Shallow Draft, Sailboat Keel; Draws 5' Of Water?
A sailboat keels purpose on a sailboat is to balance out the forces coming against your sails.
Each compartment was filled with lead, then welded closed.
The time of year we were building this keel it was very cold
outside. So we purchased a flame thrower to heat the metal up before anything was welded. I did not mind this job in the winter.
This cruising sailboat hull and keel design was for the purpose of cruising to sailing caribbean, vacation to mexico, europe travel, adventure vacations. Drawing only five feet of water will allow us to get really close to land. Plus enable us to explore rivers and channels, with a deeper keel this would be harder.
In This Application, Cold Pour Means: Chunks of lead or ingets are placed into the walled sections. Mean while other Lead is being heated up to the melting point and poured around the chunks of lead forming a solid block.
Lead was available to us by finding sailboats that were
abandoned at local or out of state Marinas. Steve our friend
from Virginia helped us a lot in this area. He would track them down for us.
Keels are not hard to cut off of sailboats, we used chain saws...you do need to sharpen the blade between so many cuts. A jigsaw cuts through fiber glass like nothing. In the beginning we were cutting the lead keels into fifty to one hundred size pieces. After several years of this the one hundred size pieces turned into one hundred fifty pds - two hundred pds pieces of lead. I felt like a pack mule... This sailboat keel, shallow draft design is to help us on our journey of traveling to places and exploring other countries.
Our design isn't meant for everyone but it is one of a kind...
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There are walls located in the middle of the keel, that is where the lead has been placed about twenty thousand pounds. 8 sections in all...
