and I'm not even sure I can get it to work properly in the summer when the water is warm.)

I'd like the raw water intake to be situated in the engine compartment but I don't have too many options on where to put it.
I assume that as far aft as possible and close to the aft bulkhead puts it at about 3 meters from the stern on a 9 meter boat.
Next assumption is that it's better to have it as close to the center of the boat as possible (deeper) but since I have the cooling tanks siting where thy are the raw water intake will be quite close to the keel.

Will the closeness to the keel create some kind of disturbance that might hava an adverse effect on the availability of sea water?

Will it sit low enough in the water? (The spray is about one third from the bow.)