First - thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion of my keelbolts. I'll be a lot more comfortable aboard after servicing them, and I couldn't have done it without the input. So here's what I did. For those keeping score, this is a 1980 Catalina 25, iron keel, ferrous studs threaded into the keel, ferrous keel nuts in the bilge. Catalina claims the studs should be 1/2 inch. Mine are 5/8. Torque should be 39 footpounds. All six studs appeared solid and rang happily when struck. I removed the nuts from two of them and determined that I am in fact paranoid. Clean and shiny. I added lock washers to those two and applied new nuts. I chased the threads on another stud, ran a couple of nuts down it, locked the top one with the bottom one, and used a big socket wrench with a breaker bar to extract the stud. It was clean and solid. It too was threaded home. All three will be resealed and retorqued when it is warm enough here to use 5200. The three I messed with were the worst of the six, so I am now confident in the remaining three. On to other projects. Thanks again, its such a bummer wondering if your keel is falling off. Justin - O'day Owners' Web