I launched last Wednesday. My summer port is roughly 300 miles away. I view my trip there as my “spring cruise.” It usually takes me four to five days after launching to get the boat ready to go. It’s going to take a bit longer this spring.

Friday evening I dock tuned the standing rigging. The mast was straight and the shrouds and stays were properly tensioned. I was finishing up, going around the boat putting the cotter pins in the turnbuckles. I had inserted the top pin in the turnbuckle for the starboard cap shroud and was turning the turnbuckle to line up the hole in the bottom screw when the chainplate shot up into the air. It was getting late and I was tired so I just jury rigged the cap shroud, taped over the hole in the deck, and went home.

Saturday morning I went back to the boat to try and figure out what happened and how to fix the problem. What I discovered is that the chainplate is made of two parts. Inside the boat a stainless steel bar is bolted to a bulkhead. The top end of the bar has a 90* ell that butts up to the underside of the deck. Outside, on deck, the shroud connects to what is essentially a heavy duty eyebolt that goes through deck and the ell.

The nut clamping the eyebolt to the deck/ell had shattered.

This was not obvious at first glance. The bar was on the aft side of the bulkhead and the ell was bent forward through a notch in the top of the bulkhead. On the forward side of the bulkhead, the notch had been glassed over after the eyebolt had been bolted on. It took me a while (and some destruction) to figure this out. After I did, I used my Dremel to cut away the fiberglass covering the notch on the forward side of the bulkhead. I pulled out a washer and fragments of a very rusty nut.

Needless to say, I feel very lucky this happened at dock. I had quite a few days of boisterous sailing last season and I’m surprised (and relieved) the chainplate had not failed then. And I’m just as relieved it failed before I took off this year.

I’m in the process of cutting away the fiberglass concealing the other eyebolts, inspecting the chainplates, and replacing all the nuts. (I admit I was an idiot for not doing this years ago.) Unfortunately, there is only one store locally that may have the nuts I need (it’s a British boat so the thread is either metric or whitworth) and it won’t be open until Monday. But if my luck holds, I’ll still be able to get away late next week.