question for ex-Ericson employees

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davemitchell

Member I
I have a 1980 25+. Love the boat. I have had water dripping from the keel for a year now.Under one of the bilge access cover it looks like someone drilled into the lead. I was wondering could this have been a keel bolt? Does the 25+ have keel bolts. If so where are they and how do you check them? If there are no keel bolts as I have heard how is the lead in the keel supported?
Thanks
 
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ted_reshetiloff

Contributing Partner
From what I heard the lead was poured into the keel. The hull, (correct me here someone) was built in to halves. After joining them the lead was poured into the void that would become the keel. Not bolted on like more modern designs. The process was used by many other builders of the same vintage and for boats of this size range. I did not work for ericson but this is what I have heard here.
 
Martin King

Martin King

Sustaining Member
Blogs Author
I'm here to help

ted_reshetiloff said:
From what I heard the lead was poured into the keel. The hull, (correct me here someone) was built in to halves. After joining them the lead was poured into the void that would become the keel. Not bolted on like more modern designs. The process was used by many other builders of the same vintage and for boats of this size range. I did not work for ericson but this is what I have heard here.
Click to expand...

What actually happened is the lead ballasts were a seperate casting
fitted with lifting eyes which were then carefully lowered into the
keel cavity via overhead crane while the boats were still in the molds
before the decks went on. The eyes were then removed and the
cavity was glassed over. This procedure was only used for boats
with encapsulated keels. Trying to pour thousands of pounds of molten
lead into a thin skinned fiberglass keel cavity would have likely resulted in
an enormous industrial accident.

Martin
 
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Seth

Sustaining Partner
Beat Me To It

Martin is, of course, 100% right. We used to get these keels from Keelco and "AlCO" or "ALRO" (I don't recall the exact name of this vendor). IIRC, Keelco did the external fins, which were pretty well shaped when we got them, and the other vendor did the "internal" keels-in which a less precisely shaped keel was trucked to us with eye bolts sunk into the tops, and as Martin says, we would lift them with a cherrypicker-like device and lower them into the open voids on the models that did not have bolt on keels. So, you could be looking at the old lifting eye cavity.
Fair winds,
S
 
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davemitchell

Member I
Thank you Thank Thank you

Thank you so much. I love the boat, before I bought the boat it sat on the hard for 3 years, doing stuff that hasn't been taken care of in years.One more question, 1980 Harken was the supplier for the ports, correct. looking for replacements, they are an odd size, apparently, with the slant.
 
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Seth

Sustaining Partner
Ports? Harken?

Glad we could help-but if you are talking about the side windows, no-at that time we bought very little from Harken-certainly not ports/windows. I don't think Harken even makes these. Did you mean Lewmar?
Over...
 
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