Keel Damage

[Steve Treppa]

Hi Folks!I was wondering how and what I needed to go about repairing the keel damage I suffered last year on my 1986 Catalina 30 tall rig/fin keel. The low water levels here in the Great Lakes have been a real problem!The best way that I can describe the damage is that the forward "corner" of the keel is "chewed". It just all gnarled up from repeated impacts with rock, etc. There also are some 1/4" gouges running across the bottom of the keel which I'm not as worried about.Should I even bother with this? What are the boat speed and long term implications of this ?

 

[LaDonna Bubak - Planet Catalina]

Tedious work

It's not a difficult job, but any work done on the bottom of a boat is *blech* in my book!I'm assuming when you say "corner" you mean the forward bottom "corner", right? Assuming that, you have to determine how much has been gouged out. If it seems like a lot, you might have a knowledgeable boatwright take a look at it (NOT the yard owner cuz he'll want you to repaint the topsides to match the new bottom!) Keels were meant to get bumped so don't worry too much. If I'm not mistaken, the keel is just cast lead anyway so you're not looking at delamination. As far as performance is concerned, do you race? If not, & the boatwright thinks it's not too bad, ignore it.If it really bothers you, I guess you could grind it down to bare metal, removing all specks of bottom paint. Then start laying up the glass to get it to the correct dimensions, sand it all down, fair it in with fairing compound, sand that down, and paint it all again. Like I said: "blech!"LaDonna