Keel in the Thames!
Reverend Tom Pyke describes how he recovered and reattached his yachtÕs swing keel after it dropped into the gloopy Thames mud
Rev Tom Pyke recovers and reattaches his swing keel
Isometimes wonder if the editor of Practical Boat Owner isn’t stalking me. Maybe it’s because Beowulf, my swing keel Jaguar 25, is a lady of a certain age, but when I have niggles or nightmares with her, it’s uncanny that I find the same issues mirrored in the editor’s choice of articles in the next PBO.
I was really spooked when I turned to Dick Everitt’s Sketchbook page in the July 2019 edition ‘Overcoming Centreboard Problems’ because the last but one sketch echoed exactly what had happened to my boat. On her half tide mooring, over the winter, Beowulf had shed her keel. Now we had to work out how to find it, how to lift it from the bottom of the Thames, how to repair it and how to re-attach it.
The Jaguar 25 is the British licensed version of the US Catalina 25. It was built on Canvey Island by Eric Birch in three variants, swing keel, bilge keel and fin keel. Beowulf is the swing keel variant and she’s usually moored on a trot mooring in the Thames that dries out at low water. For about half an hour before she takes the ground, and then half an hour before she floats off on the ebb the boat is prone to slamming on firm mud by the wash from commercial craft. This motion must have contributed to the failure of the fixings and the loss of the keel.
I’d been looking forward to the new season and getting my boat ready for the Greenwich Yacht Club’s East Coast cruise. At the end of a happy hour splicing a new continuous furling line for the genoa I did the normal visual check that the boat was safe to leave.
My eye was caught by a loose wrap of wire rope on the drum of the keel winch. This lifting wire is always bar taut, so it definitely looked wrong. I tugged at it tentatively and all the rest of the wire, its shackle and the remains of the lifting eye I’d last seen attached to the aft end of the
keel came up the spout. Either the lifting eye had sheared off and the keel was hanging in the down position, thumping the keel casing and damaging the bottom of the boat at every ebb tide, or the keel was gone altogether.
I didn’t know which was worse, but I knew I had to get the boat to the slipway and out of the water as soon as possible.
Getting there was a challenge: the keel of a Jaguar 25 provides the lateral resistance of course, but also all of the ballast. Even under power the boat shied off course at every puff of wind.
All the evidence pointed to the keel having sheared its forward pivot and dropped clean away from the boat. So where was it now? Presumably lying on the mud at the mooring, on or just below the surface of the seabed.
Jim Miskin, a member of the Greenwich club and the real hero of this sorry story volunteered to put on waders and go out at Low Water Springs and ‘have a poke around’. He didn’t find anything and nor did I the following day. On the third attempt I prodded deep into the mud midships of the trot buoys, out into the river. Nothing. I then lost my balance and landed in the mud. Was this hopeless?
Getting to my feet, ready to give up the search, my stick struck something hard and flat inshore of the trot-line. I dug away at the mud and 30cm down came upon traces of dark blue antifouling. Could this be what I was looking for?
More digging proved that it was! The keel was on its side buried under layers after layer of mud, sand and clay. I slopped back to the boatyard happy to have found it but unconvinced that we could ever dig it out and reunite boat and keel.
Enter Jim Miskin again. He was doggedly positive. I’d marked the keel’s ‘grave’ with a line and a small inflatable fender. Jim was sure he could dig it out enough to attach some racing marker buoys to the pivot hole and rip it from the river bottom on the rising tide. All that needed to happen then was to tow it to the slipway and use our club’s boat lift to get it into the yard.
The next time I was in the club there it was, the best part of a ton of cast iron keel lying like an exotic game-fish on a trolley at nearby Billingsgate fish market.
Now we needed to repair the keel, set it on edge safely, make up a new manganese bronze pivot pin at the front end and weld a metal sleeve into the worn and misshapen hole in the keel to receive the new pin. At the after end of the keel
we needed to drill out the remains of the old lifting eye, tap the new hole and find a beefier, stronger lifting eye.
But it was Holy Week and I am a vicar, and all of this was going to have to wait until after Easter.
I like a challenge, and I like learning and applying new skills, but sometimes you have to recognise your limits and know when ‘practical’ actually means ‘realistic’.
So I called around and found a skilled marine engineer who worked up the parts we needed from measurements I gave him and then spent two visits to the club welding the sleeve into place and drilling out and refitting the lifting eye.
On the third visit we craned the keel upright and nearly vertical, and then the engineer set to welding a cradle for it. The plan was for the cradle to hold the keel at the right height and the right angle so that we could lower the boat onto it, and then bolt the pivot pin into place held by its two bronze bearings.
This simple and elegant cradle made the rest of the job safe and easy – well, as easy as any job is on an old boat. The cradle is mine to keep, and I’ll use it to inspect the keel’s pivot pin on a regular basis now – just to be sure this never happens again. Within six hours the work was finished and Beowulf was back in the boat lift heading back to where it belongs – in the water. A nightmare had ended because of the willingness of my fellow club members to help and the skill of the marine engineer.
I’m looking forward to the summer and to our East Coast cruise. I won’t easily forget this chapter of owning Beowulf, but there are some changes I’ll need to make.
Though the drying mooring meant I could recover the keel, because of the maelstrom of forces that the Thames throws at boats, I have asked to move to a deep water mooring. The pivot pin and lifting wire system, ideal on a freshwater lake, needs more regular and careful attention in a harsh maritime environment than I have given it to date.
We live and learn.
‘Sometimes you have to recognise your limits and know when “practical” actually means “realistic”’