On Jun 10, 8:44*am, wrote:
On Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:19:44 -0400, "Roger Long"

wrote:
I can tell that you are not an engineer. *Are you familiar with those
pictures of stainless steel shafts that have had a rubber band put around
them and immersed in salt water? *That's what can happen at the keel hull
joint if it is not kept watertight and there is no joint on a boat harder to
keep tight.

Do you have any good tips on how to keep the dust bunnies out of my
bilge? If I could keep out the dust bunnies, I'd feel more comfortable
about storing fresh bread wrapped in a paper napkin down there.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of boat are we talking about here? *I
haven't seen many bolted keel installations with structural glass backup.

I don't think of the epoxy/glass as "backup". It was also not original
to the boat when manufactured. The keel is held on three ways. There
are 6 bolts. The keel is bonded to the stub with 3m5200, and the
outside is wrapped and epoxied. You can remove the bolts and the
fiberglass and still have a very hard time removing the keel. I tend
to think of all three elements as backup for each other. No single one
alone would be enough to satisfy me that it was secure.

If it really is structural as you say, stainless steel bolts would be OK but
there would also be no reason not to use plain double dipped galvanized with
cast iron or bronze with lead.

They used what they used. Who knows why...

BTW, I have nothing against bolted keels and have designed a few myself.
I'd probably use a bolted keel if built a new boat for myself. *

But, but... You said they were DEATH!

When buying
a 28 year old boat with a poorly documented maintenance history like I did,
it's nice to have encapsulated ballast.

You are right that keel failures are rare but few people drive their boats
hard.

Here's an email to someone about how my wife and I spent this past
Sunday afternoon:

We had quite an adventure yesterday (6/8/2008)on the Long Island
Sound. We got caught out in a line of severe thunder storms. Boat got
knocked down twice while under bare poles. From the time we saw the
threatening line on the horizon, to when it hit us was less than a
half hour. I knew what I was looking at, and wasted no time getting as
prepared as possible. We immediately doused sails, donned PFD's,
clipped on, and secured everything possible. We were too far out to
make it into any port. Once it hit, trying to get into anywhere for
shelter would have been a deadly mistake. Horizontal rain so hard it
burned as it hit. I couldn't see the GPS and RADAR just inches in
front of my face. Wind gusts were in the 70+ mph range. Maybe higher.
This was later confirmed by another sailor who encountered parts of
the same storm 30 miles west of my position. His max windspeed reading
was over 57 knots. My wife reported to me during a discussion
afterwards that at one point she had the odd sensation of very hot air
blowing on one shoulder and cold air blowing on the other at the same
time. I'd guess that means we were experiencing wind sheer, and were
directly in it.

It takes an awful lot of wind power to knock this boat over sideways
with no sails up. Whenever there was a slight diminishment, and I
regained some steering ability, I headed straight out to give me more
room for the periods when we were taken wherever the wind wanted us to
go. VHF radio announcement by the CG that it was coming didn't
commence until maybe a few minutes after the first rain had already
hit us. They were also way off about how hard the gusts were inside
the cells. It was actually a string of cells. We encountered two of
them, the second being worse than the first. That's when we got
knocked down. There was no way to escape them at 5 knots. I could see
them clearly on the RADAR. They came rolling up the Sound like that
famous stone ball in Indiana Jones, except there was a bunch of them.
One person was killed by lightning and several injured on a beach just
a few miles northeast of our position at Hammonassett Beach. They were
under a pavilion. Heard panicked pan-pans and maydays on the radio
during lulls when I could hear it at all. Haven't seen any reports yet
of boats sinking or on the rocks, but it wouldn't surprise me. Some
small boats may not be reported missing until someone on land realizes
they didn't show up for work or whatever. In over 45 years of sailing
on the LIS, I've been caught in some bad weather before, but this was
exceptional. Taking half a day off today to go down, dry out the sails
better, and and straighten out the boat.

Racing boats usually become uncompeditive long before keel bolts
reach a critical age. *When you sail hard, as I do, the rig is enough to
worry about. *Not having to think about keel bolts, even not a statistically
significant worry, just makes watching the boat working hard a bit more
enjoyable.

I apparently stress test my boat occasionally as well. :')

Keel bolts was something I didn't worry about at all.

Nice story salty, thanks for sharing. What were sea conditions like?

Fred