It is the strongest and safest way of adding a keel to a yacht. No bolts are holding the keel to the hull, the keel is the hull. This means the keel is moulded as part of the hull. Our offshore cruisers the Rustler 36, Rustler 37 and Rustler 42, have encapsulated keels. This also prevents her from getting snagged on flotsam, makes her relaxing to sail and gives excellent manoeuvrability under sail at slow speeds, so you can sail her onto a pontoon with ease. Our Rustler 24 is a dayboat designed to give the same sailing pleasure – a satisfying heft to the helm combined with finger-light balance – that you’ll find on the very best classic yachts, so she has a long keel with a cutaway forefoot. The fin keel of our R33 is different from our offshore boats, but it’s the best design for her intended use Weed and fishing pots are prevalent in coastal waters and it’s often a real pain to remove flotsam from around the bulb of your keel. While it’s true that a short-chord fin with a torpedo-shaped bulb on the bottom would put the ballast even lower, it must be remembered she is primarily a coastal cruiser, not a racer. This shape increases the amount of lead deeper down as well as reducing drag from the vortices at the keel’s tip. Looking from the side, it’s a deep fin that sweeps aft low down at the trailing edge. Looking at the keel from the bow, the keel is narrow at the top and flared at the foot. For this boat, we use a lead keel bolted to the hull for the best combination of performance and stability. Our Rustler 33 is designed for coastal sailing so she’s as nimble and responsive as possible – she’ll tack on a sixpence and then accelerate rapidly out of the tack. Both ranges are built for different purposes. We produce two distinct ranges of yachts: dayboats/weekenders and offshore/ocean cruisers. It can be made thinner and therefore less buoyant and the more weight we can get lower down, the stiffer the yacht will be, and the less lead we need making her lighter and more easily driven in the process. For the same volume, lead weighs around 1.4 times more than iron, that’s why we use lead as the ballast on all our yachts. Keels can be made from many different materials, from cheaper iron to more expensive lead and bronze. “For the same volume, lead weighs around 1.4 times more than iron, that’s why we use lead as the ballast on all our yachts” It is, however, correct to say that the deeper the ballast is in or on the keel the better it is for the yacht’s stability. In many cruising grounds, from most of Britain to the Baltic, Bahamas and large parts of the Caribbean, shallow draught gives access to a lot more harbours and anchorages. For a cruising yacht, deep draught can be a liability. Keels come in many different shapes and it’s useful to know some of the technical terms that describe them Keels come in many different shapes and it’s useful to know some of the technical terms that describe them The deeper keel, the better, right? Less obvious, the chord of a keel is its width when you’re looking at the yacht side-on, so a short-chord keel is a deep, skinny fin and a long-chord keel is a shallow one that stretches along the underside of the hull. The bottom of the keel, where it hopefully doesn’t hit the sea bed, is the tip. The top of a keel, where it joins the hull, is the root. Keels come in many different shapes and it’s useful to know some of the technical terms that describe them. Don’t worry if all those keel descriptions meant nothing, we’re here to explain them, why we have them, and the benefits they bring to our designs and ultimately you, the owner. Keel design and ballast can easily be overlooked when choosing a sailing yacht, but having the right keel design for the cruising you do, and having the ballast in the right place can transform your sailing and improve your life on board.Īt Rustler, we produce two designs with long keels, one with the option of a lifting keel, and when it comes to fin keels we produce three variants: a standard fin keel, an encapsulated fin, and a stub keel with a bulbed-lead foot over five models.
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