If you’re lucky and the keel is still attached to the boat, retrieving the boat with the keel down is tricky. And if it happens to you, you’re in a serious pickle. It happens quite often, actually, unexpectedly and at the worst possible time in many cases. “It came up off the rest and then the cable snapped! Thankfully the keel only fell about an inch into the rubber padded keel holder on the trailer.” “Checking to make sure everything works, I let the board down, cranked it back up a little and BAM…the wire broke near the end of the steel tube.” “The metal cable that retracts the keel on my Macgregor 26S broke–as I was launching the boat to put it in a marina this spring” “I actually lost the keel when it swung down out of control, broke off and was gone forever – 600 pound of cast iron.” “Bad news as I’ve just discovered my keel cable is snapped with the cable all the way wound on to the winch. Following is a small sample of the confessions of sailboat owners in a certain online forum over the past few years. Think swing keel cables rarely break? Think again.