Bummer! Nothing gets my blood up like insurance companies trying to weasel out of claims after we paid good money for "coverage"...
This may seem a bit mercenary, but in the SE USA there must be plenty of leftover sailboat hardware in the hurricane belt, not so?
I've seen a similar failure before - a chain plate pulled out of a rotten bulkhead (after noticing the chainplate slowly pulling free we were lucky to be able to crash tack and saved the
rig). There's something to be said for todays' practice of using tie rods and more visible attachments for these sorts of things.