Yipee!!! ... My Bavaria Keel is still attached!!!

Baggywrinkle

Baggywrinkle

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My Bavaria 36 is coming up for it's 20th Birthday this year, so, as at the start of every season I lift the floor to check for water ingress and then hoover the remaining crumbs and dust out of the bilges.

Imagine my surprise to find the keel bolts all looking healthy and the keel still attached!!
Glad I ignored all the people who told me it would fall off. :encouragement:

Any other Bavaria owners out there with keels still attached after 20 years?

Bilges.jpg

PS: I did find a nasty red-wine stain in the bilges that took some scrubbing to get off. Don't know where that came from.
 
My bilges are somewhat wetter - congratulations! My keel is 4.65 tons of encapsulated lead so no bolts to worry about tho’...
 
My keels, we need 2, are part of the moulding and contain no ballast. Despite the lack of ballast they do seem to work very well and allow us to dry out, flat, on a beach.

What is all this about lead, ballast and bolts! :)

Why on earth carry that weight - I spend my time trying to save a kilo here and a toothbrush handle there???

Jonathan
 
Baggywrinkle said:
My Bavaria 36 is coming up for it's 20th Birthday this year, so, as at the start of every season I lift the floor to check for water ingress and then hoover the remaining crumbs and dust out of the bilges.

Imagine my surprise to find the keel bolts all looking healthy and the keel still attached!!
Click to expand...

How do you know the keel is still there?
 
JumbleDuck said:
How do you know the keel is still there?
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it's still lurking there under the water. Will find out for real when she is lifted out for anti-fouling and saildrive anode in a few weeks .... if the keel is gone I think it is probably on the sea bed under my marina berth, I sailed up to the marina entrance last season and it was still working then, so I know where to find it if it's missing ... might be in the channel though .... are my celebrations a little premature?
 
Baggywrinkle said:
My Bavaria 36 is coming up for it's 20th Birthday this year, so, as at the start of every season I lift the floor to check for water ingress and then hoover the remaining crumbs and dust out of the bilges.

Imagine my surprise to find the keel bolts all looking healthy and the keel still attached!!
Glad I ignored all the people who told me it would fall off. :encouragement:

Any other Bavaria owners out there with keels still attached after 20 years?

View attachment 77465

PS: I did find a nasty red-wine stain in the bilges that took some scrubbing to get off. Don't know where that came from.
Click to expand...

You are not actually comparing like with like. Pre 2007 the Bavaria was once a decent boat, before it went down market. Nevertheless, Patrick Laine seems to be happy with one.
 
Baggywrinkle said:
My Bavaria 36 is coming up for it's 20th Birthday this year, so, as at the start of every season I lift the floor to check for water ingress and then hoover the remaining crumbs and dust out of the bilges.

Imagine my surprise to find the keel bolts all looking healthy and the keel still attached!!
Glad I ignored all the people who told me it would fall off. :encouragement:

Any other Bavaria owners out there with keels still attached after 20 years?

View attachment 77465

PS: I did find a nasty red-wine stain in the bilges that took some scrubbing to get off. Don't know where that came from.
Click to expand...

Mark-1 said:
The Bavaria Keel myth dates back to long before 2007.
Click to expand...

Enlighten me.
 
harry potter said:
Enlighten me.
Click to expand...

I'm saying I remember the Bavaria Keel myth being 'a thing' long before 2007, I'm not claiming to know the origin of it. I think most people attribute it to the Bavaria Match 'incident' but I have a feeling it pre-dates even that.
 
The one on my 2003 Bavaria is still loitering about under the boat. I do have some nice big osmotic bubbles in the rudder though (made by Jeffa, not Bavaria).
 
Billows said:
Isn't that a crack in the gel coat on the bolt next to the dept sounder? :eek:
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The bilge seems to be painted with a thin layer of either paint or gel-coat ... it is flaking in places. The depth sounder (white thing?) is a bilge pump and the bit that looks in the picture like a crack is a hard ridge of resin where the brown coating has chipped off. I've had her since 2011 and nothing has changed down there, before I bought her she was a charter mule in Croatia and had a hard life - she may even have been repaired although the surveyor was OK with the condition of the hull. She was cheap and I like her, I've had 7 years of fun on her so far and I've spent more on marina fees than she cost me to buy so I'm not complaining - a reasonable amount of boat for the money.
 
Baggywrinkle said:
My Bavaria 36 is coming up for it's 20th Birthday this year, so, as at the start of every season I lift the floor to check for water ingress and then hoover the remaining crumbs and dust out of the bilges.

Imagine my surprise to find the keel bolts all looking healthy and the keel still attached!!
Glad I ignored all the people who told me it would fall off. :encouragement:

Any other Bavaria owners out there with keels still attached after 20 years?

View attachment 77465

PS: I did find a nasty red-wine stain in the bilges that took some scrubbing to get off. Don't know where that came from.
Click to expand...


20 years old this summer! And mine look almost identical to yours!

Has some water in last year, But it was from our fresh water pump leaking... ( took me a while to figure that one out mind!)

And yes, the keel is still there. (At least it was when they dropped me back in last month,..)
 
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