Hi Thora,
As far as I'm aware, all Moodys have bolted on keels. A well designed bolted keel joint is just as strong as an encapsulated keel which relies on the bending strength of the grp sections immediately above the encapsulated ballast to keep it fixed onto the hull. As yachts have got beamier with a tighter turn to the bilge the stresses on hull to keel joints have increased compared to the slack bilge designs common up until the mid 1960's so Moodys, being fairly moderate in this respect compared to many production boats of today impose relatively low stresses on this joint. The stress is further reduced by a long joint, which again is disappearing in modern designs as keels get shorter and deeper with bulbs at their foot.
Another advantage of keel bolts is that it is relatively easy to withdraw the bolts (actually studs on Moodys) to inspect or replace them - there is no way of inspecting internally the grp holding an encapsulated keel onto a boat. n my view, if you pound a typical Moody keel on the bottom (e.g. a grounding in rough weather) the grp keel stub is likely to fail before the bolted joint, but I've never tested that in real life.
The one disadvantage of Moody keel studs is that they are of mild or carbon steel material and so prone to corrosion. If the boat gets water in the bilge, the nuts, backing plates and studs above the nuts will get rusty. This tends to alarm younger surveyors (anyone under 55 is young in my view) as there experience is predominated by stainless steel bolts. Marine Projects, who built the Moodys, favoured mild steel because of concerns about crevice corrosion in stainless steel, which was not well understood when these boats were built.
In all but one of the cases I know of, where studs have been withdrawn, the stud below the nut has come out in as new condition. In the one case where some studs were corroded in the lower (load bearing) portion, the seal between the keel and the hull had failed allowing seawater to get access to the studs. The best way I know of checking for such a failure is to watch a boat being hauled out as its weight is pit down on the keel - if water squeezes out of the joint, it is at least starting to fail although it may not yet be so badly failed that the sea gets in to the keel studs.
Personally, I would not take a boat showing signs of keel joint failure on a round the world cruise, but dropping the keel and remaking the joint with new studs, backing plates and nuts is a very doable job, you just need appropriate lifting equipment for the boat and the keel (each weighs several tons).
One member of the association had his Moody 425 blown ashore and pounded on the bottom for several hours in a storm on the eastern seabord of the US (As fa as I recall she broke her mooring) The rudder was damaged and, as a precaution, he had the keel removed and replaced with a new joint and fastenings. The yard found it difficult to separate the keel from the hull and all the studs in good shape - the rudder was rebuilt. Another member bougt a Moody 41 in the South Pacific. There were cracks in the keel stub, but he made ocean voyages until he got her ashore on a fairly remote island where he had no access to lifting equipment. Nonetheless he removed the keel, repaired and reinforced the keel stub before replacing the keel. Clearly, he was a competent craftsman, but i never heard of further problems with that yacht.
You're clearly planning to buy a fairly old boat. As I write on here repeatedly, her condition will depend more on how well she has been maintained through her life than how well she was built.
Peter.
