As the time for my mast step problem to be fixed gets closer, I start
having these weird ideas about sailing.

So...... Useless idea #(I have lost track). This one may be really
useless.

I like to sail but all the interesting places around have very shallow
water so I began considering adjustable keels and even deformable
keels.
Why not have the bottom of a keel be a bag filled with mercury?
Mercury has a density of 13.5 vs only 11.3 for lead so the volume of
mercury would be less than lead. When you hit bottom, the bag would
deform but stay intact. Of course it would have internal stays to
keep its shape when sailing. Because I am sure ppl would worry about
the mercury leaking out of a hole, I began to consider encapsulating
it in little spheres that could not leak out a small hole but then you
might as well use a solid as ballast. Depleted uranium as ballast
(density of 18.9). Once again, when you hit bottom the bag would
deform displacing the small spheres of ballast.
Then I began considering ways to actively alter the keels depth and
decided perhaps it's shape could be changed from a shallow wing keel
to a deep fin keel by using a deformable parallegram as an internal
structure inside the keel bag. Then I began thinking about the keel
as a vertical wing in the water and thought maybe it could be trimmed
so that the upwind side was the "top" of the wing producing lift in
that direction thus allowing you to point higher.
Maybe I should drink more.