By 1980 the keel bolts on your catalina should be made of stainless steel, and are actually pretty rugged. I believe that the catalina smile is a combination of several design issues: mast pumping punding the top of the compression post, soft or hard groundings causing friction pressure against the keel to hull joint. But the primary reason is water seeping past the keel bolts and glass bilge surface & into the plywood compression block under the mast base and the plywood reinforcement beneath the bolts begins to rot with age. We all seem to forget that these boats were not actually designed to last forever, even if fiberglass hulls do seem to last indefinitely! I'm sure catalina wishes that they had created a self destuct feature after 10 years of wear to force us into buying new sailboats! Maybe that's what the wood beneath the keel bolts and cheap gate valves were installed for. Anyway, I wouldn't go finding problems with the Cat smile unless there is already a noticable crack there. Don't fix it if it ain't broke. My 1980 had a minor smile developing and I fixed it pretty easily with faired out West Systems Epoxy resin. Once that stuff dries its hard as a rock.
