<Tommy Terrific wrote: What would you say is a decent keel for a square sterned boat?> G'day Tommy, that's a bit of a subjective question that NA's have a tough time answering. The lay advice is "one that works for you in the sea conditions you are in". Hard chine square stern boats by nature have a greater bite on the water. This bite is what gives them the initial stiffness an anchor and underway. As a sea builds however these very same characteristics begin to work against you. The less a big wave has to bite against the less it will move you around. Water flows around smooth objects with far less resistance resulting in less force moving the object. A square stern, aka one that has a sharp angle under water where it turn to the boats bottom, presents two areas for a following wave to work on. Initially the water in a wave face is rotating up the wave face so it is trying to come from underneath up to the surface at trawler speeds. This means drag which raises the stern. Next as the wave crest reaches the flat stern the wave force tries to accelerate the boat rapidly. How rapidly depend on the wave size. However, most waves of a size to be concerned with will be moving at 15+ kts. Far faster than the trawler. So the stern gets a big push and is now lifted as its on the wave crest and the bow is down. As we all have learned long ago in power boating 101 we never trim a vessel bow down as it leads to "bow steer" which is very dangerous. Yet these waves are doing just that. How to mitigate this bow steering effect? A flat bottom boat is pretty helpless in this situation. Twin screw boats with minimal rudders aren't much better. What we need is a long keel with will resist the yawing effect of bow steering AND if possible a larger rudder(s) to act as the feathers on an arrow. A just in time pulse of power to get the water flowing over the rudders also help the whole process by increasing water flow at a critical moment. However adding the power on the face of the wave is often counter productive as you have just added speed when you may wish to slow down. This is why I'd said that long downwind/wave runs require concentration and dedication to each and every wave. Very tiring yet the reward is no broaching. A momentary break in concentration can be un-nerving if not dangerous. There is no such thing as a keel big enough to stop all this. A long keel for bow to stern with a 2-3' depth below the hull certainly will settle it down. Bilge keels are a good help in adding that extra tracking surface but few hard chine/square stern trawlers are likely to use them.The Hatteras LRC's are a good example of using a keel on a twin engine square stern vessel. They track quite well till the following seas reach rail height. Then they to require concentration and throttle use. BTW, active fin stabilizer help this situation until there response time is exceeded by the wave size/speed. If the boat yaws fast enough the fins will actually present a greater tripping surface for the water to act on. With all this said Swan Song which does quite well in following seas up to 10' or so even at wave periods as low as 4 seconds. Above this I usually hand steer to quarter the bigger ones and let them slide under us. Please remember that we have always towed our tender so it in effect is a small drogue helping to keep us aligned and reduce yaw. For our Hawaii passage where we will encounter larger following waves we have two new drogues on board expressly for the purpose to provide some drag to reduce yawing. One is a Shark from Florentino and the other is a large Seabrake from Burke. Our plan is to use the Shark when we need a bit of drag to reduce the yawing effect. This will allow our autopilot to do the steering. If we need more we'll switch to the Seabrake which should provide an increased drag. If we need yet more the Shark followed by the Seabrake in tandem should get us up to 3-4000 lbs of drag at 6 kts or so. From my experience Swan Song will be fine if it is held to that speed range and not yaw about. Slowing to an idle doesn't really bother us on this leg as we are millionaire's of time and can wait out a big seas for a few days if required. What we can't do is run all over the Pacific trying to avoid weather. This would add too many miles and eat into our fuel reserves for no real gain, IMHO. We plan on keeping a good log on the use and also video these drogues in action. The marketing videos we all see where they tow them in a Harbour or toss them over the stern of a sailboat really isn't germane to our usage on trawlers and passages. We hope to be able to add to the data base in a unbiased manner. Of course if one works super and the other is a dud we may no longer be unbiased ;-) We discussed the Jordan series drogue but didn't think that it fit our needs as well. We don't wish to slow almost to a stop as this puts us at the mercy of cross seas which are a normal occurrence. I want to be able to maintain decent headway and to be able to steer up or down easily if we encounter them. The series drogue adds to much drag, IMO, to allow this steering. I know this is a bit counter to what I have said in the previous paragraph but to me the series drogue is a better replacement perhaps for a para anchor than a drogue. You and other may have a different opinion. To summarize the answer. Hard chine square stern trawlers offer lots of room and costal cruising advantages but few are really good passagemakers. Those NA's that have worked up some designs that work pretty well are few and far between, IMO. The market for these types of boats is small and only a few commercial builders tailor to the passagemaker market. One thing that makes a boat a good passagemaker is the ability to run down wind/wave without white knuckles, IMHO. Ah, boats. We just move from one compromise to another. One person feature is another's Achilles heal..... BTW, Swan Song went on the dock today at Marina La Paz for 10 days giving the anchor a good rest. 1st one in the Pacific Ocean as our last time at a dock was in Colon, Panama in the Caribbean back in January. She'll get a good freshwater bath, some needed R & R, an interior deep cleaning and our tender will go to the dinghy doctor for a full check-up which is long overdue. As always YMMV. Dave & Nancy Swan Song Roughwater 58 Limin in La Paz