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Best 34 foot blue water cruiser
On 22 Mar 2004 10:45:29 -0800, (Frank Maier) wrote:
Beating off a lee sho
Well, here's where you definitely want a fin keel sloop in preference
to a
full-keel ketch. There have been discussions here on Usenet about what
"weatherly" means. If a boat can point high, but makes terrible
leeway, is
it truly weatherly?
Not in my book, no. In club racing, the tendency of the boat to make
leeway is generally known and made use of in order to make the mark by
a combination of trimming for the wind, active helming AND factoring
in that little bit of drift. The experienced helmsperson will get a
feel for how responsive their boat is and whether to stand off a lee
shore not due to hazards but due to sea state and the ability of the
boat to claw off. The fin keels excel here, and maybe in 20 years when
Dufours and Beneteaus have canting keels, maybe we'll all laugh at fin
keels. But every design has its strengths and weaknesses: I like to
discover or surmise the strengths, but KNOW the weaknesses....like my
fin keel, spade rudder flat bilged C&C just stinks backing off the
dock under power, but the same boat can turn in a length and I can get
close enough to marks at five plus knots to touch them...because I
know what lee she tends to make.
On the other hand, of course, if I lived in tidal waters, a semi-full
keeler (cutaway forefoot, say) would be great for low-tide maintenance
like the way the English fix stuff on their hulls when their harbours
dry out....
R.
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