Twin keel performers
In the frenetic yet halcyon days of fast-selling Hunter Sonata and Impala cruiser-racers, I foolishly regarded bilge keels as performance sapping abominations. I thought they looked like casually designed afterthoughts sprouting beneath nice hulls and assumed that their sole purpose was to stand a boat on its own two feet.
The boats that our company built, on the other hand, were aimed at people we thought of as serious sailors – and we rashly believed that anything other than a state-of-the-art fin or lifting keel flyer would be unlikely to satisfy them.
But when my personal circumstances underwent a change, I had to think again. Ignoring my prejudices, I spent my own hard earned cash on a second-hand bilge keeler. Why, you may well ask? Simple. My factory and home were on the East Coast but most of the high profile regattas took place down south. So I needed a comfortable floating base that could live on a cheap mud mooring, follow the circuits where the cruiser-racers I built competed, and act as a photo launch and mobile home. A bit of leisurely weekend sailing would be an added bonus. With a limited budget there was one obvious solution. A Westerly Centaur.
Unbeknown to me at the time, this model’s twin keel design had been a game-changer. When Westerly founder and designer Denys Rayner retired and handed over the reins to a young David Sanders he advised him to ask Laurent Giles to design future models.
Rayner was
