You can have a shoal draft keel, but then with a high aspect rig and a low aspect keel the boat is no longer balanced and the performance again suffers. It can be argued that even an overloaded modern boat with a shoal draft compromise is a faster sailer than an old gaffer. This is probably true if upwind, light air performance is considered, but fall off the wind a little and let the wind come up and the modern boat is reefing and heeling and spraying. Modern boats have made great progress in sailing, and I would never go back to hemp rope and canvas sails. But I also will not ignore a millennium of sailing s evolution because a few boats that I would never take offshore can point 15 degrees higher than I do.
Traditional craft are still around because they work, and they work well.
I can t think of another boat I would want to go through hell and high-water on than a well built traditional gaffer. I grew up on the east coast sailing almost exclusively gaff rigged boats, and I absolutely love them. It seems that owning a gaff rigged schooner, I spend an inordinate amount of time defending my choice of boat since only a hopeless deluded traditionalist would ignore the advances made for us by the racing community. In light of all this, let me congratulate you on your choice of an excellent cruising boat for couples. That s on boats the size of the Adventures or Bluenose.