Another keel breaks...

Canting keels seem to be gettng a fair bit of grief and they obviously have some reliability issues, but the suggestion that they should be banned is taking things too far. 

Going sailing offshore short handed is inevitably going to be dangerous, whether going in a canting keel boat, conventional keel boat, or (craziest of them all!) a multi hull.  There are an almost infinite number of things that can go wrong with offshore race boats - for example snapping a mast, hitting something etc.  I guess it is best to let the sailors decide if the performance gain from a canting keel outweighs the risk of a keel failure.

It seems there are plenty of other dangerous things out there that don't get banned'so why pick on canting keels!

Depends on whether the keel is on the "right side". Dinghies mostly capsize to leeward (except, perhaps, Lasers and similar), whereas on a keelboat, broaches to windard (i.e. capsize to leeward) are generally quite tame affairs. It is broaches to leeward (with unplanned gybe) that cause the grief. In that case, not only will the sails be pinning you down but so will the keel, now on the wrong side.

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.

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.