[Public-List] In Praise of Integral Keels

Jonathan Bresler 262alberg30 at gmail.com
Mon Feb 25 05:42:09 PST 2019


Beautiful.  Lovely to see.

Related topic: bulb dropping off keel.
Watched The Mike Plant Story on Amazon Video the other night.
Was a determination made as to why the bulb dropped off the keel of Coyote?

Jonathan

On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 5:15 PM Gordon Laco via Public-List <
public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:

> ... and of course the designers name is ‘Garden’, not what I wrote
>
> G
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Feb 24, 2019, at 2:04 PM, Gordon Laco via Public-List <
> public-list at lists.alberg30.org> wrote:
> >
> > Well most yachts since before WW1 have had bolt on keels… I think the
> issue is not so much bolt on keels, as what the keels are bolted to.  Once
> upon a time yachts were built with massive internal transverse structures
> called ‘floors’ which spread the load of bolted-on keels to a wide area of
> very strong hulls.  This was, and still is, a very sound way to build a
> yacht.   If one omits the floors, which there is great impetus to do in
> this era of cost fear, lightweight hulls and shallow bilges, trouble is
> almost inevitable.
> >
> > So here I am in Vancouver connecting flights to LA for the Tall Ships
> America AGM after a week sailing in a friend’s Gardner designed 70’
> schooner.   Conditions were unseasonably cold, so the pilot house, which
> I’d normally sneer at, was quite welcome.  Gardner’s boats can’t be called
> ’traditional’ but they certainly have the look of having been descended
> from traditional designs by means of extrapolation.   This schooner has the
> basic look of a Fredonia from the late 1800’s. but with everything turned
> up to 11. (Those who have seen ’Spinal Tap’ will know what I mean.)
> Everywhere a traditional schooner would have a curve, this one has more
> curve… she has a clipper-like bow, but very much improved from a clipper
> bow.   Her spars are raked, and raked some more.   I’m not sure if she’s
> beautiful, but wow she is fast.
> >
> > Her ballast is all carried internally, amounting to about 33% of her
> total displacement, which is considerable. She has a long straight keel
> like something from the 1800’s… but she’s very fast and weatherly.   She
> has a stays’l rig, which means that there's only one string to pull when
> tacking, that of the outer jib’s sheets.  Everything else flops over on its
> own, self tacking.   The whole sail plan but for the main is on roller
> furlers like big genoas… and the main has a ball bearing car and track
> system which makes a winch required only for luff tension despite the very
> lofty rig and huge sail.  It goes up and down smooth as silk.
> >
> > Down below, I was shocked that although my wife and our host’s wife were
> already there, I couldn’t see them looking in the companionway at the
> cockpit.  They were WAY up forward in one of the staterooms, of which there
> is m
>
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-- 
Jonathan M Bresler
S/V Constance Alberg 30 #262
Annapolis/Eastport MD


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