On Jun 10, 4:19 am, "Roger Long" wrote:
....
You are right that keel failures are rare but few people drive their boats
hard. 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. ...

Well, folks have been bolting ballast to the outside of keels on a
regular basis since like the 19th century. Many boats with external
ballast have been driven very hard even in their old age. The retired
IOR racer is a popular class of cruising boat on the Pacific circuit.
Bolt on fin keels are the norm for them. Folks run them aground, sail
them in the Souther Ocean and the like. You sail your boat hard, but
trust me, lots of other folks sail their boats at least as hard and
put many more hours on them. For instance, I recently got an note
from a couple who are heading back up to the islands after their
seventh trip to Tasmania (that's 14 crossings of the Bass Straight).
They've been cruising their old IOR warhorse hard in tough conditions
many weeks a year for 20 plus years. They're both ex-racers and they
always push pretty hard. It just so happens that they are friends of
mine so I'm aware of what they do, but there are hundreds of other
folks out there quietly doing similarly hard sailing. AFIK,
catastrophic keel bolt failure is very rare. I know of many more rig
failures and injuries and deaths resulting from them than keel
failures.

Not having to think about keel bolts, even not a statistically
significant worry, just makes watching the boat working hard a bit more
enjoyable.

Which is cool. But it's kind of like saying, "I wont drive a front
wheel drive car because CV joints are prone to failure and I don't
want to have to worry about that..." That's aesthetics not risk
analysis.

-- Tom.