KEEL HAULING, THE REAL DEAL..........................................

NORTH ISLAND, N.Z. 1957

There are many forms of "KEEL HAULING" but this one is the real McCOY............. This lead keel weighs six tons, and in the photo above it is being moved into the boatshed before construction of the yacht "ARITA" can begin...... And this is no mean feat ......................... It all started, back in 1957 by finding a nice open patch of ground, somewhere near RUSSELL, in the North Island on New Zealand, and digging a hole in it.................About 8ft long, 2ft wide and 2ft deep........................ Cut some plywood up to make a mold and generally throw some concrete around it to keep it in shape.............. All this is exceptionally technical.....................

The next step is to scrounge around town and locate a large copper pot............... There used to be plenty of these around,............ Being left over from the whaling days, for if the pot "got a little too thin", it was likely to spring a leak and let out all the blubber oil which, when it caught fire could send the whole whaling ship to the bottom.............. Needless to say the pots were changed out regularly.


Now comes the hard part..................... how to collect about six tons of lead from old batteries, window casement counter-weights, boat ballast pigs, and wherever it might have come from.................. Then melt it all down in the copper pot....





The cross-braces in the mold have to have holes drilled in them to take the copper tubes before the mold is finally filled with molten lead..................... Yes, knock out the bung (or spigot) at the bottom of the copper pot, slide a sheet of corrugated metal under it, and let it rip.................Just don't stick your hand in this steaming silver salad......................

When the lead has cooled, the copper tubes will be drilled out and replaced with stainless steel bolts (the keel bolts), long enough to be attached to the 'king-plank' the main central frame to which the rest of the ribs and planking will also be attached.............

We are almost done here.....................Get a crow bar and some lumber and dig that piece out of the ground and ................. "VOILA!!!!",...... We have a six ton keel............ Now all we need to do is get it across the inlet by getting a barge from somewhere and then slide it onto the railway trolley and into the boatshed and ............ 'Bob's your Uncle!'.............



I guess today you simply order a lead keel from a foundry or perhaps most of us just buy the yacht without ever realizing what goes in to it................ "ARITA's" keel was made this way................. Raw muscle, raw ingenuity, raw determination and raw perseverance...................

And amazingly, some fifty-two years later that piece of lead is still there keeping ARITA upright when the wind shrieks through the rigging................Or at least it was there the last time I looked.............

THIS VERY SAME PIECE OF LEAD............