There is always someone with a bigger problem.

[TOM]

We are on the hard at Boat Lagoon Phuket Thailand getting ready for Chagos, having a bad day trying to sort out the bearings in our in mast furler . Things are not going well .

Then the travel lift comes past ....... Hey at least we have a mast !

[boatman61]

OUCH.....

[anjou]

Oooops

Keep the faith and remember, its PMA that gets you through. (Possitive Mental Attitude). Its the most important thing you take on any voyage through life.

[TOM]

ouch is right, The good news is he is insured . Chain plate gave away on a leisurley sail up the coast of Phuket .Chain plate was inbedded in fibreglass so no way to inspect.

www.byamee.com

[multihullsailor6]

Tom,

Know the feeling - under guidance from the boatyard manager and his staff I put my boat on the public slipway in La Coruna, Spain at high water for work on the shaft prop seals - found the only large rock there which of course gave way and punched a big hole in the skeg! Still could have been worse, could have been a hole in the hull!!

Keep your spirits up! (Land-based) Life could be worse!

[PamlicoTraveler]

Originally Posted by TOM

ouch is right, The good news is he is insured

I wonder if insurance will pay for a failing chainplate. Many policies don't even cover rigging.

[S/V Alchemy]

Jeez, I hope that's deck-stepped...

not that it matters at this point.

[Jim Cate]

Well, at least the chap in the travel loft won't have any problems flying flags at half-mast!

And Alchemy, could you explain your hopes that it is deck stepped, please?
Looks to me that if it had been deck stepped it would have fallen off the boat 'cause there do not seem to be any lower shrouds left connected to the mast.

Jim

[S/V Alchemy]

I didn't look closely, but if it's bent in the part beneath the spreaders and it's keel-stepped, it's probably damaged the partners.

Even a deck-stepped mast, so pinned, might remain upright at a small angle as pictured due to the plates and pins in the tabernacle. I've raced, and I've seen boats come back like this. Deck stepped is usually pinned to a small tabernacle and would not necessarily come free if the mast went by the boards. I have a large tabernacle for the purpose of bringing the mast down over the pilothouse for canal transits and inspections/light bulb changes, etc. Quite handy.

[sabray]

Having recently replaced my chain plates I found this. The chain plates passed through the deck to a knee and were through bolted. Inspection by eye showed no issues but evidence of water egress. I pulled one and found where the chain plate was bedded against the knee some crevice corrosion had occurred. The bolts that held the chain plate in were shot. some of the bolts eaten away 30%. Ideally I would have replaced them with bronze bolts and bronze chain plates (hindsight). External chainplates can have the same degradation to the plates and bolts. I mention this more because we hear chainplate failures but little about the bolts. That was my experience. I am thinking that pulling a bolt out of the chainplate may be a good indicator of issues. Any way thats what I saw when I did mine.

[S/V Alchemy]

I have found and replaced through bolts due to deformation, not corrosion, but then I'm in fresh water and rigs generally last considerably longer than in salt.

I have found it helpful to use a torque wrench on chain plate bolts not so much to get the dogging down to a certain point, but to make that point consistent across all the bolts on all the plates.

The same idea pertains in head bolts on an engine.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by S/V Alchemy

I didn't look closely, but if it's bent in the part beneath the spreaders and it's keel-stepped, it's probably damaged the partners.

G'DAy Alchemy,

Can't say that I agree with this... Once the support of shrouds is removed from an aluminium tube mast, it is extremely fragile athwartships. A failure such as the one shown would not be likely to damage the partners of a proper keel stepped mast.

We were dismasted in our previous boat (Palmer Johnson Standfast 36, keel stepped mast) when a lower shroud clevis pin came out. Mast broke about 200 mm above the deck, it all went overboard and was cut away, losing 5 winches, mast, boom, three sails, radar, instruments, lights and all the standing rigging. There was no damage to the partners. The chap in the picture has saved all of these things except the mast, so things could have been worse for him.

Looking about at the various deck-stepped masts on current production boats, I see no tabernacle type mounts, but who knows what this boat had.

I do agree about the handyness of a real tabernacle, though!

Cheers,

Jim and Ann s/v Insatiable II lying Morning Cove, NSW, Oz