# Bolt on Keel



## champlain94 (Jan 30, 2012)

Would you purchase a boat with a bolt on keel VS encapsulated. I looked at an Ericson which is a great sailboat. I had no idea they have bolt on keels. There is water in the bildge of this boat. Im not sure where its coming from but it tasted salty. I researched bolt on keels. Wow it cost a lot of money to have them dropped and repaired properly. There is enough maintenance and cost with owning a sailboat. This is all new to me. What is your opinion?


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

Nothing wrong with a bolt on keel. Time was when almost all production boats had bolt on keels. Encapsulated or "internal ballast" keel boats are cheaper and easier to build. But when you smack a rock with an encapsulated keel you may penetrate the skin of your hull, i.e. the keel is a part of your molded hull. With external ballast if you smack a rock you may only put a ding in the lead. Keel bolts can last a long time. I would always prefer a bolt on keel. I live where it is very rocky. Maybe your salt water in the bilge is from you stuffing box.


----------



## benesailor (Dec 27, 2012)

Bob's right on the money. 
My cast iron keel gets scratches. I understand that iron is the cheap alternative to a lead keel but i like the durability. My buddies Columbia/Hughs got a huge gash last year in the erie canal in transit. Took some serious fixing. We think it was a piece of steel. 
I've had no leaks at the keel joint that i can tell; it's 20 years old.


----------



## Tim R. (Mar 23, 2003)

The Ericson bolt on keel is fine. The keel stub in the Ericson is solid glass unlike some Catalinas and others that used plywood in some models. The salt water could simply be from the prop shaft packing gland. A proper survey should give you a decent idea of whether or not that keel should be re-bedded.


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

The mighty PERRYWINKLE was built in 1978 and had a bolt on cast iron keel. My bilge was so dry that I would have to vacuum it. I'm not kidding. But I also had a sail drive so I had no stuffing box.


----------



## blt2ski (May 5, 2005)

I've got an 85 with a steel bolt on, no issues other than the packing gland when I had it, and WAY more issues with the PSSC fitting with water getting in the bilge etc. Even tried to sink me back in January.......grrrrrrrr.....

I'd rather have the issues with a bolt on vs an encapsulated keel personally!

marty


----------



## ScottUK (Aug 16, 2009)

I would prefer an encapsulated keel. You might get some water coming in with a hard grounding but it beats losing your keel in a hard grounding.


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

Perhaps you could provide us with a few documented cases of that happening.
Just a few.


----------



## blt2ski (May 5, 2005)

bobperry said:


> Perhaps you could provide us with a few documented cases of that happening.
> Just a few.


I can think of one, that was a Jeanneau SO37 in England, no body figured it out for two weeks, took the 2nd charter person to realize something was wrong.

That is the ONLY ONE I know of for sure. I would bet a super hard grounding would do as much or more $$$ damage to a boat that is encapsulated than not. Encapsulated keels are only recent in that we had to have a fiberglass boat to pull this off. Also considering what SOME of the manufactures use for ballast vs the bolt on types.........not sure I really want lead shot in concrete poured into my fiberglass keel!

Then again, the earliest iron/lead on the bottom of a keel had to be bolted on, or rocks in the bilge or equal. many types of ballast needed thru the years. Even today, oil tankers use water in the oil tanks when going back to the oil source once empty.

Marty


----------



## davidpm (Oct 22, 2007)

bobperry said:


> Perhaps you could provide us with a few documented cases of that happening.
> Just a few.


We ran a Catalina 27 into a rock at at speed.
The typical damage happened.
The bolt on lead keel rocked back and pushed the hull up enough behind the stub so the boat leaked.
Had to be ground out and re-glassed.

I suppose one could attribute that more to it being a fin keel than bolted on.
Not sure what would have happened to an encapsulated keel.

Bene 32s5 with iron wing keel, hit rock then ran aground in storm
Bent stuff up enough to cause cracks in the glass grid.
Was totaled

I know encapsulated keels suffer damage too and it can be severe.
I get the sense that the damage is different however.


----------



## oceangirl (Sep 17, 2008)

Bolt on keels do fall off from grounding, severe neglect to repair, bad design to begin with. It happens. If you google "keel falling off" you will get a few hits. I have not seen any hard data on encapsulated keel. I have always been a staunch encapsulated gal, but my husband has brought me around to the bolt on keel logic (can absorb damage better, easier to inspect and repair). 
Big problem with encapsulated is you just don't know for sure what's going on in there, and if your keel weeps rusty brown during haul out on a 20 year old boat..

Non production boats, the keels seem to fall off on a regular basis look at the last two vendee globes.


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

I do not think it is valid to include radical, state of the art race boats in this discussion. They are built to minimal safety factors and as a result they can break in many areas.

I have about 6,000 boats on the water and many have bolt on keels. I am not aware of any keels having fallen off for any reason. And, believe me when I say I am among the first to hear about failures like that on my boats. I remain convinced that for me the bolt on keel is the best way to go. It gives the designer freedom to design the most effective shape without having to allow for "positive draft" for mold release.It reduces frontal area due to lack of a "skin". It insures that the keel will be either one pice lead or cast iron whereas the internal ballast can be anything from cement to steel boiler punchings.


----------



## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

I apologize that this is quite long and that I had written it for an earlier discussion, but it represents my take on this topic. 

This is another one of those ‘no one universally right answers’ questions. In other words an argument can be made for either type of keel. (For the record, I personally strongly prefer a bolt on keel rather than an encapsulated keel.) Here’s the way I see it. 

Bolt-on keels tend to offer more performance since the ballast must be cast and without the keel stub skin thickness tend to place their vertical center of gravity lower relative to the center of bouyancy. They also have significantly less wetted surface and less frontal area making them theoretically faster on all points of sail. They are simple to repair and generally can be repaired satisfactorily no matter how bad the mistake. 

On the down side they are more expensive to build; requiring precision casting, bolt hole drilling and a lot more hand fairing. They are higher maintenance requiring fairing every 10 years or so and new keel bolts at some point in the boat’s life. 

Encapsulated keels are less expensive to build. There’s less labor and less precision required. Boat builders will often use less expensive forms of ballasting with encapsulated keels, such as iron or lead scrap cast in concrete, resin or other binder further reducing costs. If they are not damaged in a grounding, encapsulated keels are less expensive to maintain.

On the down side they are less efficient. Their real downside is the difficulty in doing a proper repair. Typically, in a hard grounding a number of things happen on an encapsulated keel. Typically the skin of the keel encapsulation gets ruptured and separates from the ballast. This allows water into the small cavities between the keel and the ballast and once wet it can mean the ‘beginning of the end’ for the boat as this permanently wet fiberglass blisters itself from the interior and the wet areas spread around the ballast. This is especially a problem on a boat that is hauled out for cold winters where freeze/ thaw cycles can really pry the skin loose from the ballast. The problem gets worse when the ballast contains ferrous materials. Here the ballast begins to rust and can reduce the ballast into a loose mass of matrix and rusting iron. 

In my life, one of our boats with an encapsulated keel nicked a rock and ended up with issues that we never could permanently fix for as long as we owned the boat. The problem would get worse with every year, spreading from a small dimple on the leading edge of the keel to an area that was much of the bottom and sides of the keel.

Beyond that, in a grounding the ballast is often forced upward as well. In an encapsulated keel the membrane of the hull is at the outside of the keel and the membrane above the ballast is often quite thin. In a bad grounding the ballast keel is often is pushed through this membrane causing a serious and difficult to repair damage and leaks. 

Because it is very hard to lay-up the glass in the keel cavity, the glass work in the are vulnerable most vulnerable during a grounding is often inferior to the glass work elsewhere on the boat. In repairs that I have made when I worked in boat yards it ws not unusual to see ‘dry glass’ or lenses of unreinforced resin in this area. On the other hand, the glass often overlaps from either side of the encapsulation sides and the bottom of the keel is generally considerably thicker glass. 

Much is made of boats losing their keels. This is a reasonably rare occurance and one which in my experience seems to happen equally with boats that have bolt-on keels and boats that have encapsulated keels (that is if you except race boats for the moment). 

In the case of a bolt on keel, the engineering needs to include an internal framework that disburses normal service loads, and impact loads into the hull and surrounding structure. This kind of robust engineering has become reasonably routine in modern boats, but is not always as robust on ‘value oriented’ designs, and some racing designs as would be ideal, and was not fully accommodated in many early fin keel boats. 

There is a perception that this level of framing is not required with an encapsulated keel. That is not necessarily the case. This perception is only valid if based on a variety of assumptions and those assumptions are true. 

Part of the perceived basis for the belief in the encapsulated keels is that when the ballast keel is fully adhered to the encapsulation envelope, the ballast itself can serve as a part of the structure and help distribute service and impact loads. That is true when the ballast is properly adhered to the encapsulation. But the bond between the ballast keel and the encapsulation envelope is not always very well done, and over time that bond can often break down due to the leveraging of the ballast against the side of encapsulation envelope. 

I personally have walked through a local boat yard and did an informal survey of boats in that yard with encapsulated keels. I basically sighted the keels and tapped on suspect areas, and took notes. More than 50% of these keels had voids between the ballast and encapsulation that were over a 1 ½ feet in diameter, and come had entire sides of the encapsulation delaminated from the ballast. 

Another reason that encapsulated keels may not be a better option relates to the issue of internal framing and where failure mode in most keel failures. Surprisingly, bolt-on keels are rarely lost due to keel bolt failures. More often than not, the problem results from the failure of the fiberglass in the area surrounding the keel stub. The forensics in many of the most notorious keel losses showed that the hull itself failed beyond the are where the bolting takes place. These same areas of the hull receive similar kinds of loads on encapsulated keels. But while bolt on keels need and generally receive robust framing, that same level of framing is much rarer in encapsulated keels. Over time, these high stress areas are more prone to fatique and are reduced in strength, and in the absence of framing this is more likely to occur then with an encapsulated keel.


----------



## ScottUK (Aug 16, 2009)

Sorry Bob (I only check SN at most once a day) for my tardy response though some instances I see have now been given. I friend of mine lost his keel and thus his boat on an unmarked reef. This is my only 'research' in the subject and I have never pursued it further. Jeff, from my cursory read, brings up some valid food for thought. So I guess it comes down to the number one issue with boats - compromise.

Cheers


----------



## ScottUK (Aug 16, 2009)

Another point about bolt on keels is that they too can be bloody expensive to replace. A mate of mine was considering replacing his keel bolts and was looking at around 16,000 grand. He decided not to and instead bought a newer model of the same boat for 43,000 grand.


----------



## groundhog (Jun 27, 2006)

Can anyone provide instances of catasrophic failure for encapsulated keels ?


----------



## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

We're waiting......


----------



## Tim R. (Mar 23, 2003)

Google "O'Day keel loss" and you will find some info on bolt on keels that have come off.

Also, Catalina makes a retrofit kit for replacing keel bolts. That speaks volumes.


----------



## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Bolted-on keels never just fall off. That would randomly contradict the laws of physics.

But like anything else, if they are improperly designed or implemented (as in Hunter's Thursday's Child, or the more recent Bavaria plague) they can fail. If they are improperly maintained by some bozo who uses his bilge as a koi pond, they can fail.

By and large, they just don't fail. Maintaining them is no more of an issue than fixing leaks in the many kinds of encapsulated keels, where any damage to the "capsule" can create a leak that is impossible to fix without hauling the boat and doing extensive glass work. And then, heaven help you if they need to raise that ballast, which probably was put in place before the deck was attached.

I'd suggest that anyone who has a problem with the choice of encapsulated or external ballast, should probably be looking at a multihull, that simply doesn't have one of those damned problematic keel things under it at all.


----------



## paul323 (Mar 13, 2010)

Jeff, your points are well made (as always), but in fairness to the encapsulated keel folks there are some perceived advantages:

1) You don't have to worry about keel bolts - and we have all seen some awful bolts in our time!

2) In general, the bilge stays dryer.

3) No risk of a "catalina smile" which many bolt-ons suffer from.

(and yeah, less risk of the keel falling off - although the odds of this happening in a well-maintained boat are miniscule, so it has never worried me; but encapsulation makes the Admiral feel more confident!)

The downsides you articulated well.


----------



## Tim R. (Mar 23, 2003)

paul323 said:


> ...
> (and yeah, less risk of the keel falling off - although the odds of this happening in a *well-maintained boat* are miniscule, so it has never worried me; but encapsulation makes the Admiral feel more confident!)
> 
> The downsides you articulated well.




From a design standpoint, what would have to be done to make an encapsulated keel better?

Glass over the top of the ballast? Create an impact zone of additional fiberglass at the leading edge? What else?


----------



## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

Tim R. said:


> From a design standpoint, what would have to be done to make an encapsulated keel better?
> 
> Glass over the top of the ballast? Create an impact zone of additional fiberglass at the leading edge? What else?


If I wanted to create an encapsulated keel that was as sturdy as a properly engineered bolt on keel, I would have cast ballast, keel bolts, as thick a membrane above the ballast as the keel area of the hull, and then have same system of tranverse and longituninal frames capable of distributing keel loads. The rule of thumb is that the glass in the keel area is approximately twice the thickness of the hull below the waterline. At that point the encapsulation becomes structurally irrelevant. The problem with that set up is that there is no way to change the keel bolts.

And...For what it is worth, unless you have a keel stepped mast, there should not be water in your bilge whether you have a bolt on keel or a encapsulated keel. With the exception of my Folkboat whose keel bolts could no longer be considered bolts before I replaced them, worst keel leaks that I have tried to repair was on boats with encapsulated keels where there was water in the encapsulation so that there was not good way to get a repair that did not have pin holes letting water in.

Jeff


----------



## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

Can I assume you wear a belt *and* suspenders as well Jeff.


----------



## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

SloopJonB said:


> Can I assume you wear a belt *and* suspenders as well Jeff.


Why do you ask? Actually, I also have my pants stitched to my shirt and both surgically attached to my body. They never fall down!

But seriously, in reality, if the membrane was heavy enough and there is adequate internal framing, you would not need the keel bolts as long as you never spend any time grinding on a rock ledge.

Jeff


----------



## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

I have never seen an encapsulated keel that anyone would regard as "failed" or loose even with voids detectable on the sides.

Bolt ons on the other hand.......

I've had both styles, lead and iron fins, lead encapsulated and steel plates. I've mounted and remounted lead and iron fins. I've helped pour punchings into slurry in a moulded fin - you name it. I regard encapsulated as the most trouble and worry free. There is a bit of a performance loss due to the extra thickness but I can live with that - it would take a race course to detect the difference.


----------



## Capt Len (Oct 9, 2011)

I remember a encapsulated keel that munched its prow on a rock. Looked like a small reglassing job until the grinder let all the sand run out. (Taiwan sand)


----------



## SloopJonB (Jun 6, 2011)

Just imagine what you'd have if that builder had bolted a keel on.


----------



## Jeff_H (Feb 26, 2000)

SloopJonB said:


> I have never seen an encapsulated keel that anyone would regard as "failed" or loose even with voids detectable on the sides.


You may never have seen a failed encapsulated keel but the ballast keel on my familiy's Vanguard ended up near the sea wall at Fort Totten and the rest of the Vanguard and its encapsulation envelope ended up at the bottom of the East River. When I worked at Direcktors a Cheoy Lee was brought in on a salvage barge with the bottom of its encapsulation keel sheered where he missed the entrance to Gvt cut. Most of the ballast was gone there too.

But I have also seen bolt on keels with bad keel bolts so I also know this is a matter of pick your poison.


----------



## champlain94 (Jan 30, 2012)

So a bolt on keel was designed originally as a money saving adventure? It's cheaper to build a boat with a bolt on keel than an encapsulated keel?


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

Champ:
No. Other way around. Cheaper and easier to do an encapsulated keel. That's one reason almost all the boats out of Taiwan had encapsulated keels. When we did the Lafitte 44 I think that was the very first Taiwan production boat to have outside ballast.


----------



## Maine Sail (Jan 6, 2003)

champlain94 said:


> Would you purchase a boat with a bolt on keel VS encapsulated. I looked at an Ericson which is a great sailboat. I had no idea they have bolt on keels. There is water in the bildge of this boat. Im not sure where its coming from but it tasted salty. I researched bolt on keels. Wow it cost a lot of money to have them dropped and repaired properly. There is enough maintenance and cost with owning a sailboat. This is all new to me. What is your opinion?


Actually I would buy a bolt on external ballast before encapsulated. For a rocky granite coast encapsulated ballast would probably be my last choice unless really well executed..

I have seen far too many encapsulated boats hit rocks and then require months of "drying out" the keel before any repairs can be made. Watched an Island Packet sit on the hard burning up an entire season before it was dry enough to repair.

On the other side I have seen external lead patched up while still in the slings and dropped back in all in the same day.

I have also seen encapsulated keels split open in the winter due to entrapped water likely from an earlier grounding and improper dry-out time... While there are some builders who did encapsulated well, such as Caliber, many do not and the dry out times after a hit can be extensive. This means an out of commission boat for a good part of the sailing season.

This was one of my customers boat with internal ballast. The internal ballast got wet, it froze and split the entire keel bed meaning more water drained into the encapsulation. Arghhhh... Note the upwardly cracked fiberglass between the bilge hoses...










For those who don't think _bolt on_ is robust enough this was a Hunter 340, a boat many pooh-pooh as a "production boat". Pretty darn tough, if I do say so myself....

Check out this chunk out of a lead keel below!!! That was a HARD HIT, about as hard as it gets. This boat did not sink nor lose the keel. All keel bolts were still intact despite there being only a few of them compared to some other builders in this size range and this was..

This was a FULL BORE hit to solid immovable granite. Both the keel and hull survived to sail another day. While the keel was re-set it was more to inspect and die test the bolts. 









If that 4100 pound lead keel on a 11,000 pound Hunter 340, with only 5 keel bolts, can handle that, how do you suppose the 3850 pound 12 bolt keel on this 36' 8900 pound day sailor would do? It would likely move the granite!!










There are differences in quality among encapsulation built boats as well as external bolt on. Buy a well built example of either and you'll be doing well.

I don't hear anyone running away from world cruiser brands such as Morris, Passport, Hinckley, Halberg Rassy, Malo, Cape Dory, Bristol, Gozzard Yachts, Valiant, Pacific Seacraft etc. etc.. all of which use external ballast. In fact the opposite is true and most of these boats are some of the most coveted cruisers ever built.


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

I too would prefer external ballast. It has design advantages in terms of shaping the keel With internal ballast the designer is limited in shaping the keel to a shape that can be pulled from a mold.

Bouncing around the rocky PNW it's nice to have that big lead "bumper" down there.


----------



## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Bob-
I was thinking about "cheaper" when that was first asked and, not knowing, at first thought an internal keel might be cheaper. But then I started to wonder about the "indirect" costs of having an encapsulated keel.
You've now got to have a building that is perhaps eight feet taller, because the keel is a part of the hull from the start, and that makes the hull "taller" all during production. 
You've now got to shift thousands of pounds more weight in one unit during production, as the ballast usually has to be installed before the deck goes on.
You've now got to send every worker and every internal fitting six or eight feet higher up into the air to get it into the hull, time, expense, and some added risk.

Having an externally hung keel allows the hull and the entire production facility/process to be literally smaller and faster, which should mean cheaper. And I've seen a large boat delivered by barge, with the keel sitting next to it in a cradle, waiting to be rejoined at the delivery site after a trip from NZ to NY.

So I'm just wondering...when you say the encapsulated ballast is cheaper, is that just based on the materials used, or on an analysis of all the manufacturing factors affected by that choice? It would seem to be a more complex "real" cost issue than just the materials. And not being intimate with boatbuilding, I can only make a guess at that.

(FWIW, my gut preference has always been to external too. I just don't like "sealed" assemblies very much when there's any chance they'll need to be accessed in the future.)


----------



## bobperry (Apr 29, 2011)

Hello:
You bring up good points but no.

I am talking about the overall cost of building the boat. It's fewer steps and easier steps to do internal ballast. That's why it's done. I'm not speculating. Fitting and fairing an external keel is a lot more work than dropping a rough slug of ballast into a grp keel envelope.

Most boat yards are built with 'mezzanine" level that allows the workers to access the boat during construction without using a ladder.

When you see that boat being trucked with the keel off laying on the trailer it is most propbably to avoid being over regulation shipping height. Generally around 12.5'.


----------

