Full Keels

A full keel sailboat is not known for high speed or performance, they are known for being sturdy. The full keel provides a lot of wetted surface area which leads to more drag through the water and slower speed. The low aspect ratio appendage extends out below the hull and provides little lift for its size which translates into less ability to point into the wind.

This may sound like a horrible keel design, but it does have some very promising attributes. A full keel offers a lot of strength to the bottom of the boat. The keel attaches to the full length of the bilge and the forces exerted on the keel are transferred to the hull over a very large area. 

This extensive contact between the keel and hull means that the keel will be better able to withstand the normal and the extraordinary forces that can be applied to it. If you are sailing along in a storm, the forces on the keel are going to be tremendous and well distributed to the rest of the hull. If you aground, your biggest concern will be getting off the shoal and not getting a haul out to check for damages.

When a fin keel runs aground, the forces can lead to cracks in the keel and hull from the amplification of these forces. When a full keel runs aground, it sits on the bottom awaiting the captain to kedge off. The yacht will rest on the bottom on the long edge of the keel. Forces will be well distributed and subsequent damages will be minimal.

While full keel vessels tend to be slow and unable to outrun a storm like a high performance fin keel yacht could, they are very capable of comfortably riding out the storm. The large keel will produce a significant slick to windward as the yacht drifts laterally while hove to. This slick is comprised of disturbed water that will act to calm breaking waves into simple rollers. Heaving to with a full keel will produce a powerful slick that will magically calm large breaking waves well before they reach your yacht, keeping you safe and dry as you wait for the storm to blow past.

The last issue with full keels is they love to go straight. They will track in a straight direction all day long without little input from the helm, no matter the winds or sea state. If the seas are rough and pounding into the bow or stern quarter, a full keel yacht will hold a straight course. This does make it very easy to balance the sails and lock the helm, as the keel will keep you on a straight track for quite some time with no input from the captain. The problem with a full keel shows up when you want to turn and the keel wants to continue straight. You will find that you need to move the rudder much more to get a reaction on a yacht with a full keel as opposed to a yacht with a fin keel.

A fin keel yacht will turn with the slightest twitch of the helm, a full keel yacht will require you to turn the helm quite a bit and then wait for the yacht to respond to the new rudder position. Tacking really exemplifies these issues, as full turns through the wind are desired and expected. A fin keel will turn through the wind and continue moving quickly in the new direction without losing speed. A full keel yacht will slowly turn through the wind and then come to a complete stop. 

The full keel is now laying perpendicular to the direction that the yacht wants to travel and the yacht will come to a stop. The large keel will act as a large wall in the water that will stop all forward progress of the yacht. The rudder is useless as there is no speed and no water moving over it to provide steerage. The yacht will then lose forward momentum and the wind blowing on the headsails will cause the yacht to be pulled downwind. The wind will push your yacht to leeward as it begins to gain speed. Once you have enough speed, the rudder will become effective again and you will be sailing on your new tack. This slow tacking makes short tacking very difficult and each tack will cause you to lose some ground that you have fought for while working to windward. Combining these facts with less ability to point to windward and you can quickly see why it is so important to plan your tacks ahead of time to minimize your losses and get you to your windward destination.

While full keels are by far the least efficient design, they do offer incredible strength and versatility on a sailing yacht. If you want to explore new waters where you may run aground and wish to travel across large open waters, a full keel will keep you safe and on course.

Buying Your Boat: Walking Away from the Deal

When the seller is not willing to negotiate a better price, the best move you can make is to walk away from the deal. When you walk away, you show the seller that you will not play by his rules and will not be toyed around during further negotiations. 

After a few weeks or months, the seller will realize that no one else is looking at the boat, but the boat will continue to cost them money. If a seller decides to wait a year for a better offer, the seller would have to pay an extra year in slip fees. In a year, the boat will be older than it once was and worth less money, so any future offers will not be near the original asking price.

After enough time, a seller that was originally insulted by your low offer will come crawling back with a counter offer. At this point, the boat can accrue more problems, further lowering the value of the boat.

Most sellers get desperate during the Fall, when they realize that the buying season is coming to an end and they will have to pay to winterize their boat, as well as pay for winter storage. These owners want to unload their boat and tend to be very flexible with price negotiations.

It is safe to walk away from an old boat because not many people are looking to buy them. Old boats tend to have very few people look at them and the seller knows that the first person to put an offer on the boat tends to be the person who will buy the boat. If you are the first person, then there probably won't be a second person.

This means that if you walk away from a boat, the owner will sit around paying upkeep on a boat that no one else is looking at. After a while, they will get desperate and reach out to you with a counter offer. 

Walking away from a boat doesn't mean that it will sell and you won't ever get to own her, it just means that you will own her later. It is important to remember that when you are searching to buy a boat, you are the rare gem, so don't let the seller make you fell less important during the negotiations.

State your price and negotiate from there. If the seller is not willing to negotiate, let them continue to pay for the boat until they realize that you are in control of the deal. If the seller doesn't understand that, walk away and show them that they do not have control over you.

Buying Your Boat: After the Survey

The survey will give you a list of everything that is wrong with the boat. On this list will be things that are not really important as well as major issues.

Minor things could be burned out cabin lights or worn varnish. Major things could be hull delamination, engine problems, leaks, ect.

This list gives you impressive leverage to lower your original offer and the seller will be compelled to negotiate. The seller knows that he is dealing with an interested buyer, so they don't want to lose you! When you tell the seller you want to take $10,000 off the offer, the seller would laugh at you! After the survey, you could tell the seller you want to take $10,000 off the offer because that is the cost of repairing these specific issues listed in the survey. Now the seller will be more inclined to lower the price.

Items on the list that are great for lowering the asking offer are unimportant problems. My favorite are broken electronic devices, as the boat will not sink because the radar isn't working. These units can be expensive to repair and will give you lots of bargaining power! Getting a quote from the boat yard to repair the damaged equipment is the best way to give the owner a sound number that you wish to reduce the agreed offer.

My dad did this when he purchased his boat. The deck had a soft spot in the forepeak and the yard quoted $12,000 to fix the deck. The seller then reduced the agreed offer by $12,000! My dad and I then proceeded to repair the rotten decking. We peeled up the non-skid of the deck, removed all the rotten wood, made a template inside the forepeak, and laid down a new deck and core. The whole ordeal took us only 2 hours to complete and cost my dad less than $100 in materials. In other words, my dad got $11,900 off because of the findings in the survey.

My sister on the other hand had the opposite experience when looking at a boat being sold by a non-motivated seller. After the survey, it was found that one of the transmissions is failing and deck-hull junction has separated a bit in one area. The estimated cost to repair these two issues was $25,000 and the owner refused to adjust the price. His claim is that there is nothing wrong with the boat and he shouldn't come down in price. Purchasing a boat needing expensive repairs for full price is not wise, so this is when you walk away from the deal.

If you can do the repairs yourself, you can have the repair amount removed from the purchase price of the boat and repair it later as your budget and time allows. If you have to pay someone to repair it, the repair can always be carried out at a later point in time when your wallet has recovered from the purchase of your new yacht. 

Buying Your Boat: Starting the Process

Once you find your dream boat, it is a matter of going through the motions to make this boat yours. The steps are: Contact, Look at the boat, Offer, Survey, and Sea Trial.

It all begins with contacting the person who is selling it. If you found it in a local paper or while walking the docks, you will probably deal directly with the owner. If you found it through a broker or on yachtworld.com, then you will be in touch with the broker. You make a phone call and set up a time to see the boat. While looking at the boat, you fall in love and decide that this is the boat for you! 

The next step is to put an offer on the boat (contingent on survey and sea trial) and wait for the owner to either accept, deny, or counter offer. If he accepts your offer without counter offer, you are dealing with a motivated seller and the following steps will be a breeze!

If the owner denies the offer, then the deal stops there. You can try a new offer that is higher but this is not a good idea as the owner might think he could hold out and see how high your offers could go. Instead, let the owner stew on his denial and wait around. Soon he will realize that no one else is looking at his boat and you are his only chance of a sale. Eventually, the owner will come back with a counter offer.

After the offer or counter offer is accepted, the sale of the boat will proceed to the next step: Survey and Sea Trial. A survey is the equivalent of a home inspection. The surveyor will comb over every inch of the boat, checking all the systems and accessories, along with the hulls condition. 

After the survey is completed, the surveyor will provide you with a paper detailing all of his "recommendations". This is the laundry list of everything that is wrong or not functioning on the boat. The more systems the boat has, the longer this list will be. The owner then has three choices:

• Fix everything on the list himself and then sell you the boat at the agreed offer.
• Reduce the price based on the cost to repair everything that is wrong.
• Refuse to adjust the price.

It is silly for a seller to try to fix everything himself because in the time of repairs, more systems could fail or break. Also, you could find another boat, leaving him with the repaired boat and no buyer.

Reducing the price based on the cost to repair everything that is wrong is the best plan. The seller gets rid of the boat and the buyer has to fix everything himself. This works out best for the buyer as well in points that will be discussed later.

The last option is for the seller to refuse to adjust the price based on the survey. This occurs for one of two reasons: The seller is not motivated to sell and doesn't want to let his baby go for less money, or, the offer price is so low that the seller doesn't want to come down any further. 

After the survey comes the sea trial which is the equivalent of a test drive in a car. This is also the last opportunity for the buyer to back out of the deal. During the sea trial, if there is any reason you do not want to purchase the boat, you can walk away from the deal without penalty. You could even claim that you don't like the noise of the engine, or the way it leans! This is your last chance to walk away form your dream boat if you so choose to.

After the sea trial, if everything is up to your liking, the boat can be yours. All you have to do at this point is pay the sum of money to buy her and she is yours! Smaller boats can be paid in cash, but larger boats tend to be paid with a certified check.

Once the monetary exchanges have been made, a trip to the local Natural Resources office will finalize the arrangement. Both parties, buyer and seller, will go to the office and sign some documents to transfer ownership of the boat. Now the boat is yours!

Wing Keels

Fin keels are a very broad category of keel which is characterized by a high aspect ratio appendage. Within this category are a vast world of variations and subtle differences that give rise to very different performance characteristics.

The theory behind a fin keel is the leading edge will produce lift which will carry the boat to windward. The whole keel is shaped like an air foil to aid in generating lift and make the entire system much more efficient. ​

To create more leading edge, you simply need to have a longer appendage, simple! The problem is a longer appendage directly translates into deeper draft. For yacht builders, a deeper draft means that buyers in shallow waterways will not buy their product. Yacht builders want to be able to sell their yachts to everyone, which means that they need to produce a yacht with a shallow enough draft that it will appeal everyone while still retaining the desired performance attributes that will make them competitive when compared to deeper draft competitors.​

Yachts compete on windward performance and on their ability to sail into ​shallow waters. Naturally, these two camps are on opposite sides of the spectrum. You can either sail to windward OR get into shallow waters, not both with a regular keel.

This is where the wing keel shines. A wing keel is a regular fin keel with small wings projecting to the sides at the tip of the keel. These little wings serve two purposes: They provide more leading edge length and they create less drag from tip vortices.

Adding wings naturally adds more leading edge to the keel, but instead of adding more leading edge in a downward direction, the leading edges now travel laterally. This is supposed to produce the same lift generated as a longer fin keel without the added draft.

Tip vortices directly relate to drag, and reducing these will reduce drag. Reducing drag will directly result in an increase in speed and higher performance! Tip vortices occur at the end of every airfoil. On an active airfoil, there will be a high pressure side and a low pressure side. The air foil in the middle acts to separate the two pressures and the resulting pressure differential will drive the airfoil. At the tip, there is no airfoil separating the two pressures and the high pressure side will spill over into the low pressure side, resulting in a vortex that trails along the tip of the airfoil.

A small wing at the tip will help reduce the spillover of pressures and reduce the size of the vortex. Air planes use these winglets at the tips of their wings to reduce drag and improve fuel economy, and sailboats use them too in the form of a wing keel. The wings on the sides of the tips are supposed to reduce drag by reducing the tip vortex.

While a wing keel may sound like the perfect solution to a sailor who is searching for a high performance yacht with a shallow draft, but they do have an additional problem with groundings.

Fin keels are rather weak and can suffer great damage during a grounding, but the sailboat can usually work its way off a shoal with enough effort. A fin keel will dig into the bottom, and be easily pull free from the bottom as you work yourself off a shoal. A wing keel on the other hand will dig into the bottom and get really stuck! Those wings will act like anchor flukes which will dig in and hold if you run aground in soft mud. 

If you plan on sailing a fin keeled yacht into shallow waters and are looking at a wing keel for the added performance, be weary! If you are going to explore into shallow waters, you will eventually touch the bottom!  When this happens, getting off will be a much harder ordeal. You may think you will never run aground, but it will happen if you like to explore shallow waters.

Wing keels supposedly offer added performance benefits with a shallower draft, but don't abuse of the shallow draft and go looking for trouble in waters where you can't float.