Headings: Canting Ballast Keels

There's no question that they work, but there are still engineering and safety issues being worked out in the upper reaches of the racing game that will take time to trickle down. It will happen, though.

Here's a view of Roy Disney's new canting ballast keel Pyewacket in the slings. With her bow and stern rudders, and narrow waterplane, it isn't immediately obvious which end of Pyewacket is the bow.

When the technical management team of the Volvo Ocean Race (of which I am a member) started looking at upgrading the performance of boats for the 2005-2006 race around the world, we considered a number of options, including bigger versions of the 60-foot water-ballasted boats used for the 2001-2002 race, big multihulls, and higher-performance monohulls. Volvo finally chose a canting-ballast, multiple-foil 70-foot monohull with a limited amount of water ballast to adjust fore and aft trim when running downwind at high speeds in the huge seas of the Southern Ocean.…