Lifting Keel Eye Bolt

[roblpm]

Hi

I have posted this at the Parker owners club site but its a bit slow over there so will post here in case anyone with a similar arrangement has any ideas.

For those non Parker types the 275 has a 320kg lifting daggerboard style keel lifted by a winch on the foredeck. The winch has 2 wires connected to an eye bolt threaded in to the keel.

Today I removed the keel eye bolt. Came out easily with the use of a t bar tool.Its not that badly corroded but seems sensible to replace it. Looks like this http://www.bairstow.com/product/14mm-x-20-drop-forged-metric-1759.cfm

What I need to know is the best place to source a replacement. The thread appears to be 14mm and there is only 1 bolt. On Andrews later version there are 2 smaller bolts.

On another thread someone suggests stainless is not a good idea due to being in contact with the iron keel. So should it be steel? Galvanised? Iron? Any ideas??

Also some ranges seem to go 12mm - 16mm and skip 14mm

It also seems that bpsailboats, the Company that was making the Parker 235 up to a couple of months ago is no longer in business??

Cheers

Rob

 

[Tranona]

Just Google eye bolts lifting and you will find masses of potential suppliers. You can use either galvanised steel or stainless, preferably A4. There is no problem with with either material in cast iron. Both are commonly used to attached fixed keels.

 

[William_H]

I think you should fit the old eye bolt back in. Failure of this component will not be life threatening just inconvenient. My little boat 21ft has a 100kg vertically dropping centre board. It is made of wood lead and fibreglass weighting 100kg. It is lifted bya 4 purchase tackle to a sheet winch on cabin top. The actual attachment to the keel is a stainless steel plate which goes into a slot in the top of the CB. through bolts sideways attach it. It did fail once. The cb has an enlarged area at the top so did not fall through the hull. Indeed when dropping the cb I tend to let it free fall as it can get caught up on the way down.
Anyway when it failed I was limited in depth for mooring. Fortunately did not matter for mooring but I had to lift the keel for trailering home. I ran a jib sheets from one sheet winch around the tip of the keel and back to the other side. Because this pulled from aft of the cb I then ran another sheet attached at the cb tip to ropes going forward to a cleat. I was able to slowly winch up the cb to a point where I could reach the top in the cb case and replace the broken SS plate. So winch up normally.
An alternative for you might be to run the boat aground then use the dropping tide to raise the cb.
My point is that failure of cb lift is not the ned of the world. If the old eye bolt looks Ok thenkeep using it. good luck olewill

 

[simonfraser]

Keep the bolt, any cracks in it ?
Loctite it in place ?
Change the wire, nasty stuff, to dyneema ?
You'll need smooth sheeves ....

 

[rgarside]

I have a Parker 275 [No 36].
The two in my keel are different, one M10 and the other M12.

I have had a shackle fail which resulted in the keel dropping, not something one would want to subject the boat to unnecessarily. This indicated how difficult it is to visually detect crevice corrosion/fatigue in stainless [the photos are on the Parker forum], so I would recommend that if you are in the process of messing around with the keel, and don't know their history, you replace them.

When I took the keel out to blast and re-coat it, I replaced mine. The threaded holes in my keel are quite deep, and there was some increased play around the top of the threads, weighing up the options, I elected to put studding into the holes to nearly full depth, and used Wichard eye-nuts on the top. This gave a respectable safety factor for both M10 and M12 sizes.

There are pros & cons to the different materials one could use, in the end I decided to use 316 stainless for the studding and the eye nuts. I used a little loctite on the studding in the keel, but a lot of sealant around the hole entry and under the eye nut.

If your size is M14, then the normal DIN eyebolt/eyenut break load is more likely to be adequate, the Wichard eyebolts/eyenuts have a higher capacity than the DIN standard.

I now use 8mm Dyneema [D12 type] for the hoist line. Mine has an electric winch in the forepeak. The second eye nut has a wire pennant with an eye for a pin to secure the keel in the up position. The keel lowering indicator line also comes from this pennant.

I haven't checked the Parker Forum for the past week or so, hence missed your post. I'll have a look there shortly - if you have queries get in touch.

 

[Ian_Edwards]

I had Parker 275/54 for 10 years. When I took the keel out to have it sand blasted and epoxy coated I replace both eye bolts with steel eye bolts stamped with a safe working load, 2tons IIRC. It was the similar arrangement as 275/34 in the post from rgarside. I then epoxy primed and painted the eye bolts with 2 pack polyurethane paint. One eye bolt took a 6 part block and tackle operated from a winch of the coach roof. The other had a SS safety wire and a small length of aluminium tube which was slipped through an eye in the SS wire and took the weight of the keel in the raised position. This wire also had a shot cord which acted as a keel position indicator. I used SS shackles. The coating soon wore off the contact points between the eye bolt and shackle and they showed some wear and rust, but never got anywhere near looking like they needed replacing.

I used the eye bolts with a stamped SWL, so that I knew the new eye bolts were amply strong enough for a 320kg keel and that I had a reasonable corrosion allowance.

I hope this helps.