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Thanks everyone!  @ewengstrom your description of removing the keel is giving me cold feet on my original plan - seems like more opportunity to do harm than good, *especially* if I'm entrusting the work to someone else.

When I bought the boat a year ago my conclusion was "just a Catalina smile".  The bilge was full of water (on the hard) and the crack was dry.  No big deal - I fixed one on my old hunter and they're just part of having a fin keel, right?

What reduced me to panic was realizing that the bilge is leaking and rust is weeping out, which means salt water has reached and is corroding at least one of my keel bolts.  At least the antifreeze is rinsing it clean?    I saw the Catalina tech note on resealing them, but the outside must be fixed as well or it's just hiding the real problem.  Is crack filling with G/flex up to the task? 

I think my plan will be to do the following, go sailing, and see how it looks next fall:
1)  Reseal the keel bolt(s) from the inside
2)  Let everything dry out for a few weeks
3)  Grind + seal the crack with G/Flex
4)  Torque the keel bolts

Thanks again for holding my hand!

I discovered this fall that the seemingly minor smile in my C34 was weeping rust.  To make matters worse, I came back a couple of weeks later and found that it was (a) still wet, and (b) had a drip of orange bilge antifreeze on the leading edge of the keel. 

I've already arranged with the yard to have the keel dropped + rebedded before launch, but now I'm agonizing over the "proper" way to re-bed it.  I came across an earlier post that said Gerry Douglas recommended polyester or vinylester resin but I also read through a bunch of posts where people talked about using "Satan's glue" 5200.  I can imagine both benefits and drawbacks to having a little flexibility.

So I want to know:  if you ever had your keel dropped for repairs or inspection, what did you re-bed it with and how has it held up over time?

Alternately...am I going too far?  Given it's a small crack that likely compromises only the frontmost bolt and there is ZERO evidence of grounding damage, I could just try to dry it, seal it inside + out, re-torque, and cross my fingers...

Sorry to be unhelpful, but it sounds like a tough case if you don't know the cause.  Insurance covers accidental damage and acts of god; not so much mechanical failures.  This feels more like when my car's head gasket failed ($1000s, not covered) than when a winter storm knocked over another boat and damaged mine.

Alas, boat ownership is an expensive luxury.  Sometimes it just costs a lot of money, even (maybe especially) if the purchase price was low.  As my dad says, it's only the entry fee...

All that said, please accept my sympathies.  I've been following your other post.  Watching the dream turn into big bills, big projects, and/or lost sailing time is hard.  I've been there myself and feel your pain.  But you'll get through it one way or another and it will be worth it!

I sail out of Rockland and just picked mine up at auction this spring.  She used to hail from Boston.  Still carries her original name, Hajime, as I haven't felt especially creative.  Nice to have company indeed!

I'm not sure I understand exactly what's going on but are you sure your swivel bearings aren't jammed up and that's what's stopping the sail?  Or maybe one of the "bearing" inserts in the tube dropped down, keeping the bottom swivel from turning?  Both those things have happened to me with my old furler.

Jim

Good point.  I've also had the furler get tangled with a halyard, which only let it unwind so far.  From the diagram it seems as if the sail should still unwind, except maybe if there's a lot of tension on the sheets such that the folded over part can't slide because the outer wrap is holding it tightly.  Maybe manually turning the drum e.g. with a second furler line wound the opposite direction would help.

Thanks for the replies everyone!  I love the suggestion about using the starboard tank first and draining the aft into it.  Funny though: this all started because I noticed the boat listing more after I used the forward tank first and thought to myself: "aha, if I mainly use the aft one, the weight will stay balanced."  Trading one problem for another...I think the listing is more manageable.

Added boat info to my profile.  It's a 1990 mk 1.5 walk-through, #1050.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

We anchored in a nice cove last night.  Bedded down in the aft berth.  Shortly thereafter some small (very small) waves started to come up from abeam of where the wind was pointing us.  We were awakened by a loud "thwap thwap" against the hull, even a bit of a banging noise, about the speed of a clock ticking.  After letting the dinghy further out (it had come up and was kissing us) and securing the wheel, I finally realized it was coming from under my feet, so I opened the lazarette and observed water sloshing back and forth violently in the tank.  Running the faucet for a minute or so didn't fix it, and we didn't want to drain the tank, so we ended up moving to the V-berth.  Good thing the kids weren't aboard!

So...was this just a freak thing or is it a fairly common occurrence?  It's my first season with the boat so I'm still discovering its personality.

Can anyone tell me what the black plastic things are in the first picture, there is several of them in the galley sink area.

Best guess:  looks like it might be an impeller-based flow meter.  Are there wires coming from it?

My strut was showing some dezincification when I bought the boat this spring and I realized that the cutlass bearing electrically isolates it from the shaft (and the zincs).  My strut bolts are exposed on the inside of the hull so I ran a bonding wire from one bolt to the engine block.  I'm not a corrosion expert but I believe this should also protect it since the shaft and engine are electrically connected, and I didn't have to go drilling holes in my strut.

Sugar scoop?  You got one of the rare ones!!  I know of three now: yours, Noah's, and Patches'.

Add mine to that list!  #1050.  By date of manufacture it was actually built in late '89 (K9 in the hull #).

New culpa:  I just saw a picture of a sugar scoop.  I was confused: mine is actually a walk-through.

We don't have gasoline but many of us do have propane stoves; propane is heavier than air and can theoretically settle in the bilge, also creating an explosion hazard - if you're unlucky enough not to notice the smell as it diffuses anyway.  But it might explain why Catalina felt the blower was necessary.

Wait are they supposed to go in from the bottom?  I hammered them in from the top, then squeezed the boot over.  Rookie move on my part?  It seems to work/fit so far.

My mast is also canted toward the back of the hole such that the table doesn't fit in the lower (sleeping) position.  But I don't see a way to fix that without tightening the forestay, i.e. taking the furler apart, so that's presumably an off-season fix...

Agreed, the corrosion on top doesn't look horrible...but those welds do.

Sugar scoop?  You got one of the rare ones!!  I know of three now: yours, Noah's, and Patches'.

Add mine to that list!  #1050.  By date of manufacture it was actually built in late '89 (K9 in the hull #).

I think I'm in love.  Almost a full month after launch, the weather up in ME (and my schedule) finally cooperated enough to sail my C34 for the first time.  Now I understand why Catalinas are so popular!

As intimidated as I was, single-handing off the mooring and docking (to pick up my family) were a breeze.  I was even more impressed at how easily she glided along at 6 kt in a modest breeze, practically upright: I would have been happy to get 4 in my old Hunter 25.  Even in a light breeze she kept up 3 easily.  Meanwhile the accommodations were plenty roomy for my family of 4 and felt positively luxurious by my standards (HOT running water!?  I'm easily impressed ).  The kids particularly loved the aft berth.

Many thanks to all of you on this forum - both for questions answered (a couple), old topics that addressed my questions/issues (many), and the tech wiki / manuals.  Getting to this point would've been so much harder without you.  I'm honored to be part of the community and will do my best to pay it forward.