Moody 27 Rusty Keel & Joint to Hull - Problem or Not?

[Alistair Paulls]

Evening everybody - we're first time buyers looking for some advice on a potential purchase; specifically if the cracks shown below are a red flag and we should walk away, or if it's something we shouldn't worry about. Any help would be really, really appreciated!

The boat is a Moody 27 bilge keel which has been on the hard for the last couple of years near where we live and is on for a fair price compared to others seen online. We went to check it out ourselves (as the marina is open to the public) and have seen a few things which we're not sure about.

• The keels have a large amount of rust on them, but after closer inspection it appears it's only on the surface and looks like it could be easily sanded off, so I think that part is ok.
• You can see from the side of the hull, various parts of the antifoul has come off. Could this this be a sign of an osmosis bubble which has dried out and fallen off, or something else? I don't know if as the boat has had a couple of years to dry out you'd still be able to see any osmosis bubbles if they were present?
• Finally, and most importantly, there are cracks all along the length of where the keels join the hull. I've no idea if this is simply where filler between the keel and hull has failed, and all that's needed is to fill it in again, or a symptom of something much worse? If water has been getting in there, could this mean the join between the keel and hull has been compromised and both keels would need to be removed and reseated? Would new keel bolts be needed? Anything else???

Happy to provide any more information which could help - whilst we've tried reading up online to find the answer, we're struggling to know how serious this is. My gut feel is to walk away, but I'm far, far away from really knowing about these thing properly....

Thanks a lot for any help!

 

[Pete Rowland]

Alistair, none of that would put me off, if the price reflected the work involved.

Ideally you would want the hull and keels shot or slurry blasted by a professional. However, that will cost. The DIY option is to remove the existing loose antifouling and the filler between the hull and keels and re-fill with something like sikaflex or CT1. Not a nice job but its time rather than money. There are also chemical antifoul strippers which we have used with some degree of success but they only remove a couple of layers at a time. They go on like wall paper paste and shouldn't be allowed to dry so do a bit at a time and cover with cling film to stop them drying out. Peel and scrap off, whilst the next section is busy dissolving the antifouling.

We do our two keels every few years and accept its on going maintenance. Once the keels are cleaned, paint with rusk killer and allow to dry to a black hard surface, then 5 or 6 coats of Primocon and your choice of antifouling paint, same as the hull. We use an angle grinder and various vicious attachments to clean the keels.

So how to approach this. I would start by asking a local contractor if available for a quote to remove all the antifoul and see if the vendor will meet you somewhere in the middle. The season is coming to the end and the price should reflect this too.

Is it the one in Fife? compared to this M27 with a newish engine, the asking price doesn't seem to be much of a bargain given the end of season and the newish engine worth a lot, all be it probably at the wrong end of the country.

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Moving her would be on a HGV as a return load to keep the costs down. perhaps £1500?

Pete

 

[Alistair Paulls]

Hi Pete - just wanted to say a big thanks for coming back to me here and taking the time to share your experience, very kind of you

I'm glad I asked the question as when I saw this I thought those cracks meant something far worse, so if I see anything like that again I know not to panic and instead look to see about a decent discount on the price. Taking the DIY option to remove the antifoul doesn't worry me that much as having spent much time renovating our house, I know how exactly how exciting endless scraping, sanding and stripping paint can truly be.

Yep, this is the one in Fife. The main reason we were looking at it is there aren't that many boats which seem to come on the market around the Forth. We figured it was only a short drive to view so we potentially could have saved some cash on haulage as we could have just sailed her back. However... as you quite rightly point out, there look to be better deals out there for a first boat and we should likely focus on getting something which is less of a project. That being the case we're going to continue our hunt and see what else we can find.

Thanks again for your advice and have a wonderful evening,

Alistair

 

[Peter Wright]

Hi Alistair,

For both the issues you identify, you have a choice between cheaper but fairly short term solutions and more expensive longer term solutions.

Cast iron is slightly pourous and the real problem is that salt water and rust has got into the pores - something you will never rectify completely. The cheaper short term solution is to lean off all loose paint and as much rust as possible with a powered wire brush. You should then pressure wash it with fresh water to get as much salt off as possible, which will cause it to ginger (Iight surface rusting) which will clean off fairly easily with the powered wire brush, followed by a compressed air line to blow the rust dust away. Follow this with at least 2 coats of a good primer and your antifouling of choice. Despite this treatment, you will probably see rust coming through again after two years or so.

A more thorough approach is to have the keel grit blasted, but use a contractor experienced at blasting yacht hull's. Again, after blasting, pressure wash thoroughly to wash out salt then blast again to clean off the gingering. Usually, blasters do several boats on a site so you can arrange to be first of the day then they can do your second blast after they have done the other boats booked for that day. You then need to paint with 2 of more coats of a rust and moisture tolerant epoxy primer. There are several paints fitting this description, none of them cheap. We did this on Wild Thyme 11 years ago and it's still looking good. In fact we applied the treatment to the keel and hull below the waterline - the blasting cleaned off many years of anti foul and a poorly applied epoxy coating on the grp, leaving the gel coat nicely matted to take the primer. We did this because we wanted to apply Coppercoat, so wanted a substrate that would not fall off.

Rust appearing at the hull/keel joint normally arises because the adhesive mastic used to form the joint has come unstuck from the keel at the edge and the bare keel that it had been stuck to has started to rust. The key concern here is that the rust will spread across the top face of the keel until it reaches the keel studs, at which point they will also start rusting, but this will probably take some years from when rust first appears at the outer edge of the joint. Digging out the mastic at the edge and replacing with a more modern product generally only slows the rusting - a full cure is to drop the keel and remake the joint, ideally with new studs, backing plates and nuts. This is obviously a fairly expensive job as it requires lifting equipment to lift the hull and keel separately while moving one relative to the other and each weighs several tons.

Peter