Hunter Legend 37 Broken Keel Box? or just façade.

[Cemseller]

I started to see the Keel to Hull Joint open up on PortRecently I discovered some disheartening cracks inside my keel box. I have tried to search for other such issues among Hunter owners but can't find any on the forums, yet at least one yard has told me this is common (and expensive to repair) and could lead to my keel falling off. I have discovered that some Hunter Legends had a false bilge, if that's the case my false bilge has been removed and I may be looking at a facade created to clean up the joint.

I'm hoping some other Hunter owners can give me advice about the repair for this. I"ve gotten feedback from 'don't worry about it' to 30k to fix and plenty of ideas in between.

 

[shemandr]

Did you have a hard grounding?

 

[DayDreamer41]

Welcome to the SBO forums where there are many very knowledgeable sailors here to answer your questions, I have not heard of this being an issue with Hunter sailboats, there have been reported hull to keel cracks AKA the smile, but not internal cracks on the keel log. I guess the first thing I would do is get a professional opinion on the extent of this damage, but it sure does imply a hard grounding. It almost appears that in one of the pictures there has been a repair done to this area.

 

[Rick D]

This looks like the cosmetic issue I had on a prior boat. It was scary but turned out to be a zero. Have a good surveyor look it over. Best of luck.

 

[Cemseller]

no hard grounding that I am aware of.

 

[rgranger]

If it were my boat, I'd put her on the hard with the keel supported and then take a grinding wheel and dig into those cracks a bit. I'd want to understand if I am just looking at a gel-coat crack on a liner or am I actually looking at a crack in my hull. If it is the former, then you fair it out and paint it or gel coat it... if it is the later then you got a problem and should not sail it until it is fixed.