Considering to buy a Dehlya 22 - lifting keel/water ballast

[SWH]

In my Dehlya search I'm happy to find this site. I consider to buy a Dehlya 22 but I do have some concerns about the lifting keel and water ballast. I hope that you as a reader of this topic can help me out.

Although the lifting keel and water ballast are very welcome features, they seem pretty tricky to me as well. I can imagine that malfunctions and leakages are hard to fix, as the double bottom makes access to it very difficult.

Are you familiar with problems like malfunctions of the lifting keel, and leakages caused by the lifting keel or the water ballast system? If these, or similar problems are known; can they be fixed without opening the hull or other risky actions?

Thanks in advance,

Jacob

[Werner]

Hi Jacob,

welcome to the Dehlya Forum. Can you give us more informations about you? Where do you come from?

I think for informations about the lifting keel here you are right. Look for "hubkiel" in the site and you find many items. Look for http://www.dehlya.de/index.php/tippstricks/51-hubkieldoku and you find a complete documentation about the lifting keel.

Because I´m an owner of a Dehler 22 with fixed keel I can´t give you more hints. But I´m shure that the lifting keel experts pipe up yet.

Werner

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[Claus_22]

Hi Jacob,

Warm welcome to the Dehlya and Dehler-Community!

From a technical perspective your concerns about the lifting-keels and the water ballast system is useless. In most cases the systems works sufficient without malfunctions or leakages. But you should consider same seasonal keel maintenance. - However check all this features properly before buying a boot.

Depending of you sailing area the "Dehler 22" with fixed keel can convinced you with better sailing characteristics (faster & higher degree up to the wind...)

Hope this helps!

All the best!
Claus

[Eric van Heck]

Hi Jacob.

Welcome to the Forum!

The construction of the boat is reliable enough to me, as it is built by the renown Dehler company, and was designed by the famous Dutch designer Ricus van de Stadt.
Of course, over time some maintenance and repairs will be necessary.

I bought my 22 last year and had to deal with some overdue maintenance on the keel of which you can find pictures on my Picasa acount below.

Here, and on Dehlya.de you can find most important info on the boat. This forum is very active, and was one of the reasons for me to choose for the Dehlya22
If necessary I can translate German documents to English for you. I allready had to translate some to Dutch for my own use
It improved my German a lot too :p

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Grüße aus Holland!

Eric van Heck
http://picasaweb.google.com/Eric.van.Heck/Dehlya#

[SWH]

Thanks for the warm welcome and your quick answers. I come from Holland. As my German writing skills are very limited (at this moment), I choose to post in this English forum. I guess this is easier for you to read. Fortunately my German reading skills are good enough to more or less understand the topics, so I already read some topics on lifting keel maintenance.

I?m happy to hear that the lifting keel and water ballast systems work sufficient (most of the time). Of course an important thing is that I will be able to do maintenance and repairs myself. This active forum and the website are no doubt of great value.

The potential problem I fear the most is leakage in the double bottom. Does this problem exist with the Deyhla 22?

[Claus_22]

Hi,

I heard about somes cases where people have Osmose issues/concerns. One approach could be to close the waterballast system accordingly. There are some postings with pro and cons on this topic which you could find in the forum:

Keep an eye on this link:

http://99276.forum.onetwomax.de/topic=100365006155

Best regards,
Claus

[sailormanfj]

Welcome, I am also from the Netherlands. The lifting keel mechanism itself is quite simple and strong. Comming winter i want to remove the lifting keel mechanism if you want to you can come take a look. The harbor of my Dehlya 25 is in the middle of the Netherlands (Spakenburg). PM or mail me at myname @ hotmail.com.