What should I be worried about? Smooshed keel while tied up...

[Walsh0575]

Hi all - I dug around a bit looking for other conversations about keel damage from rocks and couldn't find something close to my situation, so posting it. This is also my second season owning my own boat, so I'm "learning" a lot!

A friend has a new dock off his house. I have a 35ft sailboat 6.5 draft. We did all the math to determine that yes, I could tie up and stay tied up even during a median low tide. Well...even though I take full responsibility my friend failed to remember that he was advised to not have someone tie up on the left side of the dock because there is a rock at the bottom (otherwise it's sandy/gravely). That's where we tied up. The rock side - of course.

The boat was left unattended for two low-tide cycles and the bottom of my lead keel was bouncing up and down off this rock and maybe even resting on it during the low point of low tide. I mask and snorkeled on it today just after the second low when it was realized it was hitting. The very bottom of the keel is missing all bottom paint and barrier coat paint and is all smooshed and smashed, like working clay with your fingers. I didn't notice any cracks or other damage further up the keel. Really does appear to have just been up and down banging while tied up, no forward or reverse velocity while hitting the rock.

I promptly moved the boat off the dock and to a mooring in deeper water.

How worried should I be? Safe to sail as is? Should I hire a diver to inspect it? Haul and fix now or sail on for the season and do the work when the season is done? Safe to keep in the water with barrier coat paint missing?

I'm planning on jumping in again tomorrow for another inspection. Let me know if there are other things I should be looking for in my own inspection.

 

[Davidasailor26]

Is the keel lead or iron? Lead is pretty malleable and doesn’t take too much to dent. Also, what were the wave conditions at the dock? Just little wind ripples and far-off no-wake traffic, or lots of bouncing on more serious waves?

I wouldn’t worry too much about the bottom of the keel at this point. The next time the boat is hauled for bottom paint you can repair, fair, coat, and paint it. The area I’d check is around the keel hull joint. Any signs of cracking or stress around the joint or keel bolts would be more concerning.

 

[Walsh0575]

Thanks! To answer your question it's a lead keel and mostly calm conditions, wind ripples and some minor swells from far-off traffic. Occasionally some of those swells would make the mast and rig rattle when the keel hit bottom.

 

[dlochner]

Serious damage is unlikely. Dings, missing boat paint, etc are likely, just another task to attend to when it is hauled.

The big damage from grounding a rock is hitting at speed and coming to a dead stop. All that energy gets transmitted through the keel and leveraged up the aft end and into the hull structure. That energy can delaminate the hull and cause tabbing to break.

If all the doors and drawers open as they did before bouncing on the rock and you can't find any damage to the tabbing in the interior. I wouldn't be too worried. Once your are hauled, check the keel hull joint and sound the hull around the keel.

 

[PaulK]

When you haul out in the fall you will need a 5 to 8 pound sledgehammer to bang the lead back into shape. A file can help remove burrs. Then you repair the damage to the paint & any fiberglass.

 

[Jim Legere]

Like Paul says, the beauty of lead keels is that you fix them with a hammer. Given that this is a design from the '80s with the keel attached to a stub (rather than an internal grid like many new boats), the strength of the design and the shock absorbing properties of lead mean that it is highly unlikely that there was any structural damage. If you want to be really thorough, next time the boat is hauled out, in addition to repairing/fairing the bottom of the keel, check for cracking/loss of filler along the keel to hull joint and also check the torque on the keel bolts. Nice boat, that Express 35.

 

[Walsh0575]

Thank you everyone! Very very helpful. @Jim Legere she's a great boat, fast but also comfortable - hence why when I do dumb things to her like tie her up in an area that's too shallow with a rock at the bottom I cause myself great anxiety!

Follow up question: good to know this is likely a repair I can do myself. When the boat is on the hard for the winter the marina puts wooden support blocks under the keel - in the exact areas I'll need to repair. How do I get around this? Ask the marina for more stands and remove the wooden block so I can do the work?

 

[Jim Legere]

Thank you everyone! Very very helpful. @Jim Legere she's a great boat, fast but also comfortable - hence why when I do dumb things to her like tie her up in an area that's too shallow with a rock at the bottom I cause myself great anxiety!

Follow up question: good to know this is likely a repair I can do myself. When the boat is on the hard for the winter the marina puts wooden support blocks under the keel - in the exact areas I'll need to repair. How do I get around this? Ask the marina for more stands and remove the wooden block so I can do the work?

Probably can't support the boat's weight just on stands - I imagine that she needs to sit on her keel. Maybe they can block her so that you can access the damaged area or fix her keel while she is in the Travelift slings. Sometimes you can ask the yard to leave a boat in the Travelift overnight or even over a weekend. This is what I did when I had to replace the centreboard pennant on my C&C Frigate 36.

 

[dlochner]

Follow up question: good to know this is likely a repair I can do myself. When the boat is on the hard for the winter the marina puts wooden support blocks under the keel - in the exact areas I'll need to repair. How do I get around this? Ask the marina for more stands and remove the wooden block so I can do the work?

The weight of the boat needs to be on the keel and the keel needs to be supported at the forward and aft ends when stored for a long time. Tell the yard what you need to do and block the keel so you have the most access while properly supporting the keel. You may need to the job in two stages with the boat being lifted and the blocking moved. For a short period of time having the keel only blocked in the middle is OK, but I wouldn't leave it that way for long.

When the keel is only blocked in the middle, a strong wind can cause the boat to rock back and forth, this can cause the stands to move and if severe enough the boat will fall over. So, leaving the boat on only 1 block over the winter is a recipe for disaster.

 

[jssailem]

How do I get around this? Ask the marina for more stands and remove the wooden block so I can do the work?

The simple answer is yes.

They block there because it is solid and easy. Explain the issue and they will adapt. More jack stands and higher in the air. All depends on the damage.

 

[Ward H]

No, the boat needs to rest on the keel. Stands only will not properly support the boat and could cause more damage.
Can the keel be blocked to avoid the damage?
Can the yard give you a day or two hanging in the slings while you do the repair? Maybe a day when you haul for winter to open the damaged areas so it can dry out and a day before you launch in the spring to do the actual repair.

I have a wing keel and the trailing edge of one wing was lifted up a bit, maybe an 1" up and back. I used a hand sledge to bang it back down, wire brushed the lead until shiny, (use proper PEE for lead) smoothed with TotalFair from Total Boat, sealed coated with 2000e barrier coat, then put on the bottom paint. Took a long day.

 

[LloydB]

Make a keel ground block for the keel to rest on when the keel is resting on the ground for the winter. After doing that cut it in half so that you can move the forward half and repair the forward part of the keel bottom and then replace it to repair the aft portion of the keel bottom. You should be able to use the Jack stands to move the weight fore an aft slightly as needed. When balanced either fore or aft do not leave it unmonitored or in the wind and overnight.