Contessa 32 doppelganger.

[FWB]

Just for interest this is a friends Contessa 16.
He bought her new many years ago when she was a 32.
Later modified by Red Funnel. Fortunately he was not aboard at the time. I’ve added a link to the accident report if interested.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ZDDfzCB7VBrkEbDPHRji52cKCICqO_LLZZFlbp9jOCAKc

 

[awol]

Ooh err! A brave man. Quick let’s grab some pop corn and await the incoming

At least the keels don't fall off!

 

[dunedin]

At least the keels don't fall off!

That’s upped the ante even more (but you shouldn’t be rude about Oysters)

 

[BurnitBlue]

At least the keels don't fall off!

There is a list on the web from an authorative source that give 75 confirmed boats that have lost their keels to date. The addendum at the bottom of the list stated that the list was incomplete because of unreported incidents. A keel detachment is sudden with usually no warning or time to launch the liferaft or radio a mayday.

Boats do go missing with no search or fanfare and no one noticing except relatives of the crew. The risk is pretty low if the bolts are inspected. Considering the uncared for yachts that come to light on the boats for sale sites it is a wonder there are not more.

However it is one less risk plus one less maintenance task with an encapsulated keel. I think the She31 has bolts. The Contessa 32 has encapsulated.keel. I must add this feature to my list of attributes to avoid if possible.

 

[Tranona]

You need to treat such "statistics" with caution. When you dig into the details you find that almost all the reported incidents involve race boats or failure as a result of grounding. Only very rarely do you see keels "falling off" because of bolt failure. In fact the bolts are probably the most over specified bits of equipment on the boat. Also most failures occur close to land (because that is where the hard bits are that knock keels off) so although there are boats that disappear the likelihood of the cause being keel failure is almost non existent.

As to "sudden" keel detachment this is rare and again almost all examples are racing boats where either the design or construction was deficient. The best known examples of cruising boats suffering keel failure in recent times, one a Beneteau First and the other an Oyster took literally days from the time the problem was identified to the boat sinking, and in the case of the Oyster plenty of time for the crew to abandon ship. In both cases it was not the bolts that failed but the load bearing parts of the hull structure.

An encapsulated keel is inherently more secure, although not totally trouble free if the GRP does get breached. There are also examples from the days when it was popular of poor construction of the GRP keel section and type of ballast that can cause problems of voids. One of the reasons it fell out of use was that it was expensive and limited the shape of hulls. Designers did not necessarily choose it because of its integrity, but for convenience as it was an easy way of ballasting hulls of the type they wanted to use.

BTW don't know the source of your figure of 75 - the number is larger, but not statistically significant given the population of boats with bolted on keels runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. If you restrict your analysis to cruising boats, the number becomes tiny.

 

[dunedin]

There is a list on the web from an authorative source that give 75 confirmed boats that have lost their keels to date. The addendum at the bottom of the list stated that the list was incomplete because of unreported incidents. A keel detachment is sudden with usually no warning or time to launch the liferaft or radio a mayday.

Boats do go missing with no search or fanfare and no one noticing except relatives of the crew. The risk is pretty low if the bolts are inspected. Considering the uncared for yachts that come to light on the boats for sale sites it is a wonder there are not more.

However it is one less risk plus one less maintenance task with an encapsulated keel. I think the She31 has bolts. The Contessa 32 has encapsulated.keel. I must add this feature to my list of attributes to avoid if possible.

Please provide evidence of unmodified CRUISING boats losing keels - ie not custom racing boats, boats which have been modified from their original design, not been properly repaired after groundings or broke their keels off after being stranded on rocks etc.
I would be surprised if you can come up with 10 examples (the big Oyster being one of them and that was the GRP hull structure that broke, not a “bolt on keel” issue).
Encapsulated keels also have issues through damage or lack of maintenance - one example in a recent magazine survey comments the boat could sink if GRP keel was punctured.
By all means choose to go sailing in old style boats, but don’t fall for the false myths which lack hard evidence.
PS. I did start analysing a list of 70+ “keel failures” a couple of years back but gave up very quickly when realised how many were unrelated to cruising yachts. At the time I had a list of about 4 known cruising yacht failures.

 

[FWB]

Well there was Polbream.
Amazing story….
CHARTER BOAT LOSES KEEL: And No One Noticed - Wave Train

 

[dunedin]

Well there was Polbream.
Amazing story….
CHARTER BOAT LOSES KEEL: And No One Noticed - Wave Train

That was one of my 4. After the Oyster, the second most shocking one (how could they knock the keel off and return back from the Isles of Scilly without it!)

 

[awol]

Wasn't the keel falling off what did for the Mary Rose?

 

[BurnitBlue]

You need to treat such "statistics" with caution. When you dig into the details you find that almost all the reported incidents involve race boats or failure as a result of grounding. Only very rarely do you see keels "falling off" because of bolt failure. In fact the bolts are probably the most over specified bits of equipment on the boat. Also most failures occur close to land (because that is where the hard bits are that knock keels off) so although there are boats that disappear the likelihood of the cause being keel failure is almost non existent.

As to "sudden" keel detachment this is rare and again almost all examples are racing boats where either the design or construction was deficient. The best known examples of cruising boats suffering keel failure in recent times, one a Beneteau First and the other an Oyster took literally days from the time the problem was identified to the boat sinking, and in the case of the Oyster plenty of time for the crew to abandon ship. In both cases it was not the bolts that failed but the load bearing parts of the hull structure.

An encapsulated keel is inherently more secure, although not totally trouble free if the GRP does get breached. There are also examples from the days when it was popular of poor construction of the GRP keel section and type of ballast that can cause problems of voids. One of the reasons it fell out of use was that it was expensive and limited the shape of hulls. Designers did not necessarily choose it because of its integrity, but for convenience as it was an easy way of ballasting hulls of the type they wanted to use.

BTW don't know the source of your figure of 75 - the number is larger, but not statistically significant given the population of boats with bolted on keels runs into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. If you restrict your analysis to cruising boats, the number becomes tiny.

Good post but the numbers don't bother me. I agree the failures will not be keel bolts themselves. My keel bolts have been replaced twice. Once by the previous owner and once by me. I pulled the formost keel bolt again in 2021 after only four years and it was perfect as I expected. The only thing that concerned me was the lack of sufficient sealant. I recall I used only one tube of 291 this was a mistake. The bolt was almost dry so I intend to remove all bolts and use lashings of 291 so the sealant will liberally excude into the bilge when I tighten them up. I have all the tools from when I did the job 4 or 5 years ago. Takes about an hour for each bolt.

The source of the list I quoted was from Krakenyachts.com with the title "Are we facing a Keel and Rudder Timebomb" i made a mistake it was not 75 examples but 90 with yacht name owner, designer and event. I believe the list originated in the organisation called World Sailing. I did not pay nuch attention to the list because I got there by accident.

From an earlier search when the subject concerned me I learned that my keel on the Moody could be supported by just two bolts which are 24mm and there are ten of them. No doubt the massive margin of overbuild was to accomadate heeling and grounding. I then stopped worrying about my own keel bolts. I think the Krakenyachts web sight is a comprehensive examination which is basically no concern of mine anymore. However, having said that I would choose encapsulated over bolt in if I had the choice.

I would be interested in your take on the article. It is rather long. Maybe I will find the time just to read what they say about the rudder time bomb.

 

[Tranona]

Kraken has an agenda as they are just about the only boat now made that has an encapsulated keel so it is in their interest to create an impression that lost keels are an issue. As I tried to indicate earlier encapsulation of ballast did not come about because of the issue of keels "falling off" - it was just a logical and simple way of incorporating ballast into the moulded hull shapes popular at the time. Not least because many of them had the fashionable tumblehome which necessitated split moulds which made moulding the keel housing easy, but difficult if you wanted to hang external ballast unless the keel was very wide to allow for a load carrying structure inside as some designs did with a stub GRP keel. It is also a mistake to think that all encapsulated keels were the same and there are some real horrors lurking inside may of those troughs. I speak from experience having built a boat with encapsulated ballast - steel punchings in resin - shudder every time I think of how crude it all was! - and pretty standard at the lower end of the market. Even some well regarded boats have such materials as scrap metal set in concrete, whereas the best would have lead pigs or even one piece lead castings dropped in the cavity.

All is well until the outer skin is damaged and water gets in, or as in one well known design, the keel casing splits away from the hull under pressure from the mast step. In fact the boat that I built did indeed suffer as it was a bilge keel and in a later ownership it was kept on a drying mooring with a stony bed and the base of one keel wore away.. Water got in starting rust which split the keel open. not a pretty sight.

You are lucky in a way that your preferred style of boat if made in GRP almost always comes with encapsulated ballast, but recognise that it was not designed that way because of fears of keels falling off - thousands of boats of that style (often by the same designers) were built of wood with bolt on keels. While such keels on wooden boats were not trouble free it was more a maintenance issue than fear of a boat foundering because of losing the ballast keel.

I had complete confidence in the structural integrity of the bolted and glued on fin keel of my Bavaria, particularly after seeing how difficult it was to remove one following a heavy grounding that deformed the internal structure. Equally I am happy with the encapsulated ballast in my GH but recognise that it also has a very inefficient shape which limits sailing performance. No such thing as a free lunch as they say.

 

[Zagato]

Also had a nasty experience with steel punching ballast. The steel will be rusting prior to it being mixed with resin (and slate sometimes to prevent the resin cooling too quickly and cracking) so it will eventually 'blow' and expand. A common example of this is in Shrimpers where eventually you cannot raise or lower the jamming centre plate as the ballast has expanded on both sides. I had a Corneish Crabber 24. Unfortunately I managed to get sea water in the cabin which found its way on to the top of the already cracking resin of the ballast. This was now a worry! Hi had another boat where the steel punchings expanded enough that it broke the GRP outer skin in two places through corrosion. The corrosive parts were chopped out through insurance but of course the rest would blow, it was just a matter of time. The answer is to use lead ballast in enscapulated hulls but of course it's extremely expensive compared to free steel punchings from a local factory scraped off the floor. Makes you wonder how these old steel punching encapsulated hulls are coping unseen with osmosis!! ?

 

[doug748]

Just for interest this is a friends Contessa 16.
He bought her new many years ago when she was a 32.
Later modified by Red Funnel. Fortunately he was not aboard at the time. View attachment 149740I’ve added a link to the accident report if interested.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...ZDDfzCB7VBrkEbDPHRji52cKCICqO_LLZZFlbp9jOCAKc

I remember it well, I hope he got a new boat but don't suppose you can tell us.



Interesting points about ballast.

The Contessa 32 has lead which is fixed by pouring resin over it in situ, being fairly inert they did not bother overmuch about this back in the day. Looking into the bilge what you actually see is a sub floor above the ballast. As this floor is open at the aft end festering water tended to collect under it a causing boat stinks.
The solution is to drill a hole somewhere towards the bottom of the ballast, drain out the manky water and then fill the void with slow set resin, capping off the access hole.

Not great but not a huge job. However it does illustrate that you need to speak to people who have the knowledge when buying old boats, fortunately there is plenty of back up stuff available for this particular one.

.

 

[BurnitBlue]

Also had a nasty experience with steel punching ballast. The steel will be rusting prior to it being mixed with resin (and slate sometimes to prevent the resin cooling too quickly and cracking) so it will eventually 'blow' and expand. A common example of this is in Shrimpers where eventually you cannot raise or lower the jamming centre plate as the ballast has expanded on both sides. I had a Corneish Crabber 24. Unfortunately I managed to get sea water in the cabin which found its way on to the top of the already cracking resin of the ballast. This was now a worry! Hi had another boat where the steel punchings expanded enough that it broke the GRP outer skin in two places through corrosion. The corrosive parts were chopped out through insurance but of course the rest would blow, it was just a matter of time. The answer is to use lead ballast in enscapulated hulls but of course it's extremely expensive compared to free steel punchings from a local factory scraped off the floor. Makes you wonder how these old steel punching encapsulated hulls are coping unseen with osmosis!! ?

I am aware of steel punchings. A good friend of mine circumnavigated in an American boat which had steel punching embedded in cement. Seems to be common in USA. I know for a fact that my IF has a solid iron keel. It is part of the racing classification. Any departure from the specs means no sail number. I know that because I asked permission for a quite minor modification to the interior to make it more comfortable for cruising. Fine they said. Do what you like, it's your boat but you will lose the sail number.

Anyway I had a massive and pleasant surprise last night, I discovered that a Contessa doppelganger was built in Sweden called the IW31. The exact design by VdS also called the SHE31. 350 were built in Sweden and I have seen them on the Blocket for sale list. None at the moment though. This will solve the EU import hassle if I can find one here. I googled IW31 and mention was made about the She31 and the Contessa 32 in various places. Oh happy days.

 

[BurnitBlue]

I wonder which came first, the She31 or the Contessa 32. Knowing that the Contessa 26 owed so much to the folkboat, my money is on the She31. Hope that writting that is not a libel issue. No matter, if I am ever faced with a choice I reckon I would go for the Contessa 32.

 

[Motor_Sailor]

I wonder which came first, the She31 or the Contessa 32 . . .

Not only the She 31 but all the other boats of that size that Sparkman and Stephens designed to the RORC / CCA rule throughout the 1960s. By that time S&S were on their 2000th design many of which had had their lines plans published as was the norm at that time. David Sadler when doing any of his very limited number of designs didn't deviate very far (being generous) from what were considered, and proven to be , the best race winning designs of the time.

In the eighties we sailed our S&S design of a similar size into New York and went to visit S&S in Madison Avenue. Although semi retired, Olin Stephens was there and talked to us at length about all sorts. He asked us why we had chosen our boat and we said we actually had wanted a Contessa 32 having been influenced by the Fastnet report and the exploits of Gigi, but they were all too expensive and the S&S one we found we thought was very 'similar'. He replied that there was in fact a major difference in that we had an original and not a replica.

 

[Concerto]

The RORC rule encouraged long overhangs to minimise waterline length. It also encouraged narrow beam and high ballast ratios. Sail plans were optimised for large genoas and small mainsails. S&S designed to maximise their designs along this formula.

When the IOR rule started it encouraged wider beam for more interior volume and form stabilty. The beam was carried further aft with wider transoms and bigger cockpits. Stability was checked using an inclination test. The mast was moved slightly further forward for a larger mainsail for a more balanced rig. The IOR rule was trying to encourge racing yachts that could become cruising yachts after their racing career had ended, so preserve the value of a yacht and make racing less expensive.

The She 31 was designed to the RORC rule. The Contessa 32 as already stated had not been designed to the new IOR rule or the RORC rule, but had more of a nod to the old RORC shape. The Fulmar was designed to ignore all racing rules, but was found to be a good design for racing, cruising and for sailing schools. Surprisingly the Fulmar is rare in having a ¾ rig mast, rather than a masthead. This was chosen as it was easier to manage, but strangely very few boats have such a pure fractional rig.

With regard to encapsulated keels, the early GRP designs could have easily followed the external bolt on keel used in wooden boats for generations but chose to mould a smooth hull and fill the keel as Tranona mentioned with almost any old rubbish. When external bolt on fin keels started to be used, the keel had less frontal area, which increased speed due to less drag and was cheaper to build. Laying up an encapsulated keel was not that easy, but did require a reasonable internal width in the keel to do so. I have come across many encapsulated keels that have gradually worn away due to drying out for scrubbing and grounding on a regular basis. In my opinion an encapsulated keel should be fitted with a metal shoe to stop and damage to the GRP.

As I mentioned before, a rudder hung on the back of the keel is fine for straight line sailing, but poor at correcting things like a broach or reversing in a marina. There are many reasons why encapsulated keels have fallen out of favour with designers and builders, but the customers also chose the easier to handle, higher volume yachts over the old encapsulated keel ones.

 

[Motor_Sailor]

When the IOR rule started it encouraged wider beam for more interior volume and form stabilty.

Not exactly. When the IOR rule was started, one of its stated aims was to curb the 'pregnant cow' designs favoured by the RORC rule and encourage the slimmer, broader transomed boats favoured by the CCA rule. But in reality IOR Mk 2 was only a tweak from the final iteration of the RORC rule. This was to ensure the inclusion of the boats built to the previous rules into the racing and why so many of these designs are still referred to as early IOR designs despite being designed prior to the IOR rule being invented.

The real problems with the IOR rule didn't start until about 1974 where the aft girth measurement station and the inclusion of a stability measurement in all interations of IOR (CGF) were exploited as it rewarded internal ballast and all the other horrors which have become folklore.

The book by Peter Johnson "Yacht Rating" gives not only a definitive account of the IOR but handsomely illustrates the role racing rules have played in screwing up yacht design over the past 150 years. Remember the RORC rule was a continuation of the attempts to prevent the catastrophic plank on edge cutters that had been favoured in the UK by the old Tonnage based rules.

The Fulmar certainly looks like a very 'pure' cruising design. A shape like that is still the starting point for designs of conservative, time-less cruising boats. It's big improvement for a cruising boat over the Contessa if for no other reasons than it's aft stations are flat and wide enough to help it's downwind stability.

 

[BurnitBlue]

Kraken has an agenda as they are just about the only boat now made that has an encapsulated keel so it is in their interest to create an impression that lost keels are an issue. As I tried to indicate earlier encapsulation of ballast did not come about because of the issue of keels "falling off" - it was just a logical and simple way of incorporating ballast into the moulded hull shapes popular at the time. Not least because many of them had the fashionable tumblehome which necessitated split moulds which made moulding the keel housing easy, but difficult if you wanted to hang external ballast unless the keel was very wide to allow for a load carrying structure inside as some designs did with a stub GRP keel. It is also a mistake to think that all encapsulated keels were the same and there are some real horrors lurking inside may of those troughs. I speak from experience having built a boat with encapsulated ballast - steel punchings in resin - shudder every time I think of how crude it all was! - and pretty standard at the lower end of the market. Even some well regarded boats have such materials as scrap metal set in concrete, whereas the best would have lead pigs or even one piece lead castings dropped in the cavity.

All is well until the outer skin is damaged and water gets in, or as in one well known design, the keel casing splits away from the hull under pressure from the mast step. In fact the boat that I built did indeed suffer as it was a bilge keel and in a later ownership it was kept on a drying mooring with a stony bed and the base of one keel wore away.. Water got in starting rust which split the keel open. not a pretty sight.

You are lucky in a way that your preferred style of boat if made in GRP almost always comes with encapsulated ballast, but recognise that it was not designed that way because of fears of keels falling off - thousands of boats of that style (often by the same designers) were built of wood with bolt on keels. While such keels on wooden boats were not trouble free it was more a maintenance issue than fear of a boat foundering because of losing the ballast keel.

I had complete confidence in the structural integrity of the bolted and glued on fin keel of my Bavaria, particularly after seeing how difficult it was to remove one following a heavy grounding that deformed the internal structure. Equally I am happy with the encapsulated ballast in my GH but recognise that it also has a very inefficient shape which limits sailing performance. No such thing as a free lunch as they say.

Your comments about wood boats do in fact indicate that the bolts themselves are not the problem. In wood boats I believe the bolts were through bolted with a nut under the keel. Wood, which is compressable and malliable to a degree will allow through bolts but GRP would simply crush. Therefore studded bolts threaded into the keel is the solution. Thinking about that for a minute and I wonder what the ultimate difference is, the keel is just one big nut. So why the difference between wood bolted keels staying on while 90 examples of Grp bolted keels fell off?

 

[dunedin]

………... I have been trying to escape from Greece for the last five years in my Moody 346. I hate to blame the boat but it has become an obsession with me that the Moody and I are an impossible "fit". I bang my head quite often. I find it difficult to anticipate what movement in roll or pitch it will do next. I am incapable of sailing her efficiently to windward. (Probably why I am afraid to cross the Med East to West). This year 2022 I ended up in hospital as a side issue of Greek heat. I was determined to escape Greece so it was a big disapointment.

………

I am sure that it is the Moody 346 that is "somehow" the problem. For ME…..

I hadn’t realised that you seem to have owned the Moody 346 for a decade or more, and seemed to have concerns about steering stability 8 years ago - although that seemed to be related to expecting the boat to sail in a straight line when letting go of the wheel (which few would expect a boat to do without engaging the autopilot or wheel lock) - Anyone sailed a Moody 34 or 346?

Is there space for a below deck autopilot - which is generally MASSIVELY better than the elastic band wheel pilots?

The Moody 346 is a Bill Dixon designed boat, and he is a very well respected and experienced designer. I still can’t quite see why anybody would be concerned about sailing anywhere in the Med in such a boat (assuming properly maintained and prepared). Or indeed sailing back to UK or Scandinavia. Lots of Dixon’s designs have sailed round the world. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few Moody 346s have.