Another keel breaks...

This is very true and I was just having the same conversation with my dad.  But I am against banning them as sailing always needs to modify and develop and canting keels are one of the most groundbreaking innovations on boats in the last few years.  However, I do think that they need far more thorough testing and if they are to be used there needs to be strenuous testing and regulations to make sure they are fail safe.  They will not be banned and they will continue to be widely used purely for the fact that, from a sailor's point of view, the benefits outweigh the risks.  Every sailor wants to win a big race and they will always have the "it will never be me" attitude so the only option is to develop the technology further and make it safer. 

A case for the canting keel would be that they reduce the stability of an upturned boat making them easier to right from full inversion. With a conventional keel, you are dependant on the force of a wave to roll the boat back over from total inversion. If you consider Isabelle Autissier's inversion on Open 60 "PRB" with a conventional keel, the upturned stability of PRB was too much for the force of a wave alone to right the boat. With the beemier boats like the VO70s, Open 60s, etc, the canting keels provide a bias of force when the boats do go fully inverted and aid the righting of the boat. Consider a dinghy sailor hanging onto a centreboard to right an inverted boat, and you have the same effect a canting keel provides. Reckon canting keels are a step forward from a safety point of view aswell as a performance point of view, and feel that most offshore racers would support that point of view. The failings are from a mechanical point of view, but on the whole, canting keels seem a step in the right direction.

Re Alex Thomson / Hugo Boss, good news that he is safe onboard Ecover.  Anyone know what will happen to Hugo Boss now?  Is it just left to drift in the southern ocean until it breaks up and sinks?  The report didn't seem to suggest the keel damage was causing her to take on water.  Would they try and salvage the boat?

Anyway, what a shame.  Pretty crappy thing to happen.

at least there are two people on board to set up the jury rig.

I've been researching a lot about canting keels, and although they have had their failings, they do have the support from sailors such as Mike Golding, and it wasn't my own personal opinion, although I do agree with it, that canting keels are tending to make off-shore racing more safe on the whole. The tightening of the offshore rules for Open 60s has been aided through canting keels because it has allowed boats which would be incapable of self-righting with conventional keels, to right. There are two routes which the designs seem to be going down as I'm percieving it now, "beemier" boats with more upright stability and canting keels, which perform higher, or narrower boats with the ability to self-right but less sailing stability. It's a bit of a trade off between the two and it's really down to the sailor's personal decision on which design they choose, and at the present moment, the canting keel boats seem to have preference. My point initially was that if they can get the mechanics behind the canting keels right, it makes the sport slightly more safer due to the fact that wider designs of boats can be sailed, with the likely-hood of capsize reduced slightly and if need be, the canting keel can aid righting in the worst case scenario. From a general point of view, canting keels may aid the sport as a whole due to the fact that it's quite scary how many cruisers, racer/cruisers, etc have high inversion stability, in such they won't self right. If the cutting edge of the sport can pioneer and refine canting keels to the point there are no general failings, in years to come, they may filter down into other classes and lessen the ammount of  supposedly "safe" boats which can't self-right.