Offshore Sailboat Keel Types

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This encapsulated keel has suffered a grounding, but the good news is that it looks like the ballast is probably lead. If so, the repair will be reasonably easy, but if it's iron, the chances of major problems after this grounding are high.

Keel integrity on older offshore sailboats is a subject filled with ambiguity. That said, we need to really think about this when selecting a new boat since keel dropping off is not something we can realistically ameliorate, or probably even survive.

On the bright side, if we avoid certain construction methods, as far as I can see the chances of the keel dropping off, at least without warning seem to be pretty small; although, of course, like most things around offshore sailing we have no reliable statistics to prove that assertion.

So what to do? Let's start off with what I'm reasonably sure about, and then move on to the higher ambiguity stuff.

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John was born and brought up in Bermuda and started sailing as a child, racing locally and offshore before turning to cruising. He has sailed over 100,000 miles, most of it on his McCurdy & Rhodes 56, Morgan's Cloud, including eight ocean races to Bermuda, culminating in winning his class twice in the Newport Bermuda Race. He has skippered a series of voyages in the North Atlantic, the majority of which have been to the high latitudes. John has been helping others go voyaging by sharing his experience for twenty years, first in yachting magazines and, for the last 12 years, as co-editor/publisher of AAC.

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