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I have a Freedom 28 in my back yard going through a major refit. Three of the nine keel bolts sheared off with only a small amount of torque. The plan is to sister in new bolts by drilling down 9 inches into the lead keel and boring in from the side to attach a nut to the bolts. I would like to hear from someone who has actually dealt with this problem successful. Please no opinions, every one in my yacht club has given me plenty.
PS: check your keel bolts, preferably when you are at a good yard. You may be in for a big surprise!

So after a lot of research and effort I solved my keel bolt issue by using a combination of approaches. First, the bolts that were corroded I used a hole saw to remove the fiberglass and some lead from around the remaining stud and attached coupler bolts. I extended the stud above the bottom of the keel sump and bolted as normal using a large nut to act as a spacer to take the load. Since there was lots of room for new bolts, decided to add a bolt for each one that snapped off so I drilled down 7 inches into the keel with a 5/8 drill bit that was dulled so as not to grab the lead. This worked great. Two of the bores were close to the sides so I indexed the location by drilling a very small hole through the sump to find my location out side. I simply measured down the depth of the bore and marked the bottom. Now I discovered that a fornser bit works great on lead. It will not bind and you can change direction if needed. And I did. My first attempt I hit it right on and found the bottom of the bore. The next one not so lucky but I was able to bore at an angle and hit the bottom. I dropped new keel bolt down the bore, attached a nut and glassed in the hole. From what I have learned, this is an old method where the bottom of the bore is accessible my chipping out the resin, detaching the nut and extracting a bad keel bolt if needed. In my humble opinion this is a far better approach than casting them in place. All nuts are torqued and my surveyor has signed off on the repair.

Hi! thank you very much for the report! Did you per chance take any pictures? On my F28 most of the bolts are quite corroded. Would be nice to be able to estimate from your pictures how bad it could be below the fiberglass..

Yikes! That sounds like a complex repair. Amazing what can be done when you put your mind to it.

I have a 30, although all my keel bolts are nice and shiny and the sump stays dry at the dock, I do typically get 1/4 inch of H2O accumulation over time at sea. Even so, I try hard to keep it dry. But I can't forget an incident out sailing when the jib sheet sheave sheared off suddenly. I took a look at the hardware after I got the boat anchored and the heads of the two bolts holding the sheave assembly to the deck looked perfect. but about 1/2 inch below the head, one of those bolts was corroded to nothing, completely hidden from view.

Based on the above and your adventure I've looked askance at my shiny keel bolts. The angel on my shoulder says "give em some torque and see what's what" the devil on my other shoulder says "they're nice and shiny, all good". So far I have followed the devil's advice.