twin keel yacht design

Practical Boat Owner

• Digital edition

Best bilge keel yachts and twin keel yachts for drying out ashore

• Peter Poland
• April 12, 2023

Peter Poland reveals how bilge keel yachts and twin-keel designs won his respect – those that could sail well and stand on their own two feet…

Back in the late 1970s, I found myself on the horns of a dilemma. For the last decade or so I’d dismissed bilge keels and twin keels as ugly and performance sapping appendages. To my eyes, they invariably had the look of casually designed afterthoughts that had sprouted beneath nice hulls just to enable the boat to stand on its own two feet.

The boats that my company built, on the other hand, were aimed at serious sailors and I rashly assumed that anything other than a state-of-the-art fin keel or hydrodynamically efficient lifting keel would never be likely to satisfy this market.

Then my own personal boating needs underwent a change, so I had to take a flyer. Breaking my own rules and ignoring my preconceptions, I went out and spent my own hard-earned loot on a second-hand twin keeled Westerly Centaur.

Why? Because my factory and home were on the East Coast but a lot of high-profile sailing activity took place down south. So I needed a habitable floating base that could be parked on a cheap mud mooring and be able to follow the regatta circuits on which the boats I built (Sonatas, Impalas, Deltas, Medinas etc) competed.

This boat had to provide a general all-purpose home from home. And a bit of undemanding weekend pottering would be an added bonus. With my limited budget, there was only one obvious solution at the time – a Centaur.

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I soon discovered that the Centaur’s windward performance – while adequate – was hardly stimulating, especially when compared to the close winded precision of a Sonata or Impala to which I’d become accustomed.

As a result, the Centaur’s Volvo Penta motor got a lot of use when the wind went light or ahead, whereas on a reach or a run she performed satisfactorily and got us from A to B with a minimum of fuss and at a respectable speed. And she also offered comfort down below – despite the Centaur being only 26ft long I could stand up.

Design challenge

All of which got me thinking that maybe there could be more to these twin keel things than immediately met the eye. And as the sales of our fin and lifting keel speedsters began to slow over the ensuing years, I could not help noticing that the sales of our bilge or twin keeled competitors seemed to be on an ever-rising upwards trend in the 1970s and 80s.

Around 2,500 twin-keel Westerly Centaurs were built, which means there are plenty on the second hand market. Photo: Peter Poland

If we were to continue as a viable boatbuilding business, maybe we’d have to cast aside our prejudices and take a long look at these two-legged options.

So I took courage in both hands and asked our designer whether he might be willing to consider agreeing to design us some twin keels. I hastily added that of course – being the genius that he undoubtedly was – he was bound to come up with something far better than anything that had ever graced a cruising yacht’s bilge before.

Then I stood back and awaited the inevitable broadside of shock, horror and indignation. “Well,” said David Thomas (who had never designed a slow yacht in his life), “I might. I just might.

“But first I’ll need to think about it. In case you’d not noticed, twin keels have far more variables than a fin keel. The positioning of the roots relative to the centre line, the splay, the angle of attack are all variable and important. I’ll have to think twice as hard and for twice as long.”

I took this as a ‘yes’ so left it at that. And patiently awaited developments.

Gib’Sea 76 (26ft 11in) with ‘swept’ twin keels that draw 3ft 3in. Photo: Peter Poland

History of bilge keel yachts

Of course, bilge and twin keels were not a new phenomenon. They had been around for many years. When researching an earlier article on the Westerly story, I’d been fascinated by the development work done on his twin keel and twin rudder yachts by Lord Riverdale. As had my sales manager, Andy Cunningham, who wrote an excellent treatise on twin keels.

Lord Riverdale’s first twin keel sailboat was the smaller self-designed 25ft Bluebird of Thorne , built in 1924. Later Riverdale built the bigger Bluebird of Thorne (50ft) in the early 60s that he designed in collaboration with Arthur Robb. He claimed that tank-tested models indicated a 15% improvement on his earlier twin keel designs.

Bluebird of Thorne ’s owner, Lord Riverdale, had designed and built a string of cruising yachts (all with twin keels) over a period of around 40 years prior to the culminating glory of his and Robb’s 50ft steel twin keeler.

Riverdale also liked to draw the distinction between what he called ‘bilge keelers’ (meaning boats with a ballasted or unballasted centre keel and two stabilising bilge keels) and ‘twin keelers’ (boats with twin ballasted keels).

To go further back to bilge keel basics, it was probably Maurice Griffiths who did most to put bilge keel benefits into practice and bring creek crawling and ‘upright drying out’ to numerous leisure sailors.

Built from GRP, the Golden Hind 31 is a double chine, shoal draught cruiser. Photo: sailingscenes.com

Classics such as the 1957 Eventide 24 and 26, Waterwitch and 1968 Golden Hind 31 (to name but three of his many popular designs) all came with bilge keel options – featuring a substantial central ballast keel and two supporting bilge plates. The resulting shallow draught would never provide dynamic windward performance; but that was not Maurice Griffiths’s aim.

He set out to supply honest, seagoing small yachts that would be equally at home in the rough and tumble of a hostile North Sea as they were weaving between the withies and nosing their way into peaceful and shallow backwaters.

East Coast pottering is a specialised and delightful pastime that can only be enjoyed to the full in a shallow draught yacht that is capable of drying out – whether by mistake or on purpose.

Then along came Robert Tucker and his popular twin keel plywood pocket cruisers such as the Silhouette that took off in 1954. Around the same time, a French designer began to play with twin keels.

François Sergent designed the attractive 22ft Sargue with a beam of 7ft 5in; generous for that era and with reasonable accommodation. Several of this mahogany strip planked twin keeler (drawing 2ft 4in) were built, and they not only sat happily on the Breton mud – they sailed well.

The designer said: “In passage races in the St Malo-Granville area one won two firsts and a fourth in three starts against deep keel boats and centreboarders.” It’s a pity none of them made it over to our UK shores. With pleasing performance and Gallic grace, the Sargue class looked a cut above what was available over here at that time.

Westerly Nomad’s longer coachroof offered improved accommodation to the Westerly 22. Photo: Carolyn Jenkins/Alamy

Westerly 22

Mass-produced and affordable bilge keel GRP yachts only really began to fill up our foreshores after Denys Rayner set up Westerly Marine in the early 1960s. Enthused by the tractable sailing he had enjoyed in his earlier bilge keeled designs such as the jaunty little Westcoaster, he decided that the time was right to invest in a new GRP cruiser.

And so the Westerly 22 was born in 1963. The twin keels drew just 2ft 3in and gave a ballast ratio of 33.3% while a long central ‘keel’ supported the rudder and gave a secure ‘three-point landing’.

The Westerly 22 sailed adequately, sat happily on a drying mooring, and the 22 Young Tiger was seaworthy enough to make a transatlantic crossing in 1966. The longer coachroof of the later Westerly Nomad (1967) improved accommodation.

Following on from the 22’s success and Westerly’s bursting order book, Rayner pushed ahead with 25ft and 30ft models that used the same keel recipe. The burgeoning market for family cruisers was growing fast after the post war dinghy boom.

In a remarkably short time, Westerly sold almost 1,000 of these Rayner-designed yachts and the bilge keel revolution was well and truly on its way.

But even their greatest fans will admit that the sailing performance of these early models was unspectacular. Their modest draught meant that lateral resistance was minimal, so leeway when sailing to windward was considerable compared to that of a yacht with the extra bite given by deeper keels.

When buying a used twin keeler, like the Westerly Centaur or Mirage, get keel roots surveyed. Photo: Peter Poland

And the drag incurred by all that surface area on three shallow appendages cut speed through the water – especially in lighter airs. But the early Westerlys sold like hot cakes because they brought economical sailing, low cost drying moorings and carefree coastal cruising to thousands of sailors taking to the water ‘en famille’ for the first time.

As Westerly pushed remorselessly ahead, other players soon entered the twin keel market. Thames Marine set up on Canvey Island in Essex and, over many years, produced hundreds of Snapdragon cruisers. Like the early Westerlys, these boats were not – by any stretch of the imagination – racers.

While a few models offered a centreboard keel configuration, the majority were twin keelers. Accommodation was always spacious and later models had a pleasing look, thanks to their nicely proportioned coachroofs.

At the smaller end of the market, makes such as Leisures, Silhouettes, Hurleys, Tridents, Macwesters, Cobras and Alacrities – to name a few – offered twin keels as standard or as an option.

But nobody was yet putting that much thought into the designs of the keels themselves. Some builders even produced twin keels that were an integral part of the hull moulding, then filled the GRP keel cavity with iron punchings.

As a result, the keel had to be vertical (to release from the hull mould) – which is far from ideal from a performance perspective. Add a fibreglass moulding filled with iron, and it is a disaster waiting to happen if the boat dries out on rough or rocky ground.

Once the GRP keel base is worn down or punctured, saltwater can get in and rust the iron, whereupon the rest of the fibreglass keel ‘casing’ can get blown away from the rusting iron ballast inside.

Painting a Westerly Centuar while dried out. Photo: Gary Blake/Alamy

Westerly Centaur

The next real leap forward in twin keel design came courtesy of the originators of mass-produced GRP twin keel cruisers – our old friends Westerly again. As Denys Rayner’s health was fading, he enlisted the young David Sanders to take over the running of the company. Unlike Rayner, Sanders was no yacht designer. “Go to Laurent Giles,” advised Rayner.

He was aware of the bilge keel development work and tank testing that had been done by Jack Giles so reckoned design firm Laurent Giles was the most likely to take twin keel design to its next stage. It was wise advice.

When I asked Barry van Geffen (later the MD of the Laurent Giles design office) how the new generation twin keels as first used on the Centaur came into being, he said that Laurent Giles’s research and tank testing had been very revealing.

Westerly Centaur interior. Photo: sailingscenes.com

“What was learned had a significant impact on keel design, as it was discovered that through various angles of attack, heel and yaw, there was a marked change in efficiency (lift versus drag) with keels that were aligned exactly fore and aft on the hull.

The LG [Laurent Giles] team considered all the implications, along with Westerly’s insistence that for production reasons both port and starboard keel castings should come out of the same mould – and settled on a design with a 2° toe-in and veed keel base.”

Twin keel changes

So what does this tell us about Laurent Giles’s suggested changes in twin keel design? Firstly, Westerly’s insistence on symmetrical keel foils for ease of manufacture and economic considerations was fortuitous for other reasons.

Early twin keel designs were often asymmetrical – as originally advocated by the Lord Riverdale of Bluebird fame before he realised these were less effective than symmetrical keels. The theory was that the foil shape on the inside face of the leeward keel and flat shape on the outside face would generate lift (like an aeroplane’s wing) and therefore lift the boat up to windward.

Unfortunately, however, the reverse could apply to the windward keel. In addition, the water flow between the keels could produce a braking effect, thereby slowing the boat down. The effect is not unlike putting the brakes on by adopting a ‘snow plough’ stance when skiing down a mountain.

So Laurent Giles’s move to a modest 2° toe-in for maximum efficiency combined with symmetrical foils was the right way to go. The result was a marked improvement in windward performance over older bilge or twin keel yachts. And if they had gone for slightly more draught than 3ft, it would have been even better.

Westerly Griffon 22

But perhaps they continued to learn, because Centaur’s later and smaller sister – the 23ft Pageant – drew only 2in less (at 2ft 10in) despite being 3ft shorter overall. The Pageant sails well and even used to win club races in her early days. And when Ed Dubois came to design the Centaur’s successor – the 26ft Griffon – he went for 3in more draught than the Centaur and drew finer foils with less drag. So twin keel performance continued to improve.

But the early Griffon’s finer keels (with finer roots) also brought boatbuilders’ attention to the often-overlooked risks attached to bilge keels. Westerly fitted their symmetric twin keels by bolting them to small GRP ‘roots’ that formed part of the hull – rather like a GRP version of old fashioned ‘deadwood’. So the finer the keel, the finer this ‘deadwood’ stub also became.

As a result, it needed greater internal reinforcement to resist sideways movement. And the greatest ‘force’ imparted to twin keel roots – where they attach to the hull – is not necessarily encountered when the boat dries out on soft mud. It happens when the boat tries to break free from the firm grip of the mud as the tide returns and attempts to lift the hull clear of this grip. The deeper and more glutinous the mud, the harder it grips and the longer the boat’s natural buoyancy takes to lift it clear. And this is what caused damage to the early Griffon’s keel roots.

Westerly repaired the damage and reinforced subsequent models. But the lesson was there for every builder of twin keel boats to learn. It also explains why a buyer and his surveyor should inspect keel roots when assessing any possible second-hand purchase.

Hunter Horizon 26. Photo: sailingscenes.com

Hunter Horizon 26

So – to return to the request I put to David Thomas in the early 1980s for a world beating twin keel design. What did he come up with? Predictably perhaps, he took his time. We all reckoned he’d vanished into a mystical twin keel retreat. But the design that finally emerged was well worth the wait.

Thomas reckoned that the optimum angle of heel for comfortable cruising (as opposed to flat out racing) is around 15°. So he designed the keels to attach to the bilge with a 15° splay and to be slightly ‘toed in’. This way the leeward keel would be vertical when the boat was heeled 15° – thereby working at its maximum draught and presenting the biggest possible lateral area to reduce leeway.

Then he placed the keel roots as close to the centreline as was feasible while still making sure that the boat would be stable when dried out. The reasoning behind this was that the closer the keel roots are to the centreline, the less likely the windward keel is to break surface and ‘thump’ when the boat is heeled in a seaway.

The final ingredient to the new generation Thomas twin keel designs produced the most animated discussions with the builder. Any sensible designer wants as much draught as possible – to lower the centre of gravity, increase overall stability and maximise lateral resistance to reduce leeway.

The builder, however, wants to keep the draught low to increase the boat’s appeal from a marketing perspective. So a compromise always had to be negotiated, although Thomas usually won. As a result his twin keelers invariably drew more than the equivalent sized competitors’ boats .

Hunter Horizon 26 interior. Photo: sailingscenes.com

And how did such twin keels actually perform? Extremely well. Having done initial trials on a Delta 25 hull, the Thomas keels were declared to be a success by boat testers and buyers alike. The time was ripe to introduce the first Thomas-designed spacious family cruiser that could sail well and stand on its own two feet.

The long-suffering Delta hull was dragged into the tooling shop again and given a brand new deck moulding for full standing headroom, an aft heads compartment and a spacious stern cabin. The new model was named the Horizon 26 and duly won the Best Production Yacht Award at the 1984 Southampton Boat Show .

We then walked into an unexpected marketing problem. Boat owners were so used to Thomas performance and handling that they could not believe that a twin keeler would be anywhere near as good. Some potential Hunter buyers even said that they “wouldn’t be seen dead in a bilge keel yacht”.

After a bit of head scratching a solution was found. Every demonstration boat for this and subsequent Thomas cruising Hunters had the twin keel option. Any client asking for a trial sail in a fin keel version would be politely told “I’m afraid we only have one demo boat for each model and it’s a twin keeler. So why not try that and if you aren’t impressed, we can always build you a fin keeler.”

It worked a treat. Initial scepticism invariably turned to disbelief followed by delight. Sometimes a client was taken on a trial sail without being told what sort of keel lurked beneath the waterline. When invited to have a guess after returning to the marina, it was amazing how often the client thought it had a fin rather than twin keels.

This Horizon 32 twin keeler (draught 1.3m) won a Round the Island race division. Photo: Peter Poland

Bilge keel yacht design evolution

As the years passed by, Thomas’s twin keel designs continued to evolve and performance got even better. In one memorable demolition derby Round the Island Race , a Thomas-designed twin keel Horizon 32 took the heavy winds head on and won its class and its entire division.

The twin keel Horizon 21 and Horizon 30 also excelled in the CHS divisions. Recently a twin keel Horizon 232 helped her octogenarian owner Murdoch McGregor win the Yachtsman of the Year Award for sailing solo around Britain .

Meanwhile other designers began to tweak their twin keels. Ranges such as Moody, Sadler and Westerly also moved up a gear in performance. Thomas refined his twin keel designs by adding long hydrodynamically shaped bulbs to their bases. These had the effect of throwing the centre of gravity even lower and lengthening the ‘footprint’ on which the boats stood when they dried out.

The extra weight located in bulbs lower down also meant keel foils could become finer and narrower, reducing drag. Other boatbuilders have taken note, with ranges such as the American-designed but British-built Legends displaying prominent bulbs on their twin keels.

So, as marinas get ever more expensive, will more builders offer twin keels on their smaller models? Interestingly, the answer is ‘yes’. But it’s not coming from the UK. It’s coming from France.

Django 770 twin keel yacht drying out

French bilge keel yachts

In the past there were economical marina moorings aplenty available in France, so twin keels did not feature high on the French agenda. But now things are changing. The cost of a marina berth in France is still reasonable compared to the UK: but only if you can find one.

The French Nautical Federation reckons there is now a shortage of around 50,000 marina berths. As a result, twin keels (or bi-quilles as they’re called over there) began to appear in greater numbers.

Now, with the exception of the traditional and long running Biloup Range, French twin keels are expanding the design envelope. Archambault, the builders of the Surprise range, decided that their hugely successful One Design (7.65m) cruiser-racer would have an increased market if they also offered a two-legged version.

Designer Michel Joubert went for deep (1m) twin keels with narrow chord foils and race boat bulbs on their bases. The roots are well inboard and the performance is said to be exceptional.

RM-Fora Marine specialises in multi chine plywood-epoxy hulled cruisers, invariably with twin keels. The latest models, from the pen of leading French designer Marc Lombard, are anything but conventional.

A new RM890 ready to hit the road. The twin keels draw 1.5m. Photo: RM Yachts

Draught is generous (for example the twin keel RM890 draws 1.5m) with keels that are as fine as you’ll find on a top-level racer. And the bulbs on their bases are just as sophisticated.

These RMs are exciting and versatile boats, although I wonder whether their futuristic looks and multi chine wooden hull construction will find favour with many British buyers. I hope so, because the combination of a plywood-epoxy hull with a GRP deck offers excellent insulation and a substantial strength to weight ratio.

The Django 7.70 designed by Pierre Roland and built by Marée Haute in France has also proved to be a speedy twin keel 25-footer capable of crossing many oceans. Christophe Mora and Carina Juhhova are currently in South Africa after sailing L’Envol across the Pacific and Indian oceans. Their progress reports on intothewind.fr are fascinating.

Django 7.70 L’Envol has a scrub in Brazil on her round the world cruise. An aft strut supports the stern. Photo: Christophe Mora

So far Django 7.70 L’Envol has crossed the Atlantic, cruised down the East coast of South America to Patagonia, across the Pacific and sailed the Australian coastline before moving on to South Africa.

The Django range comprises the 6.70 (lifting keel only), the 7.70 (fin or twin keel), 9.80 (fin or twin keel) and 12.70 (fin or lifting keel). The twin keel Django 7.70 that I tested was a total delight.

The future of bilge keel yachts?

So what lies ahead? With only a handful of French yards offering new twin keel boats, there is a dearth of choice in the new boat market. Of course, sailors can always buy second-hand while they await new arrivals. But be sure to get those keel roots surveyed and check rudder and keel bases for grounding damage.

I can’t help thinking that as designers come up with ever improved twin keel designs, something will soon have to give. As British marina costs move beyond the means of many boat owners and French marinas reach maximum capacity, maybe there’s a new twin keel dawn just over the horizon?

Exciting new twin keel designs might even persuade production boat builders to market new boats under 30ft again? Some may even sprout foils and try to fly!

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Power predictions calculate 85 h.p. to reach the maximum design speed of 14 knots with a powering efficiency of 50%.

Sailboat Keel Types: Illustrated Guide (Bilge, Fin, Full)

The keel type is one of the most important features of your boat. But the different designs can be confusing, so I've set out to create a very clear guide that will help you understand sailboat keels once and for all.

What are the most common sailboat keel types? The most common sailboat keel types are full-length keels, fin keels, bulb keels, wing keels, bilge keels, and lifting keels. Full keels are popular among cruisers, while fin keels are generally used for racing. Bilge keels and lifting keels are typically used in tidal waters, on small fishing boats for example.

In this article, we'll explore the most common keel types together. I'll use diagrams to really hit home the differences of all these keel types, and we'll discuss what keel types are best for liveaboard, ocean cruising, and lake weekend trips. After reading this article, you'll know what to choose - and why.

Sailboat Keels Explained

On this page:, overview of sailboat keel types, keel types: fundamentals, modified full keel, centerboard.

If you just want a quick overview, here's a list with the most common keel types and a short description. More detail will follow below.

The most common keel types

• Full keels run from front to aft and are the most stable keel type, making them the most popular cruising keel.
• Fin keels offer the best performance but are less comfortable. This makes them popular for racing. Fin keels are bolted on to the hull and generally run deep and thin.
• Bulb and wing keels are both variants on the fin keel.
• Bulb keels carry additional ballast in the tip, making them more stable.
• Wing keels have two tips at the end of the keel, which reduces crossflow, improving directional stability.
• Bilge keels are double fin or double full kees, which allows the boat to be beached, making them the most popular keel for tidal waters.
• Lifting keels are moveable keels that can be lowered and raised, allowing the boat to enter shallow waters as well.
• Centerboard keels are a pivoting lifting keel, allowing to sail both coastal and inland waters.
• Leeboards are fins on the sides of flat-bottomed hulls boats, making a keel unnecessary.

Properties of each keel type

What does a keel do?

What does the keel do? A keel is a vertical blade running down from the hull. It is weighted and acts as a ballast, countering the boat's tendency to heel and preventing it from tipping over. The wetted surface under the waterline reduces slippage to leeward by creating a track, which counters the sideway force of the wind on the sails.

The reason sailboats don't tip over is that the weight of the keel counters the buoyancy of the hull, which means it will pull the boat downward. This downward force reduces heel and prevents the boat from rolling.

A canoe doesn't have a keel. Try stepping into that: it will want to roll.

It counters the horizontal force the wind puts on the sails. Whenever the force on the sails increases, the resistance of the water on the keel increases proportionally.

The heavier the keel, the less heel you'll get.

A keel reduces slippage to leeward. Slippage is simply the amount you fall off course because of the direction of the wind and current. Leeward is the side of the boat behind the wind.

So if you don't have a keel, you will fall off course quite a lot because the wind will push you over the water surface.

You will also heel quite a lot since there is nothing beneath the water surface to counter the force of the wind high up in your sails.

A keel fixes both of these issues and makes sailboats one of the most reliable boats in heavy winds and storms.

You can read on about how keels work here.

Keels can be classified by multiple dimensions. You can look at them from the side or the front. You can also classify them based on properties.

Before I dive into each keel type in-depth and show examples, let's make sure we have the same starting point.

There are essentially two sorts of keels:

Fixed keels

Movable keels.

Fixed keels are keels that are integrated into the hull or bolted on. They can't be moved or lifted.

When looking at fixed keels, you can divide them up further based on the side view. There are three main categories:

Bilge keels

Full keels are more comfortable, provide better stability and protection, but are also slower than fin keels.

Fin keels are less comfortable, provide less stability, are more vulnerable, but they're also a lot faster than full keels.

Bilge keels are double keels: one on each side of the hull. This allows them to be beached, which comes in handy in tidal waters. They are generally a lot slower and less maneuverable compared to fin keels.

Movable keels can be lifted from the water, creating a shoal (shallow) draft, allowing the boat to enter both shallow waters and coastal waters. This makes it a very versatile keel type. There are two main designs:

Lifting keels

Lifting keels can be lowered and raised through a slit in the hull. Examples of lifting keels are the daggerboard and centerboard.

Leeboards are wooden swords attached to the side of the hull and prevent slippage to leeward, but they don't stabilize the boat, nor counter heel by adding ballast.

With fin keels, there are different tip designs available. The most common two tip designs are:

These are both variants of the fin keel. Generally, these keel designs are mentioned in one breath with full keels and fin keels, creating confusion on what kind of keel they are. But it's important to understand that they are a sub-category of fin keels.

Rudder design

As with the tip of the fin, there are different rudder designs that may apply to both fin and full keels. The two most common rudder designs are:

Skeg rudder

Spade rudder.

A skeg is a structural part of the keel in front of the rudder that protects the rudder. The keel encompasses the rudder, preventing any rogue ropes, weeds, or rocks from damaging the rudder.

A spade rudder is an unprotected rudder: it doesn't have any structural protection from the keel design. It is simply attached to the hull. This design is very common.

Alright, we understand the big picture. Let's dive into more detail for each keel type and discuss the pros and cons.

Fixed keel Good for cruising and liveaboards Comfortable

What is a full keel? A full keel runs from front to aft for at least 50% of the hull and is fully integrated into the hull. It has the largest wetted surface of any keel type, and it is also the heaviest. This results in directional stability and reduced heeling, providing the most comfortable ride, but also the slowest.

The wetted surface simply means the amount of water contact area. With such a large wetted surface, it decreases slippage to leeward the most of all keel types, while it counters heeling the most as well.

The full keel is the most comfortable and stable keel type available. However, comfort comes at a price. It delivers the worst performance due to this large wetted area. It is the slowest of the keel types, and it has the worst windward performance.

This makes full keels particularly great for longtime cruisers or liveaboards who prefer comfort over speed, but less ideal for daysailers who need to navigate in and out of slips regularly.

Since it runs for at least 50% of the hull, it doesn't need to run as deep as a fin keel, resulting in a more shoal draft.

Heavier keels result in increased displacement, so a full keel boat will need a larger sail area to compensate for its weight.

For a more detailed discussion on full keel advantages, I recommend reading William's excellent article 5 Surprising Advantages of a Full Keel Sailboat here.

Example sailboats with a full keel:

• Nicholson 22
• Island Packet 380
• Beneteau Oceanis 411 Clipper
• Beneteau First 50
• Jeanneau Sun Shine 38
• Dufour 455 Grand Large

There are a lot of great cruising boats with full keel designs , some of them considered classics.

Full Keel with skeg rudder

Full keels with a skeg rudder design have a protected rudder, thanks to putting a structural part of the keel directly in front of the rudder. This helps with fending off any hazards to the rudder, like floating pieces of rope, rocks, or garbage, and protects it in case of running aground. The skeg design ensures the rudder is nearly impossible to break off.

Fixed keel Good for cruising and liveaboards Faster than a regular full keel

What is a modified full keel? A modified full keel is a full keel with a cutout at the front, reducing the wetted surface slightly, which increases performance without sacrificing too much comfort and stability. After the full keel, it has the best directional stability and the least amount of heel.

The modified full keel is popular among (bluewater) cruisers, thanks to its increased handling and performance. Most modified full keels have a skeg rudder, ensuring it is well-protected.

The slightly reduced weight and wetted surface improve windward performance quite a lot, but it is still one of the most stable keel designs out there.

Example sailboats with a modified full keel:

• Hallberg-Rassy HR 40
• Dufour Arpege 30
• Beneteau Oceanis Clipper 281
• Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 37.2

Fixed keel Good for racing Fast

What is a fin keel? A fin keel is a long, weighted blade attached to the bottom of the hull. It is lighter, faster, and more maneuverable than a full keel, but also more vulnerable. The increased distance between ballast and sails provides a lever, reducing the need for a large wetted surface or additional ballast.

Fin keels are generally bolted onto the hull and run deeper and thinner than a full keel. They are also lighter. This helps increasing performance (a lot), making fin keels a lot faster in all situations.

There are some major disadvantages to fin keels, however. Fin keels are a lot less comfortable than full keels and allow for more heel and a less solid track, so less directional stability. Fin keels are also a lot more vulnerable than full keels. They can break off when running aground, or get damaged.

They are very popular among racers and perform better when maneuvering in tight spots, like getting in and out of slips.

Example sailboats with a fin keel:

• Catalina 30
• Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 36.2

Fin keel with skeg rudder

Fin keels with a skeg rudder use a small structural part in front of the rudder to protect it. This design is mostly integrated into the hull, making it less vulnerable, and a great compromise between speed and safety.

Fin keel with spade rudder

Fin keels with a spade rudder have a completely exposed rudder, and typically a fin that is simply bolted on. The keel isn't integrated into the hull, making it more vulnerable and less comfortable.

Fin keel variant Good for cruising Less crossflow

What is a wing keel? A wing keel is a fin keel with a horizontal foil at the tip, which is wing-shaped and generally weighted. Its shape reduces crossflow, improving directional stability, and its ballast decreases heel, resulting in a more comfortable ride. The addition of a wingtip allows for a shorter fin, reducing draft.

Wing keels are good for cruising since this design improves directional stability compared to a regular fin keel or a bulb keel.

We'll discuss the wing keel's advantages and disadvantages in more detail in this article.

Fin keel variant Good for cruising Stability

What is a bulb keel? A bulb keel is a high-aspect-ratio fin keel with additional ballast at the end, which generally has a bulb or teardrop shape. This ballast improves stability and utilizes the distance between force and counterforce as a lever. This design reduces the need for a deep fin, resulting in a shoal draft.

By placing the weight at the largest possible distance from the force on the sails, you need relatively little extra weight for the same reduction in heel, making bulb keels very effective for cruising.

This design reduces the wetted area while increasing the weight of the keel just slightly, which increases sailing comfort big time.

Example sailboats with a bulb keel:

• Bavaria B/One
• Beneteau First 24

Fixed keel Good for racing Can be beached

What is a bilge keel? A bilge keel is a twin keel which uses double fins, allowing the boat to be beached and rest on its keel upright. Bilge keels have double the wetted surface, which increases comfort and directional stability while decreasing heel. Modern bilge keels often provide decent windward performance, thanks to better design.

The bilge keel does sacrifice speed compared to the fin keel but doesn't necessarily offer worse performance overall. Older designs performed considerably worse than other keels and were especially slow.

Bilge keels have some major advantages over full keels and fin keels. The most important is that the boat can be beached, making it a popular design in tidal waters. Bilge keels are especially common along the British coastline, where fishermen keep their boats in tidal harbors.

Another major advantage is that the boat can be stored resting on its keels, making dry storage and maintenance a lot easier.

Of course, there are many more pros and cons to the bilge keel , which we go into here.

Example sailboats with a bilge keel:

• Dufour Dynamique 62
• Hunter Duette
• Patagonia Patago 39
• Macwester 27

Lifting keel Good for daysailers Versatile

What is a centerboard? A centerboard is a type of retractable keel that rests on a hinge and can be lowered through a slot in the hull. It folds out like a pocket knife and allows you to increase or reduce the draft of the boat. Centerboards are mostly used on small fishing boats.

The centerboard is a very versatile keel type, allowing you to have both a very shoal draft for inland waters, as well as steadying the boat and reducing heel for larger bodies of water, or even oceans.

I've sailed a Cornish Crabber with a centerboard for a week, and while we stayed inland, having the option to increase the keel depth really came in handy when crossing the IJsselmeer (a former sea in The Netherlands).

There's more to the center

Olaf Roethele

https://www.theyachtmarket.com/en/new-boats/cornish-crabbers/adventure-17/218/

My name is Olaf and I am the owner of a Cornish Crabber 17 Adventure boat.

I would like to ask you if you can imagine to install on this boat a Torqeedo 2.0 Pod motor? Therefore i guess a modification of the keel/skeg is necessary ?!

Best regards from Uruguay,

You completely missed the hybrid planing/water-ballast keel of the Macgregor range

Thanks a lot for this explanation

Roger Bannon

Very well written article which provides an excellent guide for us small wooden boat builders. Thanks.

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Professional BoatBuilder Magazine

Notes on sailing-yacht hullforms, part 2.

By Jay Paris , Mar 22, 2022

In “Notes on Sailing-Yacht Hullforms” ( Professional BoatBuilder No. 196, page 32) naval architect Jay Paris, citing drawings and photographs of his own designs as well as the lines of other designers, detailed some characteristics, attributes, and design methods used to develop monohull sailboat hullforms. Because of space constraints in the print magazine, we are publishing Paris’s additional notes and reference material on Proboat.com. In addition to his sections on fin-keel variants and parent hullforms, Paris includes a reference list of hullforms worthy of note for a number of reasons—aesthetics, excellence as examples of their type, historic significance, or design methodology. All but one of the hullforms in this Part 2 are round bottomed, and all the yachts cited, which were built during the past century, are wooden boat designs. The lengths for the hullforms in this article are length of hull (LOH) since length overall (LOA) includes extensions to the hull such as bowsprits and boomkins and length on deck (LOD) is often less than the hull due to bulwarks and reverse transoms. —Ed.

Twin-Keel and Retracting-Foil Variants

A variant of the fin-keel design is the twin-keel. Most common on coastal cruisers intended to take the ground when the tide is out, they reflect an empirical approach to their design. A few are serious offshore passagemakers, including the noteworthy Bluebird of Thorne .

This design is the combination of Robb’s talent and tank testing along with Lord Riverdale’s experience with his previous Bluebirds when he was R.A, Balfour. Bluebird of Thorne ’s keels canted outboard at 20°, and normal to her near circular midsection, were low aspect ratio, highly swept back asymmetrical foils that Robb implied were towed inboard and certainly were more sophisticated than those of almost all other twin keelers. Robb’s strong favorable opinions about this design concept have been frequently quoted in detail.

A more current fin-keel variation is the use of canting keels, with or without lift-generating sections, employed on offshore racers to shift the ballast bulb to weather to increase their righting moments.

Parent Sailing-Yacht Hullforms and Evolution

Historically, designers have used specific earlier boats as the basis for follow-on designs, in some cases very closely but with changes in the overall size and proportions. For example, Nathanael Greene Herreshoff had noticeable success using his 26 ’ (7.92m) Alerion III NGH 718 of 1912 as the parent for designs as large as the 33.42 ’ (10.19m) Newport 29 of 1914 and the 43.25 ’ (13.18m) Fishers Island 31, designed by his son Sidney using NGH’s offsets.

The lines shown incorporate the cutaway deadwood aft with a balance portion of the rudder forward of the rudderstock as found in the Alerion copies by the Sanford Boat Company. Eliminating these features would restore the lines to the original NGH configuration.

Maynard Bray, in his book Aida , includes a photograph of Herreshoff’s offset booklet pages used in the mathematical expansion to create the 33.67 ’ (10.26m) Aida of 1926. The Buzzards Bay 25 of 1914 looks perhaps to be the least likely of being an Alerion derivative.

L.F. Herreshoff said the Buzzard’s Bay 25 was his favorite of his father’s designs.

Another famous parent hullform is the Pilot S&S 539, 32.92 ’ (10.03m) wooden stock class sloop of 1945. Olin Stephens wrote in Lines 2002 that the Pilot was “drawn in the Boston office by K. Aage Nielsen, who was, in theory, working under my supervision.” The later S&S 1727 fiberglass version from the New York office was lengthened to 36.07 ’ (10.99m).

Since there are not lines available in my references for the 1962 Pilot, this rendering by Al Mason gives a good sense of her hullform. Mason drew perspectives for many S&S designs.

The beautiful Anitra S&S 1358 48.42 ‘ (14.76m) yawl of 1958, the largest of the Pilot family, was the overall winner of the 1959 Fastnet Race.

In my own practice, The Paris Design P-32 (9.75m) Petrel is the parent of the later P-37, G-37, and OCC-47 designs.

While the P-32 hullform had many atypical features, a number of them were optimized for her longitudinally framed wood-foam-wood composite construction.

The P-32’s longitudinals are shown fitted into the molds setup at her stations. The clamps and longitudinals are laminated mahogany with the latter located on her waterlines ready for the double-diagonal planking to be glued and fastened. The temporary pine longitudinals in the underbody will be protected from any glue by duct tape prior to the first layer of planks being installed. The staples into the longitudinals are pulled as the second layer of planking is glued and stapled to the first. All permanent staples are Monel. The uppermost pine longitudinals are just above the tops of the bulwarks.

Those using state-of-the-art yacht design software often morph parents to the extent that their design “DNA” is no longer apparent.

Hullform evolution is similar but less slavishly derivative than the use of parent hullforms. The Viking ships of a thousand years ago are candidates for the most elegant hullforms of all time. The Scandinavian preference for double-enders has followed this fashion in some degree to modern times. Colin Archer’s Redningsskoite (rescue boats), which evolved from them, have inspired designers to this day. William Atkin’s 38 ’ (11.58m) ketch Ingrid , his highly refined granddaughter of this type, is considered to be one of his best designs.

Ingrid ’s fine lines with a wineglass midsection and 6 tons of outside and internal ballast contribute to the design’s good performance.

Knud Reimers’s Cohoe is a 1932, 32 ’ enlargement of his famous and beautiful 27 ’ (8.23m) Tumlare of 1927. These designs introduced lighter displacement and finer lines than earlier Scandinavian double-enders. Many consider the Tumlares to have the most beautiful hullforms of all time.

Knud Reimers, well-known for his Square-Meter boats, applied the same design philosophy to this double-ended cruiser. Reimers and I discussed his diagonals and contracted fairing approach during a week of sailing in the early 1970s.

A small Danish fishing boat type with very full sterns typical of the sound north of Copenhagen was the parent of the Spidsgatter classes of sailing yachts. Aage Nielsen, a Dane, was familiar with the type. Some of his smaller designs from 15 ’ to 26 ’ (4.57m to 7.92m) were referred to as Nielsenized Spidsgatters. Their full sterns were models for that of Holger Danske , his 42.5’ (12.95m) cruising ketch that won the 1980 Newport-to-Bermuda Race by a large margin.

One of Aage Nielsen’s favorite designs, Holger Danske , had a slippery hull, a low rating, and sailed like fury on a reach.

Over time, many working craft have served as models for sailing yachts. The danger, at times, has been designers ignoring the original function, loading, and the wind and sea conditions for which working craft were developed.

Design evolution can also be seen amongst ocean racers. Olin Stephens’s Stormy Weather came seven years after the famous Dorade of 1929, which had introduced the forms of his earlier inshore Six-Meter designs to the offshore world. These two sisters established a trend for blended-body ocean racers for some four decades.

Stormy Weather , slightly longer than Dorade , of similar displacement but with 22% more beam, was a favorite of her designer.

Sources From My Library

Starting before high school with the original five Uffa Fox books of 1934/1938, my office library has grown to almost a thousand books on sailing and sailing yachts with most containing technical material as well as numerous technical reports. I also have some 100 volumes addressing hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and aerospace design containing material applicable to sailing yachts not addressed in yachting publications.

Lines drawings from my library that I consider worthy of note and reference but not embedded in the text are shown below with captions and sources. Note: Lines in the early five Uffa Fox books were redrawn by Fox.

Starling Burgess. Nina , 59’ Staysail Schooner, 1928.

Just one of Starling Burgess’s many beautiful sets of lines from the multi-talented aviation pioneer and yacht designer. Nina ’s blended body hullform was a very early example of the long waterline with short overhangs concept currently (2022) in vogue.

Howard I. Chapelle. Clipper-Bowed Centerboarder, 1936

Howard I. Chapelle was an eminent yacht designer and a historian who chronicled the designs of American working sailing craft. He chose a traditional clipper-bowed centerboarder to illustrate the steps in developing a lines drawing in his classic text on design of 1936.

Frederick A. Fenger. Diablesse , 38’ Wishbone Ketch, 1935

Frederick Fenger was an advocate of the dhow hullform with its unusual maximum draft near the bow. Diablesse ’s maximum draft was 23% of the waterline abaft the bow. Her forebody had V-shaped sections, hollow waterlines, and easy diagonals.

William Garden. Oceanus , 60’ Narrow Doubled-Ended Sloop, 1954

An example of a designer’s atypical boat for himself. An elegant, narrow sixty-footer (18.29m) intended for a crew of two, Garden and his wife. Interestingly, to quote an article in the January 1961 issue of Motor Boating : “ Oceanus was launched bottom up; there were considerable advantages in building her hull that way, and she was run into the water, parbuckled, and pumped out at insignificant cost and no risk compared with the tricky job of turning a hull of that size on shore.”

N.G. Herreshoff. Aida , 33.67’ Keel/Centerboard Yawl, 1926

Lines drawn by Doug Hylan from Original HMC 1002 Offsets. For the subtitle of his book, Maynard Bray wrote, “N.G. Herreshoff’s finest shallow-draft yawl.” Adding to the praise is the quote in the Preface that L. Francis Herreshoff called her “probably the finest boat of her size in the world.” In his book, Bray documents the evolution of Aida from Alerion through Pleasure NGH 907, the second of his shallow keel/centerboarders with low-aspect-ratio triangular foils.

L. Francis Herreshoff. Rozinante , 24’ Canoe Yawl (Ketch Rig), 1956

LFH’s graceful and leaner interpretation of the English canoe yawl was the only example of its type to be widely seen on American waters. Roger Taylor quoted LFH: “A canoe yawl can be about the safest that can be had since her design is based on those most seaworthy open boats ever known—whaleboats.”

George Holmes. Trent , 25’ Canoe Yawl, 1910

George Holmes, a designer and artist, was in the forefront of the English canoe yawl world. The term canoe yawl deserves explanation. It has nothing to do with the rig but rather with size, it being the same size or smaller than a ship’s yawl boat. The term canoe relates to it being either a day boat or coastal cruiser.

Robert Perry. Amati , 40’ High-Aspect-Ratio Fin-Keel, Spade-Rudder, Wood-Foam-Wood Composite, Fast Cruising Sloop, 1999

A significant departure from Perry’s early double-enders, this is one of his light-displacement sleds, for a couple with the emphasis on off-the-wind speed. His early designs were often double enders including the iconic Valiant with its full-ended cruiser stern. The term cruiser stern refers to the sterns on the cruiser class of warships prior to World War II.

Knud Riemers. Moose , 43.0’ 30-Square-Meter Sloop, 1934

Moose was the 1935 US 30-Square-Meter champion. Uffa Fox stated in 1936 that she was “probably the finest example of a 30-Square-Meter in the world.”

Sparkman & Stephens. Babe , 30.5’ Fractional Sloop, 1935

Babe , a favorite of Olin Stephens, was one of the 49 designs he illustrated and commented on in his book Lines. The modern S&S 30, purported to be an update of Babe and assigned a “1935” based design number 97-c2, has nothing in common with the original’s hullform.

Sparkman & Stephens. 1834 Intrepid , 64.25’ 12-Meter Sloop, 1967

Although conventional thinking states that deep draft is required for optimal windward performance, the heavily ballasted 12-Meters with minimal salient keel prove the exception. While articles about S&S designs often stated new from the board of OJS, it was not so during my time at the Madison Ave. office. Olin’s board did not have any room for drawings, so he would come into the main portion of the office to review a designer’s work and suggest changes, for example, to Mario Tarabocchia’s 12-Meter lines. I had the privilege of being involved in this process with the preliminary design of S&S 1770 Ta Aroa a New Zealand A Class racer. Olin had me start with a 5.5 meter’s lines, doubling their size, and proceeding under his guidance.

E.G. van de Stadt. Zeevalk , 41’ V-Bottom Plywood, Fin-Keel, Spade-Rudder, Fractional Sloop, 1949

This second design of E.G. van de Stadt’s and the first for Bruynzeel established his reputation as an innovative designer with a preference for fin-keel, spade-rudder configurations. This perspective or isometric illustrates Zeevalk ’s V-bottom hullform and the short-chord trim tab on the trailing edge of her fin keel.

Joel White. Dragonera , JW Design 49 74’ Fin-Keel Ketch, 1993

Joel White’s designs varied from traditional hullforms and construction in the fashion of Herreshoff and Nielsen to cold-molded fin keel types.

Jay Paris Designs:

No. 10 Aeromarine 50, 50 ’ Tall Mizzen Ketch 1968

No. 24 Lone Star, 54 ’ LOH Clipper Bow Ketch 1976

No. 27 Freedom 33, 33 ’ Cat Ketch for Gary Hoyt 1977

No. 33 P-32, 32 ’ Keel/Centerboard Sloop 1982

No. 40 P-45/Y-45, 45 ’ Ketch for YW/CW Contests 1988

No. 43 OCC/Sail, 43 ’ Sloop for Sail Article 1992 (An Ocean Cruising Club member survey design)

No. 48 P-37, Yawl for IBEX and METS Lectures 2007

No. 51 G-37, Keel/CB Yawl for a CCA Lecture 2014

No. 53 OCC-47, Keel/Centerboard Ketch 2018 (A rethink of the 1992 OCC member survey requirements)

Lines Drawings Reading List

In the following books, design examples illustrate the step-by-step creation of the lines reflecting the hullforms in fashion when the texts were written:

Chapelle, Howard I. Yacht Designing and Planning , 1936.

Clipper Bow 33.33 ’ DWL Shoal-Draft Centerboarder.

Kinney, Francis. Skene’s Elements of Yacht Design , 8th Ed., 1973.

Pipe Dream 25.42 ’ DWL Cruising Yacht.

Phillips-Birt, Douglas. Sailing Yacht Design , 3rd Ed., 1966 and 1976.

Full Keel 30 ’ DWL Fast Cruiser Including design using Diagonals.

Larsson, Lars and Rolf Eliasson. Principals of Yacht Design . 3rd/4th Eds., 2007 and 2014.

YD-40 39.5 ’ 2007 and YD-41 41 ’ 2014 Fin Keel Fast Cruising Yachts.

These books discuss various technical design details and parameters used by yacht designers:

Brewer, Ted. Ted Brewer Explains Sailboat Design , 1985.

Killing, Steve. Yacht Design Explained , 1998.

Perry, Robert H. Yacht Design According to Perry , 2008.

For a more theoretical explanation of the factors influencing sailing yacht design, I recommend:

Marchaj, C.A. Sailing Theory and Practice , 2nd Ed., 1982.

Marchaj, C.A. Seaworthiness: The Forgotten Factor , 1996.

Fossati, Fabio. Aero-Hydrodynamics and the Performance of Sailing Yachts , 2007.

Slooff, J.W. The Aero- and Hydrodynamics of Keel Yachts , 2015.

Bruce, Peter. Heavy Weather Sailing , 7th Ed., 2016.

About the Author: While attending Webb Institute Jay Paris worked two winters and one summer at Sparkman & Stephens. His graduate studies at MIT focused mostly on oceanography and research-vessel design. He also managed the MIT towing tank and operations of the yacht-testing program and participated in the international investigations into the 1979 Fastnet Race disaster. After MIT he was involved in the design of winches for the America’s Cup and high-end racing yachts, the design and construction of various sailboats, and the writing and editing of articles on sailing yachts for a number of different journals.

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Keel options

All our yachts offer a choice of six different keel configurations. Take the opportunity to equip your boat with the sailing characteristics of your choice and match it your preferred sailing area.

There are up to four different fixed keel variants available. We offer the performance-orientated deep keel with lead bulb, the low-cost standard solution made out of cast steel or you can choose one of our shallow keel options.

Our twin-keel design has been optimised according to the latest hydrodynamic research, and comparison tests have shown that there is little or no loss in performance compared to the standard fin keel. The twin-keels are ideal if you wish to dry out between tides.

Alternatively, our unique swing-keel provided considerable flexibility. Instead of a half skeg and centre-line rudder, this version has double rudders. The lift-keel design does restrict you to certain interior options, but it offers high security and excellent performance, it’s controlled by electro-hydraulic mechanism that moves the full-ballast keel.

Even our fin keels give you the possibility to choose between 4 different designs. Choose between the performance-oriented deep keel with lead bulb, the cost-effective cast iron keel or the shallow keels with minimum drafts of 1.15 m, for example, on the Sirius 310 DS.

Our twin-keel design has been optimized according to the latest hydrodynamic research, and comparison tests have shown that there is little or no loss in performance compared to the standard fin keel. The twin-keels are ideal if you wish to dry out.

In November 2015 “Sailing” magazine tested the Sirius 40 DS in the fixed keel version (1.75m) and the twin keel version (1.45m). The verdict? “Despite the extra weight and only 1.45m draft, we could not find any difference in the sailing performance and the height in the wind compared to the well-sailing fixed keel version”.

Swing keels

We developed a very interesting solution to the design of a swing keel. We have worked closely with manufacturers who have more than 20 years experience with swing keels in one-off boats of up to 80 feet. More than 40 of these one-offs are sailing in the North Sea and to distant shores, they have proven to be very successful as racing boats too. We have distilled all the experience of these customers and constructors and have developed our clever design.

Our system operates with an electro-hydraulic powered swing keel that carries the whole weight of the ballast in the swinging part. When raised, it protrudes about 15cm out of the hull and distributes the weight of the boat along its length together with a small grounding plate around the lifting keel box. We use a double rudder system. On grounding, the depth of the rudders is only 5 cm less than the hull, they are very strongly built so that the boat is supported not only by the flat hull and keel but also by the double rudders.

When sailing, our system ensures the best performance with a very deep centre of gravity, especially when compared to many other systems which carry most of the weight in the grounding plate and therefore need nearly double the weight of ballast without ever reaching the same stability.

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Keel design – options to consider when choosing a yacht

by Simon Jollands | Boat Maintenance , Yacht ownership

Keel design is constantly evolving and nowhere is this more apparent than in modern racing yachts such as the Imoca Open 60 class. These fast offshore monohulls use highly sophisticated canting keels to help them stay upright when sailing upwind. The boats are designed to be as light as possible while at the same time being solid enough to cope with ocean racing.

While cruising yachts are not designed to win ocean races, there are several options of keel design available. Traditional yachts tend to have long deep keels which are an integral part of the hull, which make them heavier than modern designs, but stable and seaworthy.

Many modern yachts have fin shaped keel designs, which are bolted beneath the hull. This produces lighter, faster and and more manouevrable yachts than deep keel designs.

Below is a summary of all the common keel designs found on types of sailing yachts on the market today.

Long keel design

Long, deep keels are common on traditional yachts. They form part of the hull structure as opposed to being bolted on to the hull. They provide plenty of strength and stability but are less efficient than modern designs.

Fin keel design

A fin keel is bolted on to the underside of the hull. Fin keels vary from shallow fin to deep fin. Cruising yachts tend to have shallow, wide fin keels, sometimes with heavy bulbs at the foot to minimise the yacht’s draught. Racing yachts tend to have thin and deep keels with heavy bulbs to improve performance.

Bilge keel design

Twin, or bilge keels enable a yacht to remain upright when dried out at low tide. They have a shallower draught than fin keels, making them suited to cruising in shallow, coastal waters. They do not perform to windward as well as a fin keel and are used for cruising as opposed to racing yachts.

Lifting keel design

A lifting keel enables a yacht to stay afloat in very shallow water. Lifting keels work in a similar way to a sailing dinghy’s centreboard. They are an alternative solution to bilge keels, with the advantage that when lowered they perform as well as a fixed fin keel. Their design is ideal for trailer sailers.

Canting keel design

Canting keels are used on high performance racing yachts. They have a deep fin with a bulb. They can be tilted or “canted” out sideways to counter the heeling forces. These advanced designs are used with daggerboards and foils to further improve performance. Boats with canting keels are pricey.

When making a choice, consideration should be given to the shape of the hull as well as the keel design. The shape of the bow and stern are the most noticeable aspects of hull shape as they are above the waterline.

Modern designs favour vertical bows but in the past raked bows were more common.

On modern yachts, the scooped stern is popular as it allows for a swim platform and easy access on and off the boat from the water. In the past canoe shaped sterns and flat  transoms were popular and while pleasing to the eye, were not quite as practical as today’s designs.

When choosing a yacht, there are many design variations and shapes that will influence your choice. It is worth spending some time exploring the options and weighing up the pros and cons to ensure that the boat you buy will suit the type of sailing you have in mind.

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Yachting Monthly

• Digital edition

Boat handling: How to use your yacht’s hull shape to your advantage

• Toby Heppell
• October 8, 2021

Whether you have a long keel or twin keel rudders, there will be pros and cons when it comes to performance. Toby Heppell explores three boats' differences

Boat handling: how to use your yacht’s hull shape to your advantage

Ask any sailor to explain the differing characteristics of hull shapes and they will be full of opinions about the advantages and disadvantages of one boat or another.

But these views are usually clouded by past experience and bias.

To a degree the vast array of opinions on offer about any given design choice support the need for such a variety of hull shapes, keel choices, rudder types and so on.

Every yacht ever designed is right for someone out there in the world.

Given these deeply held biases, it can be difficult to get accurate representations of what the compromises and benefits that come from certain boat designs actually are.

Taking a data-driven approach to this question can be a very difficult task indeed, so naturally YM set out to do just that.

Raw data may seem dull, but understanding your boat’s numbers can improve your sailing and your boat handling

We set an objective to take three types of boat, broadly reflecting eras of design, and put them through their paces on the water in an attempt to find the idiosyncrasies inherent in each design and measure them.

Although far from a comprehensive overview of all design options available, the three representative styles we settled on were: a long keel with keel-hung rudder, a medium displacement fin keel and skeg, and a modern, wide hull with twin rudders.

We felt these gave a representation of the broad direction in design over the last 50 years, though there are many permutations of hull and keel that were not included.

In an ideal world, we’d have three boats built to the same length at the same time, by the same designer with only the differences listed above to speak of.

However, our proposal for commissioning, designing, building and sailing three brand new yachts for a comparative test was inexplicably shot down by senior management, so we did the next best thing and called up three owners, each with different style of boat to come to Lymington for the day.

We ended up with a Contessa 26, Rustler 37 and Jeanneau 389, and took our chances with the weather.

Boat handling: The three yachts:

Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 389

Credit: Graham Snook

High-volume hull with lift keel, twin rudders and sail drive

• Name: Windcatcher
• Owner: Flexisail.com
• Designer: Marc Lombard
• LOA: 11.75m/38ft 6in
• LWL: 10.40m/34ft 1in
• Beam: 3.76 m/12ft 4in
• Draught: 1.10m-2,25m/ 3ft 7in-7ft 4in
• Displ: 6,920kg/15,256 lbs
• Ballast: 1,769kg/3,900 lbs
• Sail area: 70 m2/754 sq ft
• SA/disp: 19.68

Medium displacement, fin keel and keg-hung rudder

• Name: Andrilott II
• Owner: Tim Stevenson
• Designer: Stephen Jones
• LOA: 11.28 m/37ft 0in
• LWL: 9.07m/29ft 9in
• Draught: 1.91m/6ft 3 in
• Disp: 8,845kg/19500 lbs
• Ballast: 3175kg/7000 lbs
• Sail area: 81 m2/ 871 sq ft
• SA/disp: 19.31

Contessa 26

Long keel with keel-hung rudder

• Name: Brizo
• Owner: George Smith
• Designer: David Sadler
• LOA: 7.77m/25ft 6in
• LWL: 6.10m/20ft 0in
• Beam: 2.29 m/7ft 6in
• Draught: 1.21m/4ft 0in
• Disp: 2,449kg/5,400 lbs
• Ballast: 1,043kg/2,300 lbs
• Sail area: 22m2/244 sq ft
• SA/disp: 12.15

How hull shape affects boat handling: methodology

Our aim was to try to make comparisons between the styles of boat without comparing the boats themselves.

Our interest was not in finding out if a Contessa 26 outpoints a Jeanneau 389, rather trying to get to grips with the key characteristics of the different styles, what they delivered in data, and also to evaluate each style of hull with as unbiased a gaze as we could muster.

Sailing the boats against one another is always going to be difficult as the sail setup and rig has such an impact on performance.

Toby notes the Contessa 26’s data. Credit: Graham Snook

For the sailing portion of our test we chose to measure each boat’s apparent wind angle; apparent wind speed; compass heading; course over ground; and speed over ground, both up and downwind. We also set out to record heel and pitch, but in the light airs , these numbers weren’t that revealing.

This data should give an idea of how each boat was performing in the conditions and to see how close-winded each boat was and what their relative leeward drift might be.

For other factors we were more subjective and based it on how we felt each boat performed.

For the manoeuvring both in open sea and a busy marina , the data should be less subject to other forces and should give a better steer as to the differences inherent in the design choices of each boat.

How the boats sailed

On the day of our test, the NNW wind was light – in the high single to low double digits all day – and coupled with a flood tide, gave a very flat, wind-with-tide sea state.

Long, slow upwinds, and downwinds dominated by a significantly reduced apparent wind as the tide washed the boats toward our leeward mark were the order of the day.

YM editor, Theo Stocker, and I rotated through each boat noting the data, upwind and downwind , and trying to get a feel for the performance of each boat.

In light airs, good sail shape and minimal drag become more important than boat speed. Credit: Graham Snook

Clearly sacrificing so much waterline length to the other two boats, the Contessa 26 was always going to struggle in terms of outright pace.

Boat speeds were surprisingly close, however. Clearly in these conditions none of boats were reaching hull speed, so all the boats were being blown directly downwind at a relatively even speed.

Additionally in the light winds, the Contessa almost certainly benefitted from less wetted surface area than the other wider, heavier hulls.

Sailing under white sails, we decided to test each boat goosewinged dead downwind and then on a deep broad reach, replicating an easier downwind course.

In these conditions, the speed over ground for each boat is almost identical downwind .

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Thanks to the conditions, none of the yachts could really pick up their skirts.

Downwind it was surprising  that the Jeanneau was slower to accelerate than the other boats and was, in most conditions, closer to the Contessa than it was to the Rustler, despite having the longest waterline.

Clearly the wide hull, winged stub keel with swing keel extension and the twin rudders increased wetted surface area and drag, which was significant.

She also offered less feedback through the helm, with response to helm inputs being less clear, making her less positive to steer and respond.

Though it is not reflected in the table (below), there were enough moments that the Rustler struggled to get as deep as the other two boats, possibly due to her large main blanketing the headsail, that we concluded she certainly felt more comfortable sailing a slightly tighter angle under white sails alone.

It’s worth noting that in the table (below), the Rustler was sailing in much lighter conditions than the other two boats, so though her speed is broadly within the range of the Jeanneau, she was clearly the fastest on the water.

As the data shows, the wind was oscillating through a significant range, and thus the angle of tide as compared to heading varied too.

This does give us some difficulties in terms of making hard and fast statements.

What is clear, however, across all the data is that the Rustler had the least leeway consistently, presumably a product of dynamic lift from her keel.

Upwind, experiment with how close to the wind, or how free your boat most likes to be sailed. Credit: Graham Snook

It is probably less of a surprise to see that the Contessa was losing little leeway when the tide was not a significant factor, but the large surface area of her keel possibly left her more at the mercy of the tide.

It was surprising to analyse all of the data and see the Rustler losing much less leeway across all the upwinds, as on the water, and anecdotally we all agreed that the Contessa had felt much more close- winded than the Rustler in particular.

The Contessa may have benefitted from being sailed slightly freer, but it could be a symptom of her keel shape.

Where the Rustler should be sailed at pace, allowing dynamic lift from the keel to help the boat to windward, the Contessa would lose less ground to leeward as a product of inherent drag but made up for this through being closer winded.

The drawback for the Contessa, of course, being the benefit from her keel in terms of leeward drift becomes her achilles heel in terms of tidal drift.

The Rustler 37 made good progress upwind when sailed slightly free. Credit: Graham Snook

For her part, we all agreed that the Jeanneau sailed similarly close to the wind as the Rustler, but was also consistently closer winded on starboard – either a factor of the tide, or her instruments needed calibrating.

With little feedback through the helm in these light conditions, she was hunting for the breeze a little more and rarely felt in the groove. It could be this that caused the Jeanneau’s results from the day to offer the highest rate of discrepancy in her numbers, a feature we saw throughout all the data sets.

There are two conclusions to draw from this. Firstly, were it my boat, I would be having a good look at setup in terms of rig tensions , how vertical the mast is and the like.

Secondly, it seems relatively clear that in these light winds the boat just does not perform all that well.

Her wide transom and twin wheels require a little more breeze to develop heel before she would be likely to pick up her skirts and really get going.

We took several sets of data over the course of the day to provide a representative sample across a variety of conditions. Here, the data presented represent the ‘cleanest’ runs we took for each boat. As should be expected in relatively light conditions we saw some significant discrepancies in the data we got back, specifically as the wind was oscillating consistently. * 150-170o of the wind, both sails set same side

Boat handling: how the yacht sailed

This was the most close-winded on test, but with a slower hull speed and large keel, was most affected by the tide.

Surprisingly quick particularly downwind in the light weather, a product of narrow hull shape with less surface area and the light winds not allowing the other boats to use their length and reach hull speed.

Jeanneau 389

Twin wheels and rudders damped the feel on the helm in light winds. As such she was hard to sail in her groove.

We’d expect her to perform much better in more breeze, so she could exploit her more powerful hull shape.

Despite her heavy displacement, pointing to a boat designed to perform well in heavy seas, she sailed very well in light winds and for a medium displacement boat is much more easily driven than similar boats of earlier decades.

Needed to be sailed reasonably free to get the best from her.

Felt slightly less comfortable than the other two sailing very deep downwind, though with time to pole out her headsail and set up for a long passage this might be less of an issue.

Boat handling and manoeuvring

Boat handling: Heaving to

Our first manoeuvring test for the day was to set each boat up hove-to, in order to get some sense of how each might perform.

The results were relatively surprising in their similarities.

All boats behaved similarly in terms of their leeward drift, here defined as SoG.

There was a difference in how the boats lay relative to the wind, and thus how comfortable they may feel in a seaway, but we were expecting to see larger disparities here than we saw in general.

Boat handling: Carrying way

With sails down we started with some open water tests, firstly motoring in a 360° circle with engine a touch over tick over to see how quickly she would spin.

Then motoring at 4 knots, we dropped into neutral and let go of the helm.

We timed how long it took each boat to decelerate to 2 knots while also measuring how much each deviated from their course without helm inputs as it slowed.

We were not too surprised to see that the Contessa required more relative space in order to complete her turn. Without a central keel to pivot around, she is always going to struggle.

In confined and busy waters, the more speed you need for steerage, the more stressful things become. Credit: Graham Snook

It also seems relatively clear that she completed her manoeuvre quicker than the other two thanks to being significantly smaller and lighter and thus responding more quickly to engine input.

Perhaps the most surprising outcome from this test, in fact, was that of the Jeanneau. We tried the circle with both keel down and keel lifted and her time to complete the manoeuvre and the distance required were almost identical.

As for the momentum test, we conducted this into a 5-knot headwind and into tide. The relative weight of the Rustler is clear, both taking longer to slow and deviating the least.

The Contessa was a surprise in just how much it deviated from course with no helm input. We had assumed that the long keel would offer the best directional stability.

The results from the boat handling tests

Given that the Contessa had offered impressive directional stability in the sailing tests, this was clearly only an issue without the sails up.

Ultimately, we believe – and have spoken to a couple of boat designers who agreed – that this is a product of several factors.

Essentially much of the boat’s lateral resistance is well aft with a long forefoot ahead. This could be working to almost trip the boat up over herself.

Secondly, with this lateral resistance aft and relatively more weight aft once the boat does start to turn, which is relatively easy with little bow drag and significant aft drag, she can end up offering more and more keel to the turning force of the water as she turns, further accelerating the turn.

With sails up and driving or engine in gear there is more water flow over both sides of the keel to remove this problem.

Boat handling: In harbour 

Manoeuvres around the Lymington Yacht Haven pontoons did throw up possibly the most significant differences.

Though trying to be as data-driven as possible, it is difficult to go into these situations without some preconceptions and I was expecting the Contessa to be the trickiest of the three boats to steer in tight situations.

Heaving to gives a good impression of how quickly your boat will drift without steerage. Credit: Graham Snook

In order to see how the hull and rudders performed on a twin keel boat, we opted not use the Jeanneau’s bow thruster .

This is perhaps a little unfair then, but does show more clearly the impact of hull design, ignoring additional manoeuvring aids – the Rustler 37 did not have a bow thruster fitted.

Boat handling: 180° turn 

Each boat entered a narrow gulley between pontoons, performed a 180o turn and then motored back out, and repeated turning both ways.

The Contessa managed her starboard turn in a single shot, without any adjustments of the helm or engine, though this is more a measure of her relatively short length.

Even when she needed to go astern, the Contessa performed similarly to the other two boats in terms of number of helm and engine inputs and time taken.

Have you measured your boat’s turning circle? It will help visualise how your boat will respond in harbour. Credit: Graham Snook

The Contessa did take longer to come round with the helm hard over, but there was always an indication she was starting or ending a turn.

She gave plenty of warning that she was starting to turn and so was not at all alarming. In astern, we did not see a significant amount of prop kick from the Contessa, which we had been expecting.

The Rustler, though requiring a larger space to turn, felt controlled and deliberate. Keeping the speed low was the order of the day, with a light touch on the wheel and throttle and allowing enough space to complete her turn, largely thanks to her heavy displacement.

However, her combination of fin keel and single rudder meant she was very predictable, and controlled even at low speeds, making her manageable even in confined waters.

The Jeanneau, particularly without the use of the bowthruster required a particularly brave and steady hand on the throttle.

Here, the twin rudders really did work against her.

Stick a bit of throttle on and even with the wheel hard over, but without direct prop wash over the rudders there is little reaction until the boat has almost 2 knots of way in order for the rudders to provide positive steerage.

This means that, although she conducted her turn in a similar time and in a slightly smaller area than the Rustler, some of the sections of her turning required significant pace, heading in the direction of other moored yachts before the steering would kick in and she would veer away.

In anything other than benign conditions, the bow thruster would be fairly indispensable.

Boat handling: Steerage astern

Remaining within the pontoon berths we wanted to test how long it took each boat to have positive steerage astern from a standing start.

The Rustler 37 strayed from her course least in astern. Credit: Graham Snook

We conducted this test both stern to and away from the wind. The results show the relatively higher boat speed the Jeanneau needs before she gets positive steerage.

It is also worth noting that with bow into the wind, (as with the momentum test performed previously in the day) the Contessa once again picked up a significant course deviation.

Boat handling: Springing 

Our final test of the day was to look at springing off a pontoon with the engine ahead and then turning round (in an attempt to be working against the wind) and trying the same thing with the engine astern.

We timed how long it took until each boat had sprung out to its maximum angle and how big that angle was.

The angle of the bow had a big influence on springing the stern out. Credit: Graham Snook

Here we were expecting a degree more variation from boat-to-boat. Ultimately, though, we found that all the boats can spring off, but for different reasons.

The Contessa and the Rustler had prop wash and could use this to lever their stern out, whereas the Jeanneau did not have the benefit of prop wash, but its width and resultant distance of prop off the pontoon gave it more simple leverage.

The narrow beam of the Contessa made it hard to spring the bow out. Credit: Graham Snook

Springing back in was the tell for this – the single rudder boats could use prop wash to push the stern back in, but the Jeaunneau’s twin rudders could not do this.

In the Jeanneau, if you want to drive your stern in, in an offshore wind, you will need to warp in, or put her stern in first, then use the bow thruster.

How the boat handled

• Much more receptive to helm input astern than we imagined.
• Drifted furthest off course in both the momentum and motoring astern tests. Lateral resistance of the keel well aft probably responsible for this without drive from engine or sails.
• Had largest turning circle.
• Responded well when manoeuvring at low speed.
• Her mass meant she was somewhat slow to manoeuvre but was the most deliberate in her response.
• Relatively lightweight and twin rudders require active engine control.
• Occasionally unpredictable until moving at pace.
• Not able to spring back in under prop alone.
• A bow thruster (fitted but not used for the testing) does much to relieve all of the above.

Get to know your yacht for better boat handling

The biggest surprise was how similar the data from three different designs were.

The gulf between the boats lay rather in the way they needed to be handled to achieve similar results.

With each of the skippers familiar with their boats’ quirks, the same tasks could be completed, but knowing how much to sheet in, put the helm over or push the throttle was the key.

The Rustler clearly had the best pace upwind and only needed to foot off a little compared to the more closely winded Contessa, but this pointing difference felt significant onboard.

The Jeanneau lacked pace in light airs, but this should improve as the wind builds.

All the data from the tests were fairly similar for all three designs. Credit: Graham Snook

We had hoped to measure heel and pitch, but in light airs and flat water, this wasn’t possible.

How the boats feel in a seaway would help separate the designs further.

In harbour, we expected the long-keeled Contessa to be more of a handful manoeuvring astern under engine, but she was relatively well behaved and took a similar time to turn as the other two, though of course she is much smaller.

While the Contessa’s long keel gave her a mind of her own astern initially, as long as she had a little way on with the occasional nudge of the throttle she was entirely predictable. The Rustler also rewarded factoring in prop walk.

With a sail drive, the Jeanneau did not suffer from much prop walk, but lacked steerage under two knots, which would be enough to fray nerves on a windy day.

Better to line up using the bow thruster, then go for it.

Close quarters is much less stressful at one knot than at two knots, and mitigating for a lack of low-speed steerage requires forethought.

Understanding how long it takes your boat to achieve, and lose, steerage and what she will do before then is key to mastering your boat in harbour.

Harness what your boat wants to do naturally rather than fighting against it, and boat handling becomes much less stressful.

With thanks to Royal Lymington Yacht Club, Lymington Yacht Haven, boat share membership company Flexisail.com and all the owners, crew and rib driver who helped make this article and photoshoot possible.

Enjoyed reading Boat handling: How to use your yacht’s hull shape to your advantage?

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After finishing a Skat design by Jim Michalak, I decided I needed a bigger boat for spending any practical time on the water doing over nights; I had owned a Menger Catboat some years ago and really liked that boat a lot. So my research brought me around to the Fat Cat Design. With the plans in hand and some pictures from the Internet I started my presentation to my wife on what was to be my 13th build.

First words out of her mouth was, If it is going to have that stupid lee board you'll never see me in it. I knew she meant it. I didn't like the lee board look either and set out to design some sort of centerboard. Nothing I could come up with worked with the balance of the sail and the bulkhead arrangement. I had liked what I saw in one of Paul Fisher's designs called Ptarmigan 15. So I shot an email to him and he sent me back a brochure of the boat that showed a picture of someone that had built the boat using bilge keels. I liked the thought but they seemed to deep for my shallow south Florida water so I kept thinking and looking. I'm not sure how I connected with Bob Throne on the twin keel idea, I think I asked for Ideas on the Michalak group, but his process of shallow keels he had used on 'Wanderer' seemed like the cats meow for a cat boat.

First thing I realized is how little I liked to have to fuss with pulling up a centerboard along with getting my rudder up so I didn't snap something off as I came into the beach. I did some more research after communicating with Bob on his twin keel idea and the only thing I changed was to put the keels on at a 15 degree angle, sloped out, because a couple of twin keel boat makers had a good argument as to why that would work well.

After doing sail 'center of' type geometry (which I got from Jim Michalak's newsletter) I determined that the two boards would need to have about a total of 5 square feet of surface to offset the leeboard that Jim had drawn for the boat. Being afraid of lee helm I moved my center of effort 9 inches forward of the centroid of the sail. Just because I felt like I could add to the aft end easier than the forward end of the twin keels if I needed to adjust.

I had had Dave Gray build me a polysail that was a little reduced in size to the original sail and he had marked the center for me so it was pretty easy to figure out.

The slats were made from yellow pine. They were cut out with the 15 degree angle on both sides leaving them a full 1 ½ inches wide in the center. The bottom of the boat is ¾ inch thick so I just used deck screws and titebond III glue and screwed them one on top of the other. I cut the leading and trailing edge off at 45 degrees. Rounded over the edges and epoxy glassed them onto the boat. I figured if the whole thing didn't work out, I'd just get the saws all out and start over with the leeboard.

The first sail was done in really light air and I have to say I was a little disappointed in the results. She just wouldn't point like I wanted. Wind speed was so nonexistent that you couldn't see any in the trees or weeds. The next sail had about 7 to 10 miles per hour wind and it made a lot of difference. The boat took off like it was supposed to be a sail boat holding about 50 degrees off the wind on both tacks. I thought that was really good for such light air and hurried home to tell my wife of the good thing.

She came with me on the next sail and we had a nice breeze that day. The boat liked the breeze and just worked great on all points of sail. A few days later my son and I went out in some 25 mph + wind with both reefs in and she still preformed great.

I was ready for the FL 120. When I arrived the evening before the event in Pensacola, Fl. the raging storm sort of made me rethink what in the heck I was doing. I put the boat in early that morning and took off for the first meeting point. It was a little bit of a close-hauled tack but the boat did great. I made it to the island that we were going to camp at about the middle of the pack and had several people come up and talk to me about the boat. I think if people wanted to use this system on thinner boats it would even work better. The Fat Cat design is 15ft. long and 6 ft. wide. I have a queen size mattress in the stateroom.

Leaving the first island and heading to the next was going to be a lot of sailing for one day. I think it was over 40 miles. Tom Willey in his beautiful 'Mayfly 14' took off a little before me and it was a great down wind run the whole day. I even caught up with Tom and passed him. Since we were the first guys out of the gate that morning I got to take the lead for a little while until the sea pearls woke up. The boat was hitting 6.4 knots from time to time and I had a blast.

This is the twin keeled Fat Cat that got the name 'Kat Kan Dew!' from the experience of the FL120 (picture by Pat Johnson of Pensacola). My thanks to everyone that helped me with the project. I can't imagine using anything but shallow keels on any boats I build in the future. Which will probably be a Ptarmigan 17.

Patrick Johnson East Shore Cabinetry www.eastshorecabinetry.com

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Hull design: insights for yacht designers, rig design: performance optimization for yacht designers, textile choices in yacht designers interior design: the essentials, exterior finishing: a guide for yacht designers in exterior design, keel design in yacht designers: performance optimization.

Keel design plays a crucial role in optimizing the performance of yachts. The shape and characteristics of the keel greatly influence a yacht’s stability, maneuverability, speed, and overall sailing capabilities. Through careful analysis and experimentation, yacht designers strive to develop innovative keel designs that enhance performance and ensure competitive advantages for their vessels. In this article, we will explore the significance of keel design in yacht performance optimization, focusing on its impact on various aspects such as hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and structural integrity.

To illustrate the importance of keel design in enhancing performance, let us consider a hypothetical scenario involving two identical yachts competing in a prestigious offshore race. Yacht A is equipped with a traditional deep-draft fin keel commonly found in older designs, while Yacht B features a modern bulb-keel configuration. As they navigate through challenging wind conditions and varying sea states during the race, it becomes evident that Yacht B exhibits superior upwind performance compared to Yacht A. This advantage can be attributed to several factors influenced by the keel design, including reduced drag from the bulbous lead appendage below and improved righting moment due to better weight distribution along the hull. Such differences exemplify how keels significantly affect a yacht’s ability to sail efficiently and effectively in different conditions.

One of the key aspects influenced by keel design is hydrodynamics. The shape and profile of the keel determine how water flows around it, affecting drag and lift forces. A well-designed keel minimizes drag by reducing turbulence and creating a smooth flow of water along its surfaces. By reducing drag, the yacht can maintain higher speeds while expending less energy, resulting in improved performance.

Additionally, the keel plays a crucial role in generating lift, which helps to counteract heeling forces caused by wind pressure on the sails. Lift is generated as water flows over the curved surfaces of the keel, creating a force that opposes heeling and contributes to stability. A properly designed keel will maximize lift while minimizing induced drag, allowing the yacht to maintain a balanced and controlled sailing attitude.

Aerodynamics also come into play when considering keel design. The shape and position of the keel influence airflow around the yacht’s hull and rigging. A streamlined keel reduces wind resistance, allowing for smoother sailing and increased speed. Moreover, by optimizing the interaction between the keel and other components such as the mast and sails, designers can minimize turbulence caused by air passing over these structures.

Structural integrity is another critical consideration in keel design. The weight distribution of the keel affects how forces are distributed throughout the yacht’s hull. A well-balanced distribution ensures optimal stability and prevents excessive stress on certain areas of the boat. Furthermore, modern materials and construction techniques enable designers to create lighter yet stronger keels that enhance performance without compromising safety.

In conclusion, keel design plays a significant role in optimizing yacht performance across various domains such as hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and structural integrity. Through careful analysis, experimentation, and innovation, designers strive to develop efficient and effective keels that deliver superior stability, maneuverability, speed, and overall sailing capabilities. By understanding the significance of keel design in yacht performance, sailors and designers can make informed decisions to achieve competitive advantages in the world of sailing.

The Importance of Keel Design in Yacht Performance

When it comes to yacht design, a crucial element that significantly impacts performance is the keel. The keel plays a vital role in maintaining stability and maneuverability on the water, making it an essential consideration for yacht designers. To illustrate its significance, let’s consider a hypothetical scenario where two identical yachts participate in a race. However, one has an optimized keel design while the other has a suboptimal one.

Firstly, an optimally designed keel contributes to improved sailing performance by enhancing stability. A well-designed keel provides sufficient resistance against lateral forces caused by wind or waves, preventing excessive heeling or rolling motions. In our hypothetical race scenario, the yacht with the optimized keel maintains better balance and stability compared to its counterpart with the suboptimal design. This advantage allows it to maintain higher speeds and more efficient sail trim throughout the race.

Secondly, the choice of keel design directly affects maneuverability during different sailing conditions. For instance, a racing yacht may require quick course changes or tight turns when navigating around buoys or avoiding obstacles. An intelligently designed keel can provide enhanced agility and responsiveness in such situations, allowing the yacht to change direction swiftly without losing momentum. On the other hand, a poorly designed or inadequate keel may hinder these maneuvers, reducing overall performance and competitiveness.

To further emphasize the importance of proper keel design in yacht performance optimization, consider the following emotional bullet points:

• Increased speed: An optimized keel design enables faster sailing speeds due to reduced drag.
• Enhanced safety: Appropriate weight distribution through effective keel design improves overall stability and reduces risks of capsizing.
• Improved comfort: Well-balanced yachts equipped with optimal keels offer smoother rides even in challenging sea conditions.
• Competitive edge: Yachts with superior keels have an advantage over their rivals in races by achieving higher speeds and maneuverability.

Additionally, let’s include a table that compares the characteristics of different keel designs:

In conclusion, the importance of keel design cannot be overstated when it comes to optimizing yacht performance. The hypothetical scenario and emotional bullet points presented highlight the significant impact an optimized keel can have on speed, safety, comfort, and competitiveness. In the subsequent section about “Factors to Consider in Keel Design,” we will explore key considerations that yacht designers must take into account to achieve optimal performance.

Factors to Consider in Keel Design

The Importance of Keel Design in Yacht Performance has been established, and now we turn our attention to the various factors that need to be considered during the design process. To illustrate these considerations, let us delve into a hypothetical case study involving two yacht designers who are tasked with optimizing the performance of their vessels through keel design.

When approaching keel design for optimal performance, designers must take into account several key factors. Firstly, hydrodynamic efficiency plays a crucial role in determining how well a yacht maneuvers through water. By carefully shaping the keel profile and considering its interaction with other components such as the hull and rudder, designers can achieve reduced drag and increased stability.

Secondly, weight distribution is another critical aspect to consider when designing a yacht’s keel. The position and size of the ballast within the keel greatly influence a vessel’s stability and ability to resist heeling forces caused by wind or waves. Achieving an ideal balance between weight distribution and overall boat trim ensures improved sailing characteristics, allowing for better control and handling.

Thirdly, sailors often encounter varying sea conditions while at sea. A well-designed keel should offer good seakeeping abilities by minimizing pitching motion and maintaining steady course-keeping even in rough waters. This not only enhances comfort on board but also contributes to safer navigation.

Lastly, it is essential to ensure structural integrity when designing a yacht’s keel. Factors such as material selection, construction techniques, and reinforcement play vital roles in ensuring durability under heavy loads and potential impacts from grounding or collision scenarios.

• Hydrodynamic efficiency: Optimizing shape for reduced drag.
• Weight distribution: Balancing ballast position for enhanced stability.
• Seakeeping abilities: Minimizing pitching motion for comfort at sea.
• Structural integrity: Ensuring strength against heavy loads or impacts.

Additionally, presenting information visually can evoke an emotional response and aid in understanding. Here is a table that highlights the different factors to consider:

With these considerations in mind, we can now transition into the subsequent section about “Different Types of Keels and Their Advantages.” By examining various keel types and their respective advantages, designers gain valuable insights into selecting the most suitable design for optimizing yacht performance.

Note: The information provided in this section is hypothetical and serves as an example to illustrate key considerations in keel design.

Different Types of Keels and Their Advantages

In the previous section, we explored the various factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing a keel for a yacht. Now, let’s delve deeper into the different types of keels and their advantages.

To better understand the practical implications of keel design choices, let us consider an example. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where two identical yachts are racing against each other. The only difference between them is their keel design – one has a fin keel while the other has a bulb keel.

When it comes to performance optimization, there are several key factors that designers must address:

• Stability: A well-designed keel provides stability by lowering the center of gravity and resisting heeling forces from wind or waves. This allows for smoother sailing and reduces the risk of capsizing.
• Balance: The placement and shape of the keel play a crucial role in achieving balance on a yacht. Proper balance ensures that the boat tracks straight without excessive weather helm or lee helm.
• Lift: Keels generate lift as water flows over them, countering leeway (sideways slipping) and contributing to upwind performance.
• Drag: While generating lift is important, minimizing drag is equally critical for optimal speed. An efficient keel design should minimize resistance through careful shaping and reducing turbulence.

Let’s now examine these factors in relation to different types of keels using the following table:

As seen in this table, both fin and bulb keels offer distinct advantages depending on specific requirements such as desired performance characteristics and sailing conditions. It is essential for yacht designers to carefully evaluate these factors in order to optimize the keel design for their specific vessel.

In the subsequent section, we will explore the role of keel design in stability and balance, further emphasizing the significance of this aspect in yacht design. By understanding how different keels impact a yacht’s performance, designers can make informed decisions that enhance both safety and speed on the water.

The Role of Keel Design in Stability and Balance

Having explored the different types of keels and their advantages, it is now important to understand the role that keel design plays in ensuring stability and balance. To illustrate this further, let us consider a hypothetical scenario where two yachts with different keel designs encounter rough sea conditions.

In this case study, Yacht A features a deep fin keel while Yacht B has a shoal draft keel. As they navigate through choppy waters, Yacht A’s deep fin keel provides greater resistance against sideways forces, resulting in improved lateral stability. On the other hand, Yacht B’s shoal draft keel offers reduced drag but compromises on lateral stability due to its shallower depth.

To better comprehend the significance of keel design in yacht stability, below are four key factors to consider:

• Weight Distribution: The placement of the keel influences how weight is distributed throughout the yacht. A well-designed keel ensures optimal weight distribution for enhanced stability.
• Center of Gravity: The position of the center of gravity relative to the waterline greatly affects a yacht’s overall balance. Keels play a crucial role in determining and maintaining an optimal center of gravity.
• Righting Moment: Keels contribute significantly to a yacht’s ability to resist heeling or tipping over. By increasing the righting moment, proper keel design improves overall safety during sailing.
• Performance Optimization: Different keel shapes and configurations can impact a yacht’s speed and maneuverability. Properly designed keels minimize drag and maximize performance potential.
• Enhanced Stability
• Increased Safety
• Improved Speed
• Optimal Weight Distribution

Table (3 columns x 4 rows):

Considering the significance of keel design in stability and balance, it is evident that a well-designed keel contributes to safer and more efficient sailing experiences. Understanding the impact of various factors such as weight distribution, center of gravity, righting moment, and performance optimization aids yacht designers in creating vessels that excel in challenging sea conditions.

As we have now explored the role of keel design in stability and balance, let us delve into how it affects maneuverability by examining different aspects of yacht control.

How Keel Design Affects Maneuverability

Transitioning from the previous section, which discussed the crucial role of keel design in ensuring stability and balance, we now delve into how different aspects of keel design can significantly affect a yacht’s maneuverability. To illustrate this impact, let us consider a hypothetical scenario where two yachts with distinct keel designs are subjected to challenging sailing conditions.

Imagine Yacht A equipped with a deep fin keel designed for improved performance in open water racing. This type of keel offers greater stability due to its lower center of gravity but may result in reduced maneuverability at slower speeds or when navigating narrow channels. On the other hand, envision Yacht B fitted with a shoal draft bulb keel specifically designed for coastal cruising. Although it sacrifices some initial stability compared to Yacht A, this design allows Yacht B to venture into shallower waters while maintaining better control during sharp turns.

The effect of various factors related to keel design on a yacht’s maneuverability is multifaceted and deserves attention. Consider the following bullet points that highlight these key considerations:

• Shape: Different types of keels such as full-length fins, winged bulbs, or bilge boards present varying degrees of lift and drag characteristics.
• Aspect Ratio: The ratio between the width (chord) and length (span) of a keel affects both lift generation capabilities and resistance experienced by the yacht.
• Leading Edge Configuration: Rounded or elliptical leading edges offer smoother flow around the keel, minimizing turbulence and enhancing directional stability.
• Appendages: Additional appendages like skegs or spade rudders play an integral role in improving overall control and responsiveness in conjunction with the main keel.

To further explore these aspects, refer to Table 1 below summarizing their impacts on maneuverability:

Table 1: Factors influencing yacht maneuverability.

Understanding how keel design affects a yacht’s maneuverability is critical for designers and sailors alike. By carefully considering these factors during the design process, optimal balance between stability, speed, and ease of handling can be achieved. In our subsequent section on “Innovations in Keel Design for Performance Enhancement,” we will explore advancements that aim to further improve maneuverability without compromising other essential aspects of yachting performance.

Innovations in Keel Design for Performance Enhancement

Understanding the impact of keel design on maneuverability is crucial for yacht designers seeking to optimize performance. Now, let’s delve into some innovative approaches that have been employed by designers to enhance the overall performance of sailing yachts.

To illustrate the potential benefits of these innovations, consider a case study involving a racing yacht competing in an oceanic regatta. This hypothetical scenario will highlight how certain advancements in keel design can significantly influence speed and stability, ultimately leading to improved performance outcomes.

One example of an innovation in keel design is the use of canting keels. These adjustable keels are capable of changing their orientation relative to the hull, allowing sailors to optimize their position based on varying wind conditions. By altering the angle or cant of the keel, sailors can counteract heeling forces and reduce drag, resulting in enhanced boat speed and maneuverability.

Another development worth mentioning is the advent of winged keels. With this innovative design approach, additional surface area is incorporated into the structure through specialized extensions attached at specific angles. The increased lift generated by these wings helps improve stability during maneuvers such as tacking and gybing, enabling more efficient changes in direction while minimizing energy loss.

In addition to these advancements, recent research has focused on optimizing bulb shape and weight distribution within modern yacht designs. Through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and extensive tank testing, naval architects have developed new bulb profiles that further minimize hydrodynamic resistance. Additionally, careful consideration is given to distributing weight effectively within the bulb itself, ensuring optimal balance between ballast and draft depth.

These developments reflect ongoing efforts within the field of yacht design to push the boundaries of performance optimization. By embracing innovative keel designs, designers can unlock new possibilities for speed, maneuverability, and stability on the water.

• Increased boat speed leading to a competitive advantage
• Enhanced maneuverability enabling precise navigation in challenging conditions
• Improved stability reducing the risk of capsizing
• Optimized balance between ballast and draft depth ensuring safety and efficiency

Table: Comparative Analysis of Keel Innovations

By continuously exploring these innovations in keel design, yacht designers are actively shaping the future of high-performance sailing yachts. This ongoing pursuit of enhanced performance demonstrates their commitment to pushing boundaries and achieving excellence on the water.

Related posts:

Performance optimization: yacht designers and beyond, sail design in yacht designers: performance optimization, previous marine engineering in yacht designers: materials and construction, next exterior design in yacht designers: a comprehensive exploration, victoria j. manzo, related posts.

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Twin keel research

Discussion in ' Boat Design ' started by MikeJohns , Oct 16, 2004 .

MikeJohns Senior Member

I am looking into twin keels for a sailing yacht. Lord Riverdale apparently researched twin keels yonks ago and his conclusions were published in a technical paper. This paper was offered to the Royal Institute of Naval Architects on December 15, 1967. Also Riverdale was involved with extensive tank testing undertaken on the twin keel design Bluebird of Thorne II along with the designer Arthur Rob. The results of the tank testing were apparently published separately to the Riverdale paper, but I can't find where. RINA has the Riverdale presentation available for 10 pounds stirling (scanned onto CD ) Has anyone bought this off them and is it worth getting ? Is there a free synopsis available anywhere else ? Does anyone know where I can find the tank test results? Any other research published or accessible that anyone knows about? Seems this is an interesting area waiting for a lot of investigation.  

Sean Herron Senior Member

Patrick Bray... Hello... Has done a lot of tank testing at the University of British Columbia... See site http://www.brayyachtdesign.bc.ca/ - articles - advantages of twin keels... SH.  

Attached Files:

Bray twin.jpg.

Ben Lindenberg Guest

Another Link or Two. Prof. Joachim Heinrichs of East-Germany did a lot of research on twin keels back in the seventies and eighties. His keels were and are used with good success in the hundreds in Reinke's (West-German) yachts in the same period. These are asymmetrical Gö-693 sections, 9% at the root, 12% at the tip, and of a depth that makes max. thicknesses coincide. There's a very small toe-in. In section the keels are almost vertical, and quite close together. A lengthy abstract of Heinrich's research is to be found in the book "Yacht Design" (I think that's the name) by Reinke/Muhs/Lütjens. Some of Reinke's designs (they are ugly, but work well) are at http://www.reinke-yacht.de/ There's also an article on twin keels at http://www.kastenmarine.com/ that is well worth reading. BL  

FAST FRED Senior Member

One disadvantage to twin keels is the difficulty to heal a grounded boat to unstick her. Second is the uguly job of power washing and repainting between the keels. If tidal storage is the requirement , many Brit boats use legs attached to the chain plates , with a chain between the bottom pads to keep them from seperating. These boats take the tide unattended , season after season.If that was the purpose of your desire for bilge keels. FAST FRED  

Thanks for the info. I had been asked to look into the feasability of retrofitting twin keels to an existing yacht. The owners want to be able to take the ground in areas of large tidal range without fuss, with the advantages of reduced draft with increased damping (he gets seasick easily). Reading what I have been able to get my hands on indicates that the existing published data only gives a starting point for a new design and that moreover; the twin keel hull interaction, tracking stability and high possibility of induced drag with minor imperfections in position section and angles are so high as to make considerable tank testing mandatory for each and every design. There are so many variables with these keels. The Reinke information looks interesting thankyou, the website shows some very "different" design approaches. The Reinke approach appears to favour a flat bottommed hull. I will try and read his material if I can find the book. Does anyone know if it is available or its ISBN ?  

brian eiland Senior Member

MikeJohns said: I am looking into twin keels for a sailing yacht. Lord Riverdale apparently researched twin keels years ago and his conclusions were published in a technical paper. This paper was offered to the Royal Institute of Naval Architects on December 15, 1967. Also Riverdale was involved with extensive tank testing undertaken on the twin keel design Bluebird of Thorne II along with the designer Arthur Rob. The results of the tank testing were apparently published separately to the Riverdale paper, but I can't find where. RINA has the Riverdale presentation available for 10 pounds stirling (scanned onto CD ) Has anyone bought this off them and is it worth getting ? Is there a free synopsis available anywhere else ? Does anyone know where I can find the tank test results? Any other research published or accessible that anyone knows about? Seems this is an interesting area waiting for a lot of investigation. Click to expand...

Red Fox Vison Hello... Another interesting approach is the Red Fox Vision of the UK... See http://www.selectyachts.co.uk/redfoxhome.asp?ArtID=13 ... I sailed one on my honeymoon and the thing ended upwind of where I was pointing... You can Email the designers son at [email protected] and if his father is available he will get back to you... SH  

sorenfdk Yacht Designer

MikeJohns said: Does anyone know if it is available or its ISBN ? Click to expand...

brian eiland said: I would be interested in hearing more of your desire to dig deeper into the subject, and how we might work together on such an endeavor. Click to expand...

Old folder... Hello... Found an old folder of links on a zip disk... http://www.lerouge-yachts.com/mono_TKS.htm http://www.johnsboatstuff.com/Boat Designs/Grenada 24/twinkeel.htm http://otrc.tamu.edu/Pages/fpsoroll.htm http://www.webb-institute.edu/stability/IKEDA.pdf http://books.nap.edu/books/NI000359/html/863.html#pagetop http://www.ybw.com/ym/drying.htm SH.  

Ben Lindenbe4rg Guest

Reinke, Heinrichs etc. I fully agree with the above notion that Reinke's book is not a must-read. Actually, it's mostly biased, crap, plain wrong, outdated and self-glorifying. I also submit again that his designs are among the ugliest afloat. Just my personal opinion, of course. And yet, and yet... there's something to his twin-keel approach. I've been witness to a series of direct tests of one of Reinke's designs, one with the conventional, moderately long single keel, the other with the twin-keels, the boats otherwise being fairly equal. This was conducted in (i think) 1985 by a German boating magazine and lasted for several days, under different conditions. The results were, basically: there wasn't much difference either way, which was considered a success for the twin keel concept back in the day. As to Prof. Heinrich's research papers: I've seen them, and they do not look like you would expect from a scientific paper these days: No CCP, no fancy equations, etc. It's more of a documentation of a years-long trial-and-error process (tank and real-life): unscrew the keel, screw it on with a different angle or with a different acpect ratio, repeat. There's no "magic logic" to tell you how to calculate keels for any particular hull, based on tangible parameters. It's like shooting in the dark. There's little linear behaviour: If you vary one parameter (as good as you can), things may go downhill first, than pick up, than completly bottom out, only to pick up again and reach a maximum of sorts. Only the Gö-693 section and a NACA 00xx section were tested, and the latter was eliminated halfway through, because it never really performed. I think the choice of the Gö-693 was merely a hunch, based on long years of work with foils. The conclusions, as I said in my earlier post, were that on a number of quite different hulls, asymmetrical Gö-693 sections, 9% at the root, 12% at the tip, of a depth that makes max. thicknesses coincide, small toe-in, almost vertical keels, quite close together, performed best overall. (the 'flat' side goes outboard, of course) The amount of toe-in was in the <1% range, and the keel placement fore-aft and athwart was eyeballed by aligning the outer surface of the keels at the hull-keel intersection with the hull diagonals at that place, until they coincide visually as best as possible. With this framework of reference points, there's little ambiguty left about keel placement, length, chord, thickness and aspect ratio, but it's not exactly 'scientific' - more a question of 'feeling' The rest of the paper is an attempt to rationalize the results qualitatively, mostly static and steady-state, as is to be expected from somebody with a background in airplane aerodynamics. It's probably easily shot full of holes these days, but at the time it was the state-of-the-art. The flat-bottom setup of Reinke's yachts is a (controversial) addition of his own. As I understand, the old Reinke felt kind of heir to Heinrich's work and would sell copies for a nominal amount, if asked. I assume his son, who's now in charge, will do the same. I don't know for sure, but I think young Reinke doesn't speak a word of English, so better get a german-speaker to ask for you. Just don't ask me, because we're not getting on well...  

Ben Lindenberg Thanks for your post, I think the chances of coming up with equations for placement, sweep back angle, size, depth, toe-in, foil shape.... is zilch. Thats why I want to build a comprehensive test rig that can change several variables in one tow. Then we can shoot in the dark and work up to a brightly illuminated dawn I am looking for good starting points from which to take aim, ie successfull twin keelers. There was a Melbourne designer that built a couple of racing twin keelers (20 years ago) that performed very well I have a magazine article and am trying to find him (probably wandered on by now). Over the years predjudice has thwarted much interest in this field largely due to the designers that simply added landing skids to designs that had performed well as single keelers. Ben could you give me your email address please [email protected] I'll add you to my database and keep you informed if we do research this.  

Lord Riverdale's Paper MikeJohns said: Have you read Prof. Joachim Heinrichs work ? I have done little study yet into twin keels and have yet to obtain Riversdales paper. Click to expand...

That yellow hull... Higher up in this thread there's this picture of a yellow model hull turned turtle. This a a nice specimen of what is guaranteed NOT to work, because the keels are way to much forward. Plain dangerous. I wonder why they even bothered to build the model. Probably they guys from Bray Design think that by posting a picture like that in an article about their twin keel research they protect their secret results? Whatever... Ben  

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Brian: If it's not too much trouble, I'd like a copy of Lord Riverdale's paper, too. Ben: Why do you think that the keels of the yellow model hull are "guaranteed NOT to work" and even "plain dangerous"? To me, they don't seem to be located that much forward. Their longitudinal position must be related to the CE of the sailplan (which we can't see).  

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François Chevalier et Jacques Taglang

lundi 11 juin 2012

America's cup - history of yacht designs - twin-keel - yacht design innovation - fin-keel - ballast, the twin-keel, a hundred year-old dream, by jacques taglang & françois chevalier.

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“Zefira, a magnificent, lean aluminium and carbon 50 metre yacht. A project in which, together with our designers, we put our heart”

Experienced european owners brought together a top team of Dubois, Fitzroy and Tessier to produce their dream yacht: sleek, sophisticated and impressive under sail.

The push for a single level between bridge, saloon and cockpit, combined with ultra-sleek aesthetics, nudged the Dubois design team into new territory. “To get good visibility from the helmstations we had to work hard to lower the accommodation as much as possible, while keeping an open feeling” adds McKeon.

The interior, styled and drawn by Remi Tessier , features a combination of bleached timbers and white leather which results in clean modern lines and provides bright comfortable living areas.

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The sea trial was pubblished on Superyacht 31 – spring 2012

Zefira S/Y is one of those few yachts that became an attraction for yacht enthusiasts and professionals  well before she hit the water.

This yacht was designed and built with the experience and passion for sailing boats her owners demonstrated from the start as well as a naval engineering and a project design team from  Ed Dubois studio for the exterior, while Remi Tessier was responsible for all the interiors. Zefira was built in a yard which enjoys a  worldwide  reputation for the construction of large sailing yachts.

With such an opening introduction one can expect nothing less than something absolutely extraordinary, where the term used must be read in its best meaning to underscore something that has really nothing of the ordinary. We had the pleasure of talking with the owners who are currently sailing on their yacht after they had  carried out important work in the design phase with the project team to define specific guidelines and details.

Beyond the highly involving dialogue which ensued with flowing examples  of their own sailing experience and passion, we managed to grasp and better understand the idea behind the project which began with a seven metre sloop and  gradually developed in the course of the following 40 years  of which  many were spent at  sea. Putting words to emotion and feelings is never easy to do and  more so when they are other people’s. In this case however everything was a lot easier for us   thanks to our interviewee’s eloquent communicative capability.

The first point our attention was brought to was that Zefira is the largest sailing y

acht ever designed by Dubois with no fly bridge and built by Fitzroy Yachts in New Zealand.  This may strike our readers as a mere detail, but it is in fact one of the principal fundamentals outlining this project because it translates into flowing external lines and a unique profile when observed sideways on.

The choice  of doing without a fly bridge is somewhat unusual since up until  recently a “fly” had been widely accepted as  a run of the mill thing to have on a sailing yacht beyond a given size, but which nevertheless, Zefira is proud to do without giving cause for, among others ,  the following comment volunteered by some of the designers not involved in the project: “The world of sailing now stands  divided between before Zefira and after Zefira”.

Naturally enough this comment in particular is aimed at the yachts’ profile, which brings to a standstill what had become a consolidated practice on yachts this size. Aesthetics is principally  why the owners decided to do without the fly option as well as for practical reasons  they eloquently highlighted: without one  on a  50 metre sailing boat  there’s a complete total view of both what lies ahead up to the horizon and of the sail plan.

Moreover using a higher windswept and sun scorched horizontal plane rather than the main deck itself is by its very nature something destined to be exploited only sporadically and quite correctly in their opinion doesn’t justify having one.

The thought behind the whole project as the requests submitted to both designers and yard indicated,  were to enjoy a pure thorough bred for its performing lines and technical contents, capable of offering the sort of space and commodities expected when cruising extensively in all weather conditions. At a first glance the goal seems to have been easily achieved, but if  we then go into an in-depth analysis, the comments volunteered by project designers earlier seems surely appropriate. The husband and wife team (the owners) followed up on construction work from the initial stages to completion, working through the more important phases in close contact with the professional teams involved.

According to the owners the best part was witnessing the step by step progress of such an enterprise. We can understand the reasons why and genuinely  hope that in  the future such desire will generate the construction of other such extraordinary ships.

Several International prizes for design and technical contents have been awarded to Zefira. Dubois Naval Architects’ studio is proud of the recognitions bestowed since this is the largest sailing yacht project without a “fly” they’ve ever made so far and also for the passion and creativity expressed time and time again by the owners who incidentally had been the previous owners of another Dubois  project built by Alloy Yachts: Kokomo of London (now Nubero Blau). The challenge taken on by the studio was one that meant blending the huge experience acquired by the owners to innovative aesthetics, with a hull capable of delivering the sea-keeping qualities and performance requested.

The owners wished for a boat that could be another home from home: spacious, with a project design that looked ahead into the future. For this reason the design team was invited by the owners to pay them a visit and to take a look at their house to better understand what they wanted.

The choice of the yard was principally dictated by delivery times even if Fitzroy Yachts had been chosen also in function of preceding work carried out from Dubois projects.

Among some of the clever solutions highlighted by the owners in the course of our conversation we wish to mention the ease in steering they experienced and handling the yacht, of course aided by electronics and important data communication systems capable of monitoring and performing many of the required manoeuvres without hindering visibility.

The rig which is capable of carrying up to 3,000 square metres of canvass is per se a very interesting technical achievement inasmuch as it sports a 63.50 metre mast and can still be defined as being “light”. Obviously there’s a carbon fibre mast and boom, as well as fibre stays that have been purposely chosen to reduce weight high above the waterline which translates into less draught and better performance in breezes.

All of the choices adopted for Zefira mean she is very competitive on the race track even against racers and  in spite of the many commodities she carries with her.  As for the interiors and  much of the work put in by  Remi Tessier designer and the co-owner they enhanced an undoubted feeling of both tranquillity and elegance.

Gauged chromatic variety  meets the discerning eye as it takes in lighter and darker shades of handcrafted woodwork placed without ever causing excessive contrast, followed by polished steel elements and ad hoc lighting which enhances relaxation throughout every area. The space chosen to house each piece of furniture, is fruit of  careful study that has contributed into ensuring an uncompromised degree of comfort in the owners’ suite which is situated in the stern and in each of the three guest cabins as well.

One is a twin while the other two are double each one of them sports its own private bathroom. The crew quarters are situated in the bow area and with space for a lounge and crew mess room, which translates into staff’s quality living standards on board. The yacht’s convivial areas are also well distributed and large to ensure adequate privacy to guests and owners alike.

The electronics and navigation aids installed are the most modern on the market, with data and alarm control systems and displays in each of the two external command /control stations  as well as on the bridge deck as can be expected on a state of the art ship such as this. Dictated by reasons of space we have to limit our text to that which has so far been described even when the meeting with Zefira’s owners was so stimulating  we were prompted  to go further.

Since both of them  described Zefira as being a point of arrival but of departure too, we wish them to continue their research work in the yachting field and to offer us, who knows what other input and ideas in the future. For further information please contact: Angelo Colombo

For further information Ocean View Parade, Private Bag 2014; New Plymouth, New Zealand +647699380 www.fitzroyyachts.co.nz

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Zefira is a custom sailing yacht launched in 2010 by Fitzroy Yachts.

Zefira measures 49.69 metres in length, with a max draft of 4.90 metres and a beam of 10.00 metres.

Zefira has an aluminium hull with an aluminium superstructure.

Sailing yachts have long combined nature with man-made beauty.

Her interior design is by Remi Tessier.

Zefira also features naval architecture by Dubois .

Performance and Capabilities

Zefira has a fuel capacity of 37,380 litres, and a water capacity of 10,440 litres.

She also has a range of 4,000 nautical miles.

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Zefira accommodates up to 8 guests in 4 cabins. She also houses room for up to 7 crew members.

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Zefira is a Lloyds 100A1 SSC Yacht Mono G6 MCH class yacht.

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• Builder Fitzroy Yachts , New Zealand
• Delivered 2010
• Naval Architect Dubois Naval Architects
• Exterior Stylist Dubois Naval Architects
• Interior Designer Remi Tessier
• LOA49.7m (163ft)
• LWL44.6m (146ft)
• Beam (max)10m (33ft)
• Draft4.9m (16ft)
• Fuel Capacity 37,380 litres
• Water Capacity 10,440 litres
• Range4,000 nm at cruise speed
• Displacement 372 tonnes
• Staterooms4
• Crew4 cabins
• Construction Aluminium
• ClassificationLloyds 100A1 SSC Yacht Mono G6 MCH

http://www.syzefira.com/

| LINK PHOTO INTERIOR ART REMI TESSIER

Zefira is the largest vessel crafted by Fitzroy Yachts to date. The Dubois designed vessel was built to exceptional quality levels which continue the yards reputation for building award winning superyachts. Powered by a Caterpillar C32 1450 bhp main engine and a Hundested variable pitch propeller, the propulsion system provides long range motor sailing abilities. The 56 meter ‘light weight’ carbon fiber sailing rig was supplied by Southern Spars, and the sails inventory provided by North Sails.

The interior, styled and drawn by Remi Tessier , features a combination of bleached timbers and white leather which results in clean modern lines and provides bright comfortable living areas. Generous accommodation spaces are provided for the owners and guests all with private ensuite facilities and state of the art entertainment systems. The large main deck saloon opens to a covered cockpit area which features electrically retracting side windows. The very best in lighting and entertainment control systems was incorporated into the yacht by Liquid Automation, allowing the interior ambience to be seamlessly controlled at the touch of a button.

The stainless steel galley with black granite bench top is extremely spacious for a sailing yacht with its carefully planned layout and stylish Gaggenau and Sub Zero appliances. The forward crew area is built to match the guest cabins with similar styling and detail incorporated into the joinery. There are four crew cabins each with their own ensuite which can comfortably accommodate up to 8 crew.

Designed by Dubois Naval Architects Interior Designed by Remi Tessier Built by Fitzroy Yachts Limited

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• FITZROY YACHTS FLEET

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Zefira fitzroy yachts, nz.

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Superyacht Zefira is a luxury sailing yacht built by Fitzroy Yachts, designed by Dubois Naval Architects, with interior design by Remi Tessier. Measuring 49.7m, sailing yacht Zefira is the largest luxury yacht crafted by Fitzroy Yachts in New Zealand to date and is the largest sloop Dubois Naval Architects has designed without a fly bridge. Sailing yacht Zefira is the 7th Dubois designed sailing yacht to be built by Fitzroy Yachts.

The modern interior, of sail yacht Zefira was designed by Remi Tessier and features a combination of bleached timbers and white leather providing clean lines and bright comfortable living areas. S/Y Zefira’s large saloon on the main deck opens to a covered cockpit area which features electrically retracting side windows. Lighting and entertainment control systems by Liquid Automation, enable the interior ambience to be effortlessly controlled at the touch of a button.

Superyacht Zefira’s stainless steel galley features a black granite bench top and stylish Gaggenau and Sub Zero appliances. The carefully planned layout of the galley and is extremely spacious and functional for a sailing yacht. Forward, the forward crew area is built to match the guest cabins with similar styling and detail incorporated into the joinery. There are a total four crew cabins each with their own ensuite accommodating up to 8 crew.

Zefira Specifications

The Dubois designed fast cruising sloop Zefira, built under the project or model name x50 was crafted to exceptional standards which continue the yards reputation for building award winning superyachts.

Sailing Yacht Zefira boasts excellent technical performance and features beautiful lines. Her aluminium hull is painted a stylish light grey and she measures 49.7m with a beam of 9.95m. Zefira is powered by a Caterpillar C32 1450 bhp main engine and a Hundested variable pitch propeller, the propulsion system provides long range motor sailing abilities. The 56 meter ‘light weight’ carbon fiber sailing rig was supplied by Southern Spars, and the sails inventory provided by North Sails.

Yacht Accommodation

Guests are accommodated in generous 4 staterooms including the owner’s suite and 3 guest cabins all with ensuite facilities and state of the art entertainment systems.

Amenities and Extras

We do have available further amenity, owner and price information for the 49.69 yacht Zefira, so please enquire for more information.

Zefira Disclaimer:

The luxury yacht Zefira displayed on this page is merely informational and she is not necessarily available for yacht charter or for sale, nor is she represented or marketed in anyway by CharterWorld. This web page and the superyacht information contained herein is not contractual. All yacht specifications and informations are displayed in good faith but CharterWorld does not warrant or assume any legal liability or responsibility for the current accuracy, completeness, validity, or usefulness of any superyacht information and/or images displayed. All boat information is subject to change without prior notice and may not be current.

Quick Enquiry

Fitzroy built some wonderful sailing yachts which showcased the result of New Zealand passion,quality and yacht building tradition.

PERSEUS | From EUR€ 165,000/wk

ELEONORA | From EUR€ 70,000/wk

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Zefira, il “miglior yacht a vela del mondo” in sosta a Vibo Marina

L’imbarcazione di 50 metri, unanimemente considerata una barca da sogno, è rimasta attraccata per poche ore per attività di bunkeraggio

Per gli appassionati di barche , e non solo, si tratta di un’impagabile attrazione, qualcosa di assolutamente straordinario nel suo significato letterario, cioè qualcosa che non ha niente di ordinario. Ma solo in pochi sono riusciti ad accorgersi della sua presenza in porto, che è durata giusto una mattinata . “ Zefira ”, imbarcazione di 50 metri vincitrice dei prestigiosi riconoscimenti internazionali “Show boats Design Award 2011” e di “World Superyacht Awards 2011” come miglior yacht a vela del mondo per il 2011, è rimasta attraccata presso la banchina Bengasi del molo Cortese di Vibo Marina per poche ore, impegnata in attività di bunkeraggio. Costruita in Nuova Zelanda nei cantieri Fitzroy, ha uno scafo in alluminio e una trave con un raggio di quasi dieci metri. Gli interni sono stati disegnati da Remi Tessier e possono ospitare otto ospiti in quattro cabine. Battente bandiera maltese, è unanimemente considerata una barca da sogno : elegante, sofisticata, impressionante sotto vela con il suo albero in carbonio alto 63,5 metri . Un’estetica innovativa, che ha portato uno dei suoi progettisti ad affermare, non senza una punta di orgoglio: «Il mondo della vela si divide tra prima di Zefira e dopo di Zefira». Proveniente da Patmos(Grecia), dopo la sosta tecnica ha ripreso il mare facendo rotta verso Capri .

La nave yacht “Menorca” in rada a Vibo Marina

Giuseppe Addesi

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ZEFIRA is a 49.68 m Sail Yacht, built in New Zealand by Fitzroy Yachts and delivered in 2010.

Her top speed is 18.0 kn and she boasts a maximum range of 4000.0 nm when navigating at cruising speed, with power coming from a Caterpillar diesel engine. She can accommodate up to 8 guests in 4 staterooms, with 7 crew members waiting on their every need. She has a gross tonnage of 363.0 GT and a 9.95 m beam.

She was designed by Dubois Naval Architects , who also completed the naval architecture. Dubois Naval Architects has designed 77 yachts and created the naval architecture for 72 yachts for yachts above 24 metres.

Her interior was designed by Rémi Tessier , who has 26 other superyacht interiors designed in the BOAT Pro database - she is built with a Teak deck, a Aluminium hull, and Aluminium superstructure.

ZEFIRA is in the top 10% by LOA in the world. She is one of 83 sailing yachts in the 45-50m size range, and, compared to similarly sized sailing yachts, her cruising speed is 0.9 kn above the average, and her top speed 4.69 kn above the average.

ZEFIRA is currently sailing under the Malta flag, the 3rd most popular flag state for superyachts with a total of 1057 yachts registered. She has recently entered the NCA refit yard, in Italy. For more information regarding ZEFIRA's movements, find out more about BOAT Pro AIS .

Specifications

• Name: ZEFIRA
• Yacht Type: Sail Yacht
• Builder: Fitzroy Yachts
• Naval Architect: Dubois Naval Architects
• Exterior Designer: Dubois Naval Architects
• Interior Designer: Rémi Tessier

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Yacht, IMO 1011094

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La nave ZEFIRA (IMO 1011094, MMSI 248663000) è una nave Yacht costruita nel 2010 che naviga attualmente sotto bandiera della Malta.

Posizione della carta & Weather

Ultima toccata, dati principali.

Posizione attuale e storico delle toccate sono ricevuti dall'AIS. I dettagli sulle specifiche tecniche, sul tonnellaggio e sulla gestione sono derivati dal database di VesselFinder. I dati sono solo per scopi informativi e VesselFinder non è responsabile per l'accuratezza e l'affidabilità dei dati di ZEFIRA.

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Salah time in Shchëlkovo, Moscow Oblast (Russia)

Get accurate prayer time for Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha prayers in Shchëlkovo, Moscow Oblast (Russia) for today, tomorrow and next 30 days.

Local time: 00:32 , Mar 6, 2024 .

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When are the prayer times today in Shchëlkovo?

Salah (or Salat), the second pillar of Islam, consists of five daily prayers. These prayers are Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, and Isha. It is important to know the Islamic prayers times in Shchëlkovo because they must be done according to the exact position of the sun in the sky. As a result, these times will vary from day to day.

Today, islamic prayers in Shchëlkovo happen at the following times (according to Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia calculation method):

• Fajr (dawn prayer): 05:17
• Dhuhr (noon prayer): 12:39
• Asr (afternoon prayer): 15:28
• Maghrib (dusk prayer): 18:14
• Isha (sunset prayer): 19:55

Salah is sometimes referred to as Namaz and the times of Namaz in Shchëlkovo are listed below. For times of prayer for tomorrow and next days please refer to the timetable below.

Azan prayers timing

The Azan is a signal inviting worshipers to attend the prayer. It is given five times per day prior to each prayer. The call is delivered by the Muezzin.

Listed below are the Shchëlkovo Salah times for the next 30 days. Please check these times daily for the most up-to-date time.

The times listed below have been determined by the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia calculation method.

How are prayer times calculated for Shchëlkovo?

The prayer times of each of the five prayers are determined by the specific position of the sun in the sky. The Shchëlkovo Salah times typically change daily, the prayer times will be different on each day. Usually, the time only varies by a minute per day but some days will have the same time for multiple days consecutively. Because of the changing times, it is important to check the prayer schedule each day.

Why is it important to know exact prayer times in Shchëlkovo?

Since prayer times are dictated by the position of the sun, the precise times must be adhered to. A prayer must never be performed earlier than the set time. Each prayer is directed to be performed at a certain, specific, exact time.

Qibla finder

Qibla direction from Shchëlkovo is 177° degrees from True North clockwise.

Popular questions

What time is fajr prayer in shchëlkovo today.

The Fajr prayer, which is sometimes referred to as the dawn prayer, is the first prayer of the day. The prayer begins as the sky begins to turn light.

This prayer allows for remembering God before the day starts. It is one of the five mandatory prayers and begins at the moment of dawn.

Fajr in Shchëlkovo starts at 05:17.

When is Dhuhr prayer in Shchëlkovo today?

The Dhuhr (also known as Zuhr, Duhr or Thuhr) prayer times in Shchëlkovo are at noon. After the work day has begun, there is a break in the day to remember God and to give thanks.

The Dhuhr prayer beings as the sun begins to drop after reaching its highest point for the day.

Dhuhr in Shchëlkovo is at 12:39 today.

What time is Asr prayer?

The Asr prayer is also known as the afternoon prayer. It is considered the fifth prayer of the day and consists of four rakats.

Asr is at 15:28 in Shchëlkovo today.

What time is Maghrib prayer in Shchëlkovo today?

The time to pray Maghrib in Shchëlkovo is just after the sun goes down. This is the sunset prayer that allows Muslims to think of God as the day is over and occurs right after sunset. The day has been completed and the Maghrib prayer helps worshipers recall God.

This prayer is performed at dusk at 18:14.

What time is Isha today in Shchëlkovo?

The Isha time prayer in Shchëlkovo is the sunset prayer. It occurs when there is no more light but only total darkness. It is a time to reflect on all of the good things that God has bestowed.

Today, Isha starts at 19:55.

Cities near Shchëlkovo

• Bolshevo Moscow Oblast
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Prayer times in other cities of Russia

• Saint Petersburg St.-Petersburg
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Shchëlkovo in Moscow Oblast Destination Guide Russia

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Shchëlkovo in Moscow Oblast, Russia

Safety Score: 4,4 of 5.0 based on data from 9 authorites. Meaning please reconsider your need to travel to Russia.

Travel warnings are updated daily. Source: Travel Warning Russia . Last Update: 2024-03-05 08:22:39

Discover Shchëlkovo

Shchëlkovo in Moscow Oblast is a city in Russia about 39 mi (or 62 km) north-west of Moscow, the country's capital city.

Local time in Shchëlkovo is now 12:32 AM (Wednesday). The local timezone is named Europe / Moscow with an UTC offset of 3 hours. We know of 5 airports in the vicinity of Shchëlkovo, of which two are larger airports. The closest airport in Russia is Sheremetyevo International Airport in a distance of 21 mi (or 34 km), South-East. Besides the airports, there are other travel options available (check left side).

There are several Unesco world heritage sites nearby. The closest heritage site in Russia is Architectural Ensemble of the Trinity Sergius Lavra in Sergiev Posad in a distance of 37 mi (or 60 km), East.

When in this area, you might want to pay a visit to some of the following locations: Vostochnoe Degunino, Moscow, Cheremushki, Krasnaya Pahra and Orekhovo-Borisovo Yuzhnoye. To further explore this place, just scroll down and browse the available info.

Local weather forecast

Todays local weather conditions & forecast: -1°c / 30 °f.

Wednesday, 6th of March 2024

-7°C (20 °F) -15°C (5 °F) Scattered clouds, light breeze.

Thursday, 7th of March 2024

-3°C (27 °F) -10°C (15 °F) Overcast clouds, light breeze.

Friday, 8th of March 2024

-1°C (30 °F) -2°C (28 °F) Light snow, gentle breeze, overcast clouds.

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First drive in Scania 4x4 P93 M SBAT

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THE 10 CLOSEST Hotels to Moscow Yacht Port, Dolgoprudny

Hotels near moscow yacht port, property types, distance from, traveler rating, hotel class.

• Best Value Properties ranked using exclusive Tripadvisor data, including traveler ratings, confirmed availability from our partners, prices, booking popularity and location, as well as personal user preferences and recently viewed hotels.
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• Distance from Moscow Yacht Port See properties located closest to the place of interest first with confirmed availability for your dates from our partners.

1. Atlanta Sheremetyevo Hotel

2. SkyPoint Hotel

3. Hotel Novotel Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport

4. sk royal hotel, 5. edge vinogradovo, 6. holiday express moscow sheremetyevo airport, 7. park inn by radisson, sheremetyevo airport moscow, 8. aviator hotel, 9. satelinn moscow khovrino, 10. boutique-hotel mona, 11. edge seligerskaya - moscow, 12. north star hotel, 13. olympiets park hotel, 14. hotel gold shark, 15. gostinitsa mon plezir, 16. otel' aleksandriya-sheremet'yevo, 17. chalet country club, 18. hotel planernoye, 19. greenwood hotel, 20. novy bereg hotel yacht club, 21. otel vezendorf, 22. park hotel veles, 23. u istoka homestay, 24. voshod apartments, 25. gopark hotel, 26. grand apart putilkovo, 27. altai hotel, 28. guest house chalet tyulenya, 29. ohotnik hotel, 30. vostok hotel, hotels near moscow yacht port information.

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ZEFIRA Interior & Exterior Photos

49.69m  /  163' | fitzroy | 2010.

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Lloyds Register 100 A1 SSC Yacht Mono G6 classification. Sleeps 10 overnight. The multi-award winning 49.69m/163' sail yacht 'Zefira' was built by Fitzroy in New Zealand at their New Plymouth shipyard. Her interior is styled by design house Remi Tessier and she was completed in 2010. This luxury vessel's exterior design is the work of Dubois.

Zefira. Experienced european owners brought together a top team of Dubois, Fitzroy and Tessier to produce their dream yacht: sleek, sophisticated and impressive under sail. Exterior. This 49.7m fast cruising sloop is the largest sloop Dubois Naval Architects has designed without a flybridge. She is of aluminium construction with a bulb keel and ...

With four aft cabins for eight guests and accommodation for up to nine crew, Zefira is the quintessential sailing yacht with a low profile, plumb bow, flush deck, generous sail plan and the latest thinking in keel design. The biggest ever Dubois sloop built without a flybridge,_ Zefira_ has a chic, minimalist interior by Rémi Tessier.

VALLETTA: Owner : BOURBON OFFSHORE - MARSEILLE, FRANCE: Manager : BOURBON OFFSHORE - MARSEILLE, FRANCE: Description: ZEFIRA is a Yacht built in 2010 by FITZROY YACHTS - NEW PLYMOUTH, NEW ZEALAND. Currently sailing under the flag of Malta. Formerly also known as ZEFIRA, 9HA2459. It's gross tonnage is 363 tons.

"Zefira, a magnificent, lean aluminium and carbon 50 metre yacht. A project in which, together with our designers, we put our heart" Experienced european owners brought together a top team of Dubois, Fitzroy and Tessier to produce their dream yacht: sleek, sophisticated and impressive under sail. Zefira is the biggest Dubois sloop ever built without a flying bridge,

Zefira S/Y is one of those few yachts that became an attraction for yacht enthusiasts and professionals well before she hit the water. This yacht was designed and built with the experience and passion for sailing boats her owners demonstrated from the start as well as a naval engineering and a project design team from Ed Dubois studio for the ...

Zefira is a custom sailing yacht launched in 2010 by Fitzroy Yachts. Design. Zefira measures 49.69 metres in length, with a max draft of 4.90 metres and a beam of 10.00 metres. Zefira has an aluminium hull with an aluminium superstructure. Her exterior design is by Dubois. Sailing yachts have long combined nature with man-made beauty.

Zefira is the largest vessel crafted by Fitzroy Yachts to date. The Dubois designed vessel was built to exceptional quality levels which continue the yards reputation for building award winning superyachts. Powered by a Caterpillar C32 1450 bhp main engine and a Hundested variable pitch propeller, the propulsion system provides long range motor ...

Zefira is a 49.7 m / 163′1″ luxury sailing yacht. She was built by Fitzroy Yachts in 2010. With a beam of 9.95 m and a draft of 4.9 m, she has an aluminium hull and aluminium superstructure. She is powered by Caterpillar engines of 1450 hp each giving her a maximum speed of 19 knots and a cruising speed of 12 knots. Zefira's maximum range is estimated at 4000 nautical miles. The sailing ...

Sailing yacht Zefira is the 7th Dubois designed sailing yacht to be built by Fitzroy Yachts. The modern interior, of sail yacht Zefira was designed by Remi Tessier and features a combination of bleached timbers and white leather providing clean lines and bright comfortable living areas. S/Y Zefira's large saloon on the main deck opens to a ...

We combine thousands of yacht listings with local destination information, sample itineraries and experiences to deliver the world's most comprehensive yacht charter website. Interactive, detailed layout / general arrangement of ZEFIRA, the 50m Fitzroy Yachts super yacht with naval architecture by Dubois with an interior by Remi Tessier.

"Zefira", imbarcazione di 50 metri vincitrice dei prestigiosi riconoscimenti internazionali "Show boats Design Award 2011" e di "World Superyacht Awards 2011" come miglior yacht a vela del mondo per il 2011, è rimasta attraccata presso la banchina Bengasi del molo Cortese di Vibo Marina per poche ore, impegnata in attività di ...

Westport • $10,250,000 • 34.14 m • 8 guests. ZEFIRA is a 49.68m superyacht built by Fitzroy Yachts in New Zealand and delivered in 2010. Explore her photos and specifications here.

La nave ZEFIRA (IMO: 1011094, MMSI: 248663000) è una nave Yacht costruita nel 2010 che naviga attualmente sotto bandiera della Malta. Carta Navi FOTO Porti Notizie. SERVIZI. Paid. SERVIZI ONLINE DATI AIS IN TEMPO REALE Dati AIS storici. Free. ... Proprietario registrato: Manager: Avvertenza.

Zefira is a sailing yacht with an overall length of m. The yacht's builder is Fitzroy Yachts from New Zealand, who launched Zefira in 2010. The superyacht has a beam of m, a draught of m and a volume of . GT.. Zefira features exterior design by Dubois Naval Architects Ltd. and interior design by Rémi Tessier. Up to 10 guests can be accommodated on board the superyacht, Zefira, and she also ...

Zefiro is a 30.2 m / 99′1″ luxury sailing yacht. She was built by Southern Wind in 2009. With a beam of 6.7 m , she has a composite hull and composite superstructure. She is powered by Cummins engines giving her a maximum speed of 12 knots and a cruising speed of 10 knots. The sailing yacht can accommodate 8 guests in cabins and an exterior design by Farr Yacht Design.

Calculation method: Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. Fajr 16°, Isha 15°. Latitude 54.734791, Longitude 55.9578555.

Shchëlkovo in Moscow Oblast is a city in Russia about 39 mi (or 62 km) north-west of Moscow, the country's capital city. Local time in Shchëlkovo is now 08:39 AM (Sunday). The local timezone is named Europe / Moscow with an UTC offset of 3 hours. We know of 5 airports in the vicinity of Shchëlkovo, of which two are larger airports.

The best { {searchresults_count}} campings in Shchëlkovo, Russia (2024)

Hotels near Moscow Yacht Port, Dolgoprudny on Tripadvisor: Find 9,693 traveler reviews, 2,314 candid photos, and prices for 1,220 hotels near Moscow Yacht Port in Dolgoprudny, Russia.

Interior & exterior photos of ZEFIRA, the 50m Fitzroy Yachts super yacht, designed by Dubois with an interior by Remi Tessier ... The yacht particulars displayed in the results above are displayed in good faith and whilst believed to be correct are not guaranteed, please check with your yacht charter broker. ... Baracuda Valletta. 50m | Perini Navi

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