Keels and Keels Again!

a consistent pattern

I'm afraid a lot of this is going to be settled in court.

Getting burned, first, with massive legal fees, then with a frightful judgment may be just the medicine this industry needs to wake up.

Not that I like courts, lawyers, or legal fees. Our tort system is both expensive and inaccurate. It's just that I don't like people playing fast and loose with other peoples lives.

Maybe I'm a bit paranoid, but it seems to me that there is a consistent pattern here of either bad design practice, bad building practice, or, more likely, both.

And it seems that either people haven't learned the appropriate lessons or that there are a lot of unsafe boats out there that need to be recalled and, repaired, re engineered, rebuilt, or scrapped that were built before the needed changes were made.

Sadly, this speaks loudly about the integrity in our industry. And I don't think any one of us likes what it is saying.

Imagine the uproar there would be if even one out of a thousand cars suddenly lost its wheels with little or no warning.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think the average is much higher here.

 

The keel from the "Cynthia Woods" has been located:

http://www.kbtx.com/home/headlines/20568644.html

Earl

 

Really, one in a thousand boats is having the keel fall off? I never imagined. Please list the statistics for us.

If you want to include racing sailboats in the equation then we should also consider failures in auto racing when looking at that industry. Broken suspensions and gearbox failures putting people into walls at 200+ mph sounds like an industry without integrity.

There are many vehicles out on the streets that have potetially lethal qualities. I would wager some very well known models have greater issues than any particular sailboat manufacturer.

Exploding fuel tanks, known rollover (stability) issues, throttle sticking, phantom shifting, etc.

Now looking at the keel issue in Texas, wasn't that boat involved in a grounding recently? So if your family sedan is in an accident, and during the repair someone doesn't notice the crack in the A arm, which causes the suspension to fail at a later date and a "wheel falls off", who in the industry has lost their integrity?

 

Posting by one of the members of the dive team that recovered the keel:

http://www.chron.com/disp/commnts.mpl/metropolitan/5846674.html?plckCurrentPage=1

Scroll to bottom of page and post by diver1975.

Earl

 

It is always amusing to see the comments of the uneducated.

Well built cored boats will always have the core removed in the way of the keel attachment. Cores can compress and cause the keel bolts to "loosen". Adding "wood reinforcement" to that area would be the last thing you would want to do.

Look at any well built sumpless hull and you will see a solid laminate in the way of the keel attachment.

After seeing the extent of the damage that boat experienced during their grounding I would suspect there was delam in the keel flat that may not have been detected.

 

Avoiding interpretations:
.....the backing plates were still attatched and narrower that the keel itself ....and no longer than the keel either....there is only appoximately 5/8" thickness on the fiberglass....

Cheers.

 

In every fiberglass hull ever made with a sump and externally bolted lead or iron keel the backing plates are narrower than the keel itself and are no longer than the keel.

I doubt anyone would say they are all defective designs.



On first glance I thought that the material thickness sounded less than expected, but I don't know the materials used or how the calculations were done. I also don't know what sort of reinforcing floors were used, their spacing, and therefore the resulting panel size.

 

Was there a sump?

Cheers.

 

Why don't you look and tell us?


The point remains: Just because the backing plates are not wider or longer than the keel itself does not mean the design is incorrect. There are hundereds of thousands of boats sailing with this attribute.

Publishing a statement from a non-sailing non-engineer that makes it appear this was the issue is not an honorable thing to do.

 

I don't know why are you getting so upset. I just tried to separate what were the only apparent facts from that man's statement without any kind of comment on my side. And then asked if there was a sump. Why do you think that's not honourable?

 

I do not know this case, so pls do not read anything out of this that i don't intend to put into it...

I have actually seen (above waterline on some other hooks/ equipment) overtightening of the bolts, resulting in partly crushing the grp layer, that could have caused a similar failure, ripping off along the edges of the backing plate.

Also, it is mentioned that it had had a repair due to grounding, this damage would normally be crushing the hull laminate aft of the keel inwards, pulling out in front of the keel. If not thoroughly repaired, this should be possible to see, in a sliced cut-out?

Another thing here, if the repair did not involve completely new layup in the keel area, and overtightening of the bolts caused this, it will probably be pretty difficult to determine when this happened. If it was so originally from the manufacturer, or ended up like that in the last phase of the repair job...

And I also do not know anything about measures, material, layup, bending..... Plenty of possibilities here.

btw 1, I understood Guillermo's question as a eh , just that, a question where he asked for information
btw2, What's a sump?

Tragic that life were lost also.

 

A sump is where the hull extends down in the shape of the keel above where the lead begins. I don't know what you call that in your part of the world.

Photos of that boat after one of their prior groundings can be found here:

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/sailb...ar-38-lost-keel-fatality-investigation-3.html


If you look at the way the trailing edge was crushed it is obvious the adjacent hull panel must have deflected a huge amount. I can't imagine the laminate would have survived intact, not to mention the floor structure bonds should have been compromised by such a deflection.


I don't know what was done during the repair, or if your concerns of bolt torque were noted. We will have to wait quite a long time to learn what actually caused this terrible mishap.

 

A later post by the diver said there were three separate backing plates.

Earl

 

I believe a cruising boat should be designed and built to save ones life in the open sea. I believe I have achieved this using my method of construction I invented 30 years ago.
Cheers from down under Peter www.bourneboats.com.au

 

Only three?

The diver again shows he knows little about sail yacht construction. There should be floors bonded across the hull with the keelbolts spaced between them. Therefore you cannot have one continuous backing plate, as the diver seems to think would be better.

So that means there was probably a floor across at the leading edge of the keel, two more spaced evenly across the chord of the keel, and probably another at the trailing edge. So one plate between the leading edge and the first keel floor, another between the two keel floors, and finally the third between the second keel floor and and the floor across the trailing edge.

Sounds like fairly conventional construction.

When you read the comments in the thread on sailnet you wonder if the naysayers who post there have ever looked in the bilges of boats to see the construction details.