Anonymous wrote: If I didn't already have too many boats I'd be seriously considering her myself
Same here. I once had a K26, a solidly built boat that felt reassuring at sea. Their only weakness is the keels. They are strongly fitted, with 20 ½" stainless steel set screws fastened through steel plates glassed inside the hull. I don't know of any failures ... But the hollow keels are fabricated out of 3mm mild steel plate and contain poured lead ballast. The remaining void served as fuel tanks. In almost all cases, internal corrosion has made these unusable. I filled them with oil, capped the filler and suction pipes off and led an expansion pipe up from the breather tube. Treatment of external corrosion with an angle grinder, fertan and repainting was an annual chore. Blasting would have been better, but not many yards permit this nowadays, and I don't know how the blasting contractor might avoid damage to the fibreglass hull. In spite of this weakness, she carried me to the West Indies and back, then to West Africa and Brazil. Built in 1968, Antares is still afloat under her present ownership, in North Wales.