H31 Keel Shifted

[sail902]

H31 Keel shifted? Anyone ever had this problem and what's the fix? Or leave it alone? Boat was pulled last year and bottom painted. The boat was put back in as the pictures show that our friend took. Does not leak that I know of and I have no idea how long the keel has been shifted like this.

 

[Allan12210]

Probably was always that way, but I don't know. The holes that the bolts pass through aren't that much oversized that it could shift that much. It seems that something may have been out of spec originally. The key at the moment is to be sure that the nuts inside the boat are properly torqued. You could check one of the bolts...take off the nut and the SS backing plate and look at where the bolt comes up through the hull. If it is off center in the direction of the shift, then yeah it either moved (unlikely) or was installed originally off center. If the nuts are tight and it doesn't leak use fairing compound next time you haul and don't worry about it.

P.S. If you look at the bottom of the hull you see some triangular ears on the keel that fit up inside the hull providing stability. It would be hard to move the keel laterally with those recessed ears up inside a cavity of the hull.

 

[sail902]

Thank you Allan, that makes a lot of sense. Now that you mention it, I think this boat draws more than other H31s, I remember when I got the boat, it wouldn't fit in the slip because of the underwater brace. The owner of the marina was perplexed because he used to sell the H31 and said that there was no way it should have been hitting the underwater brace! I wonder if this is a keel of an h34 or something?? I will check to see that the nuts are tight. I'm not sure I want to take any of the nuts off while it's in the water?? I would hope that if it was a big problem that the marina would have let me know about it before putting the boat back into the water! If Hunter put this boat together that way, they should fix it! There is no excuse for that no matter how cheap the boat is! Maybe if the keel wasn't tight enough over a period of time, maybe it could have rounded out the mounting holes before it was corrected?? I would like to take some of the nuts off and see what's going on.
Thanks again for your advice, I was a little freaked out about it.
I'll post some more pics
Anyone else heard of this keel problem on the Hunters? Thank you!

PS Allan, I went out to Allemeda once to pick up a Columbia Sabre. was wanting to take it out for a sail, but there was no wind that day. I've been bummed about not getting out to sail there ever since! Beautiful and sailboats in the harbor as far as the eye can see

 

[Steve Dion]

I would agree that check the torque on those keel bolts would be prudent. Then just dig out all of that old caulking and re-do it. It think we have seen some of these 83-87 era boats have have had a hard grounding that are much worse than this.

You may want to try searching the archives and see if there are any photos.

 

[sail902]

Hi Steve, I searched all the forums and coudn't find any pictures of H31 keels. Do you think that my keel shifted from being grounded? Have any idea what the keel bolts should be torqued at or who would have that information? I guess snug them up and see if they are all at about the same ft. pounds? Not sure I have a socket that big, I know i got a crescent wrench though. I'm going to the boat tomorrow, so I'll see if any are loose at least. Thanks for your reply, it's great to talk to people like yourself that has experience!

 

[Steve Dion]

I would contact Hunter Marine for the torque specs on the bolts.

Honestly it looks like the caulking has just deteriorated.

 

[sail902]

Hey Steve,
I wish it was just caulking, the keel is off to starboard for sure. You can see for sure that the the interlocking part of the hull is a high spot on port and a low spot on the starboard by about 1/2 inch I think. I'm going to check out how tight the bolts are tomorrow. There is a h31 on the hard and I'll take a look at it also and take some pics to compair with pics of my keel.

 

[tcbro]

I doubt it left Hunter that way

I know Hunter gets a bad rap from some (not me, I'm on my second) but I doubt this was like this when new. Personally, I think this is cause for concern. If you've had the boat out of the water before and this is the first time you've noticed it I'd say it shifted for whatever reason. I can't imagine a surveyor missing this.

I would guess that Hunter beds the keel with something like 5200 when bolting it on. I agree with everybody else when they say to carefully check the keelbolts.

It appears to me to be shifted more on the forward edge that the aft edge. If it is not true to the centerline this could cause issues on one tack. Do you notice that she likes one tack significantly over the other?

It also appears to me that there is a significant amount of bedding at the forward edge, much more than on my 33.5.

If it was me I'd devise a way (strings fore and aft, etc.) to determine if it was cocked along the centerline. I'd also have a Hunter tech check it out. If all is determined to be ok, fair it in and forget it.

Tom

 

[sail902]

I checked the keel bolts and they seem tight. I did manage to take off the nut on the rear stud by usine my legs on a big crescent wrench. Couldn't get the big metal backing plate off, so I can't see if the holes are rounded out, but you can plainly see that the bolt is off to the starboard side of the boat in relation to the bildge pan. I can't see signs of a recent shift. I bought the boat in '06 in the water and didn't question the bottom because I bought it from the dealer who had recently hauled it out and painted the bottom etc. This last time, the boat was hauled out and painted by another service and they put it back in without mentioning that the keel was shifted, so they must not have been too concerned about it. See the pictures below and let me know what you think.

 

[gr8_2_av8]

Mine is like that too. Every spring after sitting on the hard it bleeds rust from the joint. This year I went right to the gelcoat all the way around, and in the bilge area on starboard side there was close to 1/2 inch build up of epoxy to match the keel. Port side there was none. Same at the bow one side even other side built up with epoxy. In my opinion there is no way mine could have shifted as 4 of the 5 bolts have a tab that sits recessed into the hull. I am going from the hull down about a foot or so and am glassing the whole joint and hopefully eliminating the constant weeping. As a side note it seems that the keel joint had an epoxy between rather than say a flexible agent such as 5200. I was able to chip a good portion out very easily. Seems the keel rusts and the epoxy no longer adheres. I hope this solves the annual bleeding of the keel joint. Now just to stop the pocket book from bleeding!

 

[sail902]

Thanks gr8

gr8, So you are saying that your keel joint looks like mine if you were to take all the filler out of yours? I can't see any obvious signs of mine shifting recently. I took off the aft most nut and tried to pull off the backing plate to see if the hole in the fiberglass had elongated, but I couldn't get the backing plate off. My boat is in the water, so I didn't want to push my luck. I'll post some pictures of my keel bolt off center in the keel pan inside. Do you have any pictures of your keel joint? Is your boat in salt water?
Thanks again I appreciate your reply!

 

[gr8_2_av8]

Yup. Pretty much identical. I think when they built these things the faired the joints to compensate for poor fit, but I wasn't there so can't say for sure. If you pass along your email I can send pictures of where my project is at. If you want to pm me or what ever you prefer.

Dave

 

[Steve Dion]

Something you guys may want to consider is using POR15?

http://www.por15.com/

If you could get this stuff up inside the area between the stub and the keel it may stop "this" problem.

 

[Don Crowther]

I tried to push por 15 into the gap between the keel and hull last year. Thought I had done a pretty good job but in the fall when I pulled I still had some rust stains from between the two. The rest of the keel looks fine though.
I might give Dave's suggestion a try and epoxy the joint. I wonder if the epoxy will stick to por 15?

 

[Steve Dion]

Don:

I was thinking that they could use a syringe to inject it into the joint.

 

[Don Crowther]

Steve
That might work, I didn't have one handy at the time. Just tried to get it to flow off the brush into the void.

 

[sail902]

Yup. Pretty much identical. I think when they built these things the faired the joints to compensate for poor fit, but I wasn't there so can't say for sure. If you pass along your email I can send pictures of where my project is at. If you want to pm me or what ever you prefer.

Dave

I would like to see pix of your keel joint project as I'm going to have to tackle that project soon myself. Here in the picture of my aft keel bolt, looking aft, you can see that it's off center. It doesn't look obvious to me that the bolt and backing plate has shifted, so I wonder if you might be right that it left Hunter that way. I can't get the backing plate off to see if the hole for the keel stud has been elongated. I would think that the hole would be very close to the stud size... shouldn't be much of any slop for it to shift from the factory? My e-mail is sail902@windstream.net Thank you!

 

[windwagon]

I used to have a 1984 H31. My keel did the same thing every year. I glassed over the crack, it helped but never was I able to completely solve the problem. As far as I know the boat is still going strong.

 

[Dan Johnson]

This is known as...

the "Hunter Smile". It is common to the H31 and H34 production runs. I have pix of my keel and other h34's that look the same.

Allan covered it. Scrape it clean, fill it with epoxy, 5200, or fairing compound, repaint, and go sailing!