So, we're looking at boats, and Henry Scheel comes to light. He's patented
a keel that several manufacturers are paying royalties to use, and what I
read suggest that rigorous tank testing holds out the superiority to
straight keels, so, presumably, it must be worth *something*...

However, just a Henry Scheel design does not a Scheel keel include. Too
bad...

For those not familiar, it's got some of the attributes of a wing and some
of a bulb, but primarily greatly increases holding power and reduces vortex
drag over that of a standard keel, particularly beneficial to a shoal draft
need, without the anchor-digging-in attributes of a wing.

So, the boats I'm looking at don't have this keel. I've read of those
cutting off the bottom of a straight keel and adding a bulb, or equivalent,
to achieve a shoal draft with the same equivalent weight. They've done this
perhaps by somehow attaching at the bottom, or, as one site I discovered,
bolting two lead halves to the remaining keel, forming sort of a bulb wing.

Now to the question. Have any of you done, or know someone who has, an
addition of such a bulb/wing to an *existing* - not shortened - keel? The
benefits I'd see are better holding, and more ballast, as low as possible,
against a minimal overall increase in weight (projected is from 30000 to
maybe 32/33000 pounds displacement, with that increase also applying to the
current 8400# ballast, light by my thought).

I'm more interested in experience stories, if there are any, or engineering
reasons for or against, as opposed to 'I think it would...' information.

Thanks.

L8R

Skip (and Lydia)


--
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away
from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Discover." - Mark Twain