Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

In my minds eye, it's just how comfortable

you are with the boat you choose. I go by the old adage that it's not if you're going to run aground but when you're going to run aground. If you don't mind doing it in a fin keel, spade rudder boat then that's finn. I like a bit more support down there. I can count the times I've run aground on one hand and they never have been hard. Knock on wood. That's not to say I won't go out tomorrow and pile into some reef somewhere. If I do, I think I have a better chance of surviving it in a full keel boat. I was involved in pulling one off a reef in the Dominican Republic off Puerto Platta and I can guarantee that a fin keel boat would not have survived. I spent two weeks putting the rudder back on it and patching the hole in the side before we could even get it to Puerto Rico to do a repair. The picture is of me about 25 years ago with the rudder in a jig measuring just how far we wanted to heat and bend the shaft to get it straight. The kids were the "boat yard" workers in Puerto Platta.

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