HOME
REGISTRY
FOR SALE
SPECS
HISTORY
PROJECTS
PICTURES
LINKS
What did your Renegade cost new? (Price List from Boat Show Ed. of Boating Magazine)
History of Pearson Yachts
In an interview with the National Pearson Yacht Owners Association's The Pearson Current*, designer Bill Shaw had this to say about the Renegade:
Q: Many sailors use their crafts as live-aboard homes and a means to get away for extended periods. One of the trade-offs a blue water sailor has to make is between the supposedly greater stability and tracking ability of the full keel design compared to the better speed of the relatively newer fin keel designs. Is this a real issue or have builders been able to give us both speed and stability through contemporary design and materials technology.
Shaw: I think they have. The first separated keel rudder combination that I designed was a little boat we built about twenty seven years ago called the Renegade. It was in the beginning of the era of the separated underbodies. Bill Lapworth led the field with this type of hull form with his Cal 40, Cat 28 etc. We and others found that the tracking ability of these split underbodies was really great. They were just as good in many ways as the traditional full keel boat. I think the most vivid example of the success of the split keel can be seen in the changes made in the boats competing in the various around-the-world races. It did not take long to make the shift from the full keel design to the split underbody. If anybody needs good tracking ability, these boats certainly did. So I believe that if the boat is properly designed with the right shape and balance in the rudder that nothing is lost with a split keel. I do however feel strongly that a skeg- rudder combination is the most forgiving of all of the split underbodies. They can, in my opinion, be equal to and potentially better performers than the full keels.
*Excerpt from The Pearson Current interview with Bill Shaw conducted at the Atlantic City Sail Expo in January, 1994. Used by permission