Desert Pirate wrote:
Down2TheC, Thanks for your reply. If I may ask, what exactly happened to your keel to necessitate a repair?
Water somehow got from the bilge, down the keel bolt. Once a bit gets in there and freezes, it makes room for more water next season. Until eventually you see a visible bulge.
Mind you it's rare but not specific to this boat. The keel is forged around the keel bolts so it's hard to have a bad one. And of course caulking the heads of the bolts in the bilge should prevent any water getting down there even if there were a gap inside the keel. She was 27yrs old when that happened and the price charged by Mars was kind of cheap. (yard charged more for removal and refitting.) So no complaints about Tartan's build. Mars or time made the defect and it just took that long for it to show even up here in the cold zone. This boat in florida... never would have known.