[Public-List] Keel bolt question

[Rachel]

On Apr 10, 2012, at 4:48 PM, brian curry wrote:

> 
> Got my answer on keel bolts, we have internal ballast.  But I think I am seeing something that looks like the head of a bolt (actually a couple of them) in the bilge under the cabin sole.  Could that be?

Brian,

Do you have a first-generation A-30?  If not, ignore the following, but if you do...

Just to explain the construction of the sole area of the saloon:  You have the cabin sole, which you walk on, and it has hatches that you can lift up to expose compartments underneath.  BUT, the bottoms of those compartments are not the bilge. Rather, the bottoms are plywood that makes up a "sub-sole."  Notice they are flat?  The actual bilge slopes back on an angle (you can see the actual "bilge" from the forward compartment, but the after two have the "sub-sole").  So you have the flat, plywood "sub-sole" making a flat bottom in the after two saloon sole compartments.  There is some dimensional lumber supporting this sub-sole from underneath (floors), and of course some fasteners.  (Also, as was suggested, there can be things like battery strap hold-downs fastened to the sub-sole.)

I cut out areas of that sub-sole in order to access the bilge so I could encapsulate the ballast pig (it was very half-heartedly encapsulated from the builder), so that's how I know what was down there - at least on #221.  The construction of the floors (i.e. structural members) under the sub-sole was fairly workaday (nails, flaps of fiberglass).

I have never seen, nor even heard of, any Alberg 30's with keel bolts.  If there are any, it would be a real custom or one-off thing. (That said, Whitby did build boats with external ballast at around the same time, but they were not A-30's.)

Rachel
ex-#221

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