Keel leaking

[tagster]

Last time I hauled out, the seal around my keel was shot enough it was hanging off the boat. Pulling the caulk was a piece of cake it came off like masking tape. ;-) Redid the seal with 5200, grinding out the places where the previous owner had epoxied over the Iron to Glass seam (I couldn't believe my eyes).

My work held up. But this time, I have water seeping in the opposite direction. Bilge water (which smells distinctly like my old-boat smelling bilge) is seeping out of the seam in two spots about a foot and six inches apart from eachother. I speculate I've got some keel bolts that need looked at, what do you guys think?

Anyone have any advice for resetting/replacing keel bolts? Also while I go through the trouble of pulling the engine, emptying out the bilge, and whatever else...anything else I should attack now while I'm down there?

[davidpm]

The iron keel often has keel bolts that have a nut at both ends.
The normal fix it block the boat high. Drive the bolts down, you can cut them off as you go.
Drop keel, inspect everything and clean and reseal, jack up keel and put in new galvanized bolts.
Lots of hard work but not particularly tricky.
I did have a dickens of a time getting some bolts to let loose. Used a jack hammer and a lot of pbblaster.

[mitiempo]

They are probably studs threaded into the keel. The keel will have to be dropped anyway to rebed the keel/hull interface. The type of bolts can be determined after the keel is dropped. It is a pretty big job on a boat that size but not complicated. Best to replace all the bolts as they are 38 years old.