Swing Keel cable snapped

[Joanne]

The swing keel cabled snapped as we were raising the keel yesterday. The boat is currently in the water. Has anyone experienced this? Do you have any suggestions on repair. I assume we'll have to be hoisted out of the water, don't think the trailer will be a good idea. Would appreciate any input.Thank you, Joanne

 

[ken]

keel cable

Joanne.............One thing that you can do is to get a sturdy line or cable and have someone dive under the boat and run the line accross the keel from a port/starboard direction and use your sail winches to raise the keel enough to get it on the trailer. This procedure has been done sucessfully several times .Have someone dive under the boat and see where the cable broke........ if there is enough to shove the cable back thru the volcano..... you can then reattach to your keel winch and crank it up that way.

 

[Herb]

trailer will work

Hi there actually the trailer will work. All you have to do is get the keel center in the kel pad and then make sure that the lock down is loose and then winch the boat onto the trailer it will swing the keel back into the trunk and then you can take it home and start the keel cable process. Good luck let us know how it goes.

 

[Bayard Gross]

Use the winches and a line

If you can't get the boat onto the trailer, then run the boat into some soft shore raising the keel up as much as possible.From this, run a line under the boat from the bow down to the winches and underneath the keel. Then haul up the keel with one end of the line secured to a winch and the other winch hauling the line.By hauling the keel up like that, you may be able to get onto the trailer sufficiently where it can then be drawn in by the trailer winch.This is the proceedure a freind of mine used on his C-25 with a broken keel cable, although it was onto a hydraulic trailer.

 

[Matthew Smith]

Re Snapped Keel Cable

Take a line about 25 feet long and loop it over the bow of the boat. Have two people, one on starboard, one on port, walk the line back to the middle of boat, about 2 feet past the mast, with the line passing under the boat. At this point ypu can now tension the line. Depending on where you may have blocks placed on your boat, you might be able to use the winches to tension the line. As you tighten the line, if you have it positioned correctly, it will raise up the keel high enough you can get the boat on the trailer. You do not want the line too far back as when the keel comes up it will slide of the back of the keel. Experiment - after the second or third try you will get it. Be most sure to secure the line tightly, it will be holding up a lot of weight. Hope it works out for you.Matthew