Over the last 30 years I have owned five cruising catamarans with keels nine with daggerboards and one with one centerboard.

Does a catamaran have a keel. Upwind catamarans do not usually have the same ability to point into the wind as they have shorter stubbier keels and do not travel as quickly. A sailboat needs a keel to avoid capsizing when the sails fill with wind. Larger catamarans have an engine in each hull so they can still be highly maneuverable and offset the wind effect.

Catamarans sit on top of the water with much less keel area below the water and are much more affected by the wind. Sails keels and rudders are foils. For a designer to specify a size and depth he must have those variables filled in.

Without a keel boats are much harder to steer and more likely to capsize. Lets look at the two schools of thought on this subject. Dagger Boards The average cruising catamaran has keels while high performance catamaran cruisers have dagger boards.

In the case of these boats it comes back to daggerboards. Daggerboard catamarans have several advantages over their keel counterparts some of which are well known and others that are more subtle and sometimes only recognized by people who have used them. Foils and lift In any serious discussion about sailing we need to understand these terms and concepts.

Catamarans just dont have enough keel area. Then the next would be to have keels. Especially as it would need two.

Catana 39 Underbody No keel but daggerboards. Active safety aspects are advantages created by speed and the ability to retract underwater appendages. Our 526 keeled version draws about 12 inches more than the daggerboarded version.