Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Keel attachments are another thing . . .

Again, back in the days of ink on vellum, we used Lloyd's calculations to figure keel bolt diameter and spacing. That seemed to work OK because keels were bigger back then and the ballast was bolted onto a stub.
Then keels began to get smaller and the molded stub was dropped as an idea because it costs money. Now we have a skinnier keel (because all the keel is ballast and the ballast gets spread over a bigger area than before) and, more often than not, there's a bulb on the bottom, making the keel skinnier yet.
Bear in mind that the Lloyd's rules were based on a long thick chunk of iron or lead attached to the bottom of a long full keel, so the bending moment on the bolts was fairly small (likewise the compression where keel meets hull). Applying the rules to a deep, skinny keel with a bulb looks doubtful at best. From just looking at keel bolts in the bilges of present-day boats, it doesn't look as though the calculations have changed. Maybe it's the significant safety factors built into Lloyd's that keep these keels hanging on . . . until they don't.

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