What size cleat for foredeck on 30' 8500 lb. sloop?

[Gary Mc]

If you have a cored deck I suggest that you do not over drill and fill with epoxy. In my experience you are better off to router the coring out without drilling out the upper skin.



The upper skin it likely to be thicker than the lower and you lose strength by drilling it out.

I modified an allen wrench by shortening the short side and putting it in a drill to router out some balsa. Then fill and re-drill as required.

[Lloyd Farrand]

The stronger the better. Go for the biggest cleat that is practical on the deck. Match that with the same on the backing plate. If that plate can be connected to deck beams better again. Cheers Lloyd

[Chuck34]

Originally Posted by Gary Mc

If you have a cored deck I suggest that you do not over drill and fill with epoxy. In my experience you are better off to router the coring out without drilling out the upper skin.

The upper skin it likely to be thicker than the lower and you lose strength by drilling it out.

I modified an allen wrench by shortening the short side and putting it in a drill to router out some balsa. Then fill and re-drill as required.

I did the exact same thing, but instead of an Allen wrench, I put a 90 degree bend in a finishing nail. Worked great.

As others said, make sure you have a good backing plate.

[parkstone bay]

Can only back what others have said - even if your boat lives in a marina, you don't want to lie awake at night wondering if she's secure. So - the bigger the better, and the biggest possible backing plate. No-one ever listened to the wind howling through the rigging, and said "Dammit, I really wish I'd bought smaller cleats and lines". Some modern WPBs (White Plastic Boats) have their cleats fastened with self-tappers into the GRP!

[Defeverboat]

I installed four ss 12inch cleats with 1 1/2 washers as backer plates. Using 4 1/4 20 bolts on each cheat. All the cheats held durning hurricane Harvey in Rock Port TX. 130 mph wind all ropes were 3/4 and didn’t break but the dock did! We were floating

[NorthCoastJoe]

On my Pearson 30 I have stainless 8" with aluminum backing plates as large as I could fit into the space, also 2 sizes of stacked SS washers before the nylock nuts.

I have the same cleat setup on my Macgregor 25, just used 6" cleats. I lifted the entire boat off the trailer with a loader from 4 cleats last summer.