keel hull joint image

[gonesail]

Originally Posted by daletournier

What percentage of modern yachts have their keels fall off? I would suggest the number is extremely tiny relative to the tens of thousands of boats that have been built with bolt on keels.

all it takes is one keel failure and your day will be ruined .. perhaps permanently. personal choice.

[coopec43]

QUOTE= Originally Posted by daletournier
What percentage of modern yachts have their keels fall off? I would suggest the number is extremely tiny relative to the tens of thousands of boats that have been built with bolt on keels.

QUOTE=gonesail;3408149]all it takes is one keel failure and your day will be ruined .. perhaps permanently. personal choice.[/QUOTE]

daletournier made that comment back in December 2017. (He's still around though as he logged in ten days ago)

[DefinitelyMe]

I used to sail on a friend's boat - a Beneteau First 375 - that had this setup. Every time we went sailing she took on a little water but we just ignored it. The first time we hauled her there was a crack like this between the hull and the keel. Not unusual with any kind of bolt-on fin keel so we ignored it and carried on sailing. She took on a little more water.

Two years later we hauled her again and the bilge was dry for the first time in years. You could pour a gallon of water in the bilge, run outside and watch it pour out through the joint. We launched it again and carried on sailing.

About a year later there was a bad hurricane. Another boat broke free and caused a lot of damage. She was hauled again and we finally decided to fix the problem. Ordered a new set of keel bolts, dropped the keel, cleaned it up, bedded it in with 5200 and installed the new bolts. Being an iron keel the keel itself is tapped and the bolts are simply screwed down into it which makes replacement super easy. After the re-bedding we never had any issues again and got many years of enjoyment out of the boat with relatively little input. Eventually she lost her mast in a big blow while on the mooring and it was too expensive to replace, so that was that.

We ran that boat aground several times, took it out in some horrible weather (though never offshore) and she survived several hurricanes with the keel hanging on by a thread. She took a lot of abuse and kept on trucking. The glass layup was impressively thick down by the keel to help support all the load. Overall we were pretty pleased with the design.

[coopec43]

Originally Posted by coopec43

Yes and we should never say a person is deaf (the person is "hearing impaired"). Similarly a person is not blind but "visually impaired". Likewise we should not call a person an idiot but "intellectually impaired" (remember that when one of your crew stuffs up next)

I have been queried about my use of the term "stuffs up". In Australia that is slang for making a monumental mistake. Sorry if anyone was offended.

To avoid a possible blue in the future please have a gander at the following glossary of Australian slang (It's the duck's guts).

https://www.australianexplorer.com/slang/phrases.htm

A more comprehensive dictionary
https://www.australiaday.com.au/fun-...nary/letter/s/