Crack in Keel for boat under contract

[double u]

Originally Posted by Notyetsinking

Excellent point thank you. Hammer will be coming with me tomorrow.

had a keel quite like yours, & on that lower, rear tip tapping with a knuckle already showed where there was fairing.
Take a magnet too, parts of the keel might be cast iron

[MicHughV]

just to clear the air here....are you depending on a 2017 survey ( done by someone else)...or did you have your own survey done...ie, in 2021...??

[Notyetsinking]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

just to clear the air here....are you depending on a 2017 survey ( done by someone else)...or did you have your own survey done...ie, in 2021...??

I have my own as well as another from 2017. I reference the one from 2017 as I have not yet got the report from my surveyor.

[Notyetsinking]

Update: I had a keel guy from the boat yard take a look at it (he is familiar with the boat). Took one look at it and was able to diagnose the issue. Gave a rough estimate of about $2500.

[Apollo19.5]

Originally Posted by Notyetsinking

Update: I had a keel guy from the boat yard take a look at it (he is familiar with the boat). Took one look at it and was able to diagnose the issue. Gave a rough estimate of about $2500.

And the issue was??????????

[Manateeman]

And he intends to fix it by doing what ?
$2500 feeds one manatee crew pizza and beer for a month but I have to supply the paper napkins.
Mark

[HeinSdL]

Sounds like a stitch up. Keel has a highly unusual crack running parallel to the leading edge, there is little consensus on this forum as to what the problem might be (and I would say there is a reasonable breadth of experience here) and the repairman comes along, takes a cursory look and states, yeah no problem that'll be $2,500.

[Notyetsinking]

Originally Posted by Apollo19.5

And the issue was??????????

So the boat has an unusual keel bolt situation. It has 4 massive bolts along the middle, arranged 1-2-1 raised to about floorboard level and they looked brand new. It then had 2 smaller helper bolts on each side of the main bolts, located lower in the bilge. Those had some signs of rust. I would send pictures but couldn’t get the floor board entirely off so just stuck my phone in their to take a video. Guy said the helper bolts need to be replaced and rebedded, and the crack fixed. I’m still blown away by water entering the keel in that way (I guess through the bilge), but I suppose that also matches what was seen with the crack. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth about surveyors, given the previous guy was completely wrong and mine just had no idea, but it is what it is.
However, I am impressed with the general engineering of the boat, as it really seems over built and over designed. Even with negligence the last several years and leaving this issue, there is little damage and the repair is minimal. I am expecting the repair to be a bit more than estimated, as I will not be using steel bolts. The idea of using a rustable metal down there is not worth any level of savings in my mind.

[Notyetsinking]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Sounds like a stitch up. Keel has a highly unusual crack running parallel to the leading edge, there is little consensus on this forum as to what the problem might be (and I would say there is a reasonable breadth of experience here) and the repairman comes along, takes a cursory look and states, yeah no problem that'll be $2,500.

No. As stated earlier, the guy is familiar with the boat as he had worked on it for the owner before the current seller. Details of examination listed above.

[HeinSdL]

Originally Posted by Notyetsinking

No. As stated earlier, the guy is familiar with the boat as he had worked on it for the owner before the current seller. Details of examination listed above.

Ah OK so happy ending. Was a bit surprised the seller wasn't already appraised of the issue (identified by the repairman who is familiar with the boat) and able to brief you thereby saving you some time scratching your head!

[Notyetsinking]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

Ah OK so happy ending. Was a bit surprised the seller wasn't already appraised of the issue (identified by the repairman who is familiar with the boat) and able to brief you thereby saving you some time scratching your head!

Well in a way they were. The previous surveyor (the guy who did the report for when they were purchasing) reported it as a fairing issue. So in their mind I guess it wasn’t a high priority thing. Not saying I agree as anything underwater is first in my mind, just guessing at their though process. I have no idea what the other surveyor was thinking in listing it as a fairing. Following an earlier posters advice and did a sounding, it is very clearly the same material.

The helper bolts are interesting, I haven’t seen anything like that before, and they most be located at the very edge of the keel.

[Notyetsinking]

One thing that did surprise me, looking at the bare metal of the keel, it almost seemed as if there was no crack there. Clearly there is something, evidenced by the imperfection in the paint, but I don’t think any person alive would see anything UNLESS you were really absolutely trying very hard to see something. That to me seemed very unusual, and evidently that can even happen with new boats? I’m not sure if that has any significance to a path forward, but I think that at least contributes a bit to the uniqueness of the situation.

[Notyetsinking]

Originally Posted by double u

had a keel quite like yours, & on that lower, rear tip tapping with a knuckle already showed where there was fairing.
Take a magnet too, parts of the keel might be cast iron

Wish I had you as my surveyor! Like you all I really needed to do was a knuckle sounding, as it was pretty obvious. I used the hammer just in case. Magnet was a good idea. Frankly I knew just after touching the thing. My surveyor said thermal imagining is just “smoke and mirrors”. Seems to me that would have really helped the last guy, and me as well.

[MicHughV]

ok,so who pays the $2,500...and the extra time spent in the yard, etc...???

[jimbunyard]

This is another 'you really need to be there' one, but man, I don't like it. Something caused that --don't know what to call it -- 'imperfection?', but if it is because the threads are too close to surface, as it seems might be the case, I can't see how "replacing and rebedding" the 'helper bolts' is gonna solve the ultimate problem.

From the little info we have, I'd walk unless I was very firmly convinced this wasn't going to be an ongoing issue.