Sunday, January 26, 2014

Chainplate craziness

Hey friends - doing a little maintenance stuff on the boat to get her ready to sail from Merritt Island down to her new home in Fort Lauderdale in April, and have run across an unexpected little mystery / project that needs tending-to.

I've noticed some rust on the outside of the hull for a while, and have put off checking it out. This morning, having some time on my hands I decided to spend a little time on it. The main source of the rust streaks on the hull is the little speck on this picture between the two starboard aft lower chainplate though-bolts:


Really odd....the chainplate on the inside is an angle with a flat surface against the hull, so not sure what could be sticking through the hull like this unless the chainplate inside is really rusted.

So - let's pull the trim off the inside of the boat and see what we find there:



Great - the builders globbed a crapload of sealant all over the plates, on the inside of the boat. Protecting the stainless from condensation?

After 30 minutes or so of work to dig through the glop, the chainplate is starting to appear:


After another 30 minutes the chainplate is fully exposed, and there's no indication of what could be poking through to the outside. Dadgummit. The plate looks pretty good - don't like the rust on that one bolt, though.



Guess it would do to expose the others to see how they look now that I'm this far into it....here's the starboard upper:




Wow - this one doesn't look so good. Not good at all. Double dadgummit.

Time to remove the rest of the interior panels to expose the other plates. May as well replace all of these at one shot and be certain they aren't going to fail, and while I've got the underside of the side decks exposed I can remove and re-bed the lifeline stanchions. And see what that little speck of metal is that's sticking through the hull that caused all this investigation in the first place.

I'll be having the boat hauled in a few weeks for a bottom job and hopefully if I do all the work to expose the chainplates from the inside the rigger can get them off and replaced fairly quickly.

Stay tuned for more!




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