I’m looking for some advice please. About to carry out maintenance on my P21 keel and found this. (See attached photos). I presume the blue/pink rope (which is attached to the rear eyelet on top of the keel and to the bottom of the block) is a back-up only. I believe there should be an eye bolt at the forward end, but as you can see the eyelet on top of the keel is corroded through and there’s a nylon rope (light blue) threaded through the keel and tied off onto a pressed type bracket fastened with a rather small bolt below the block. Should this secondary pressed bracket be there? The last photo shows the deck arrangement - should the hoist rope return to the deck as it appears? Finally, I assume the black grommet behind the u bolt on the deck is where the indicator wire should pass through (it’s missing)? Can I work through the inspection covers or can I gain better access? Any comments or suggestions would be very welcome!

Interesting, it's quite different to my early 21 (no 18). I think you're right that the block was originally shackled to the eyelet, but that has been replaced by the silver rope. And yes, the hoist rope is anchored at the deck.

Dropping the keel out isn't easy, especially if you're on a trailer. I managed it last year. I'd recovered the boat so it wasn't central on the trailer, and far enough back for the keel to miss the trailer's crossbeam. So, after removing the trailer axle, I jacked the whole lot up about 1m with the trailer on breeze blocks, then dug a hole underneath the keel. After removing the nylon keel slides and rollers (through the inspection hatches), the keel did drop out. Getting it back in wasn't easy either - it's pretty heavy. So I won't do that again in a hurry!

An easier way would be to crane the boat up, leaving the keel behind!

Geoff is right, Parker attached the lower block to the eyebold (on my boat).

It’s not perfect, because the lower bolt of the block is bolted through the eyebold so it’s impossible to control the condition of the eyebold without removing the block.

I think Parker made it that way because otherwise the keel would stand out of the bottom.

I removed my block last year and the eyebold wasn’t in good condition.

I removed the eyebold and replaced it with two plates of 3mm 316th which are bolted to the keel through the hole your silver rope is going through, because the old block on the eyebold twisted a lot by holding up the keel. Now there is no movement any more. The lower bold of my new block is bolted through the 316th plates too.

We did it through the inspection cover but with a crane, because the inspection cover is to low to make it on the trailer while the keel is up, so we had to lower the keel for about 20cm.

Eyebold

Twist

Plates

Ready

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Thanks to both of you. That’s really useful and I think I’ll copy Matthias’ solution as my old eyebolt has just snapped off while I was trying to unscrew it. 👍

Have either of you set up a keel hold-up using the second eyebolt that has the keel depth indicator wire on it? Apparently some people have used aluminium tubing with some sort of attachment to the mast? I’m struggling to visualise how to do it.

Here are some photos from Norman Robertson of his 235 on a cradle so the keel can be lowered/removed.

All you need is a Manitou!

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