Yes. The keel is coated with an Epoxy or Fiberglass kind of coating. (Thats the outer skin you are noticing) Are you sure that piece that you observing coming off is the lead keel? Probably not, I bet if you took a piece of of what you see and examined it you will notice it is not lead.

Almost half of the bottom of my keel did not have the "outer skin" when I bought the boat with only 50 hours on it (1999 Hull # 1800 Wing Keel). And over the years its not probably closer to 60-70% of the bottom is just exposed lead. . It hasn't hurt anything. When I prepare the boat for bottom paint I just flake off the loose epoxy and smooth it out as best I can, then slap some paint on it and go sailing. Its not ideal, but its not very easy to do much work under there when its on small wood blocks for the winter, so I live with it.

I never really liked it, it is not a very smooth surface or bottom at all. If I wanted to really race it would be a liability (but then having a wing keel doesn't help either) I have thought about having a yard lift it in slings and fill with microballoon and smooth with epoxy, but I have just lived with it. Once the boats in the water I never really think about it again until I am bottom painting again next spring.

I would not worry about anything major being a problem. Its solid lead under that coating. If you want you can remove that delaminated area and reapply some epoxy and smooth out.

Glenn,

I may be way off base here as I have no knowledge of the wing keel and own a MKI boat. I do not know of any metal being used for the keels on our boats, is it possible that the previous owner had an HF Radio onboard, if so he may have added a metal ground plane to the keel for the HF transmitter.

Or could it have been someone's lightning protection grounding plate? Glenn, your signature doesn't indicate where you are based, so we're sorta throwing darts here.

Catalina 36 keels are cast lead, so it is unlikely to be a manufacturing defect.

It sounds identical to an issue I had with the wing keel (Mars Metals) on my ODay 322. There was a "blister" like blemish on top of the winged portion of the keel.

It did appear to have a "shell" over the exterior of the lead keel made of a material I could not determine. I ground it out to clean lead, filled it with epoxy, ground/sanded it fair, painted it and went sailing. I never resurfaced as a problem but I sold the boat the following year.

I had the same situation on top of my wing keel. It looked like delaminatig metal and also showed some rust. Somehow there was a bad pour on my keel. I pryed up the loose stuff, ground to shiny lead, repaired with west system as described for this type of repair. Basically grind out the repair area (I used a wire wheel on an electric drill), wire brush a light coating of unthickened epoxy into the repair, after it is set - finish filling (fairing) with thickened epoxy. You can spread thickened epoxy with a plastic speader. Sand smooth, barrier coat and then bottom paint. My damage was at least a quarter inch to a half inch deep and about 8x10 inches. BTW, do not reattach the bad slag that you removed. You can repair this like new, fair it and go sailing. The west system instructions include repairs of this type. One last note; if you take on the repair protect yourself from lead exposure..particles when grinding/sanding.