At the keel aft of the engine bay bulkhead it looks like there are approximately six keel bolts running through. What I actually had is six lengths of timber dowel with some caulking cotton and a bit of bedding compound around the top. The dowel actually makes it look like the tip of a keel bolt but there is actually no mechanical fastening holding the aft section of the boat together.
Whoever repaired the aft exterior section of the keel pulled all the bolts out and didn't put any of them back. Alan Burnard was heard to say that the engineers worked to a few thou’ but the boatbuilders barely knew which boat they were on! So maybe it was part of the original construction.
In the engine bay I was hoping not to replace the keel bolts but unfortunately whilst testing them, the head sheered straight off one of them.
Options for removing them were to try and 'jack' them up from underneath and keep cutting them off on the inside until the length of the bolt was removed. We tried physically hammering one down from inside the boat but absolutely nothing happened.
Another option was to remove the rusted bolt heads from the outside, see if we could punch or sink them under the keel band and re-fasten into the centre line timber with what effectively would be very large coach bolts. You would however have to cope with the fact the old bolt shanks remained embedded in the centre line structure until the end of time!
Finally Custom Yachts proposed to cut the bolt heads off so that they are below the external keel line and fill them in. Then drill new gallery pockets and bolt holes and refasten in between the old keel bolts with new ones-drama over.
