High and dry
I once towed a lifting-keel Hunter 701 (23ft) from Hunter’s factory in Essex to its new owner in Newquay, west Wales, aka Llareggub (spell it backwards) the port immortalised by Dylan Thomas in Under Milk Wood. I went there often in the following years to race lifting-keelers in great Welsh company. It was a hairy cross-country journey and the delivery trip convinced me that larger lifting-keel yachts are too big to trail, rig and launch on a regular basis. But they solve the problem of Newquay’s ‘fishing boat bobbing sea’ which turns into a beach twice a day. Like bilge-keelers, they just sit there until the sea returns. What follows is my pick of the used boats you might find in the 21-23ft size range with lifting keels.
In the early 1970s, three successful British-built lifting keelers had vertically lifting keels with large bulbs at their bases: the Eclipse 22 designed by Ian Proctor; and the Hunter 701 and Anderson 22, both designed by the Oliver Lee. As a result, all three are exceptionally powerful and seaworthy yachts that excel in heavy weather when others might be labouring. These days very few variable draught yachts are built with vertically lifting keels, let alone bulbed ones. The reasons for this are simple. The engineering to lift a heavy bulbed keel vertically can be expensive and the keel housing can compromise the accommodation.
The most successful of this bulbed-keel trio was the Anderson 22. Unlike the Eclipse or the 701, it does not have
