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Here's a photo from May 2013, me sanding down my 3 inch wide 2 inch thick rub rail.
Here's a photo from August 2013, I was sanding the under side of the toe rail (which explains the teak dust) and found this little bit of joy.
Note the first picture is provided so you can zoom in and see it wasn't there.
There was a "del rechio" in June, which may, may I say, have caused a roll and hit to the piling there (it's fended off with a 9 inch diameter fender.
Irwins have embedded chain plates, no way at all to inspect without a grinder and a chop saw.
I have a surveyor with a thermal imager scheduled in, any ideas, hopes, prayers and donations?
Can you remove the chain plates and mount them on the outside of the hull? It makes for easy inspection, no leaks and will practically eliminate corrosion. If your current chain plates are embedded on the inside of the hull (as I understand it), moving them to the outside shouldn't reduce your sheeting angle all that much. Just my 2 centavos ...
I think the way "they" do it is to use the current chainplates as back plates and just bolt right through it.
Seems to me you'd still have to dig them out because they would just keep rusting.
Is that spot cored?
Usually, even with a cored hull, the structural areas are solid.
Perhaps an exploratory hole drilled from the inside?
Progressive Epoxy sells a Low V epoxy that is good for injecting into cavities to strengthen. It is good because it has no solvents that need to vaporize. Tough to off-gas when enclosed inside a core. All the other penetrating epoxies have solvents to thin them.
I've got a surveyor coming next week to take shots with a thermal camera.
After that I guess it's time for a small hole saw.
At this point I need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt if it's impact or chain plate - so I know if it's insurance or out of pocket.
I would think that if it were from an impact there would be some other damage on either the rub rail or the cap rail.. If water leaked into the chainplates at all in the past (I see a lot of silicon around them in the first photo) it is likely that they are going to have crevasse corrosion given their age. Just because chain plates are glassed in does not make them impervious to leaks, it just makes it harder to tell if they have been leaking. In this case it would not have to have had that much force to cause a failure, certainly not enough to deform the deck. The cracking looks to be in the area where the chain plates would be welded to a cross bar and the weld would be the most likely area to develop crevasse corrosion as it would naturally have a lot of nooks and crannies. This is typical of 20-30 year old ss that has lived in a marine environment.
When we pulled our plates this is what we found.. On all of them.. It was because of this that I have recently started (1 year so far) doing rigging inspections under the supervision and along side of a local surveyor. While I don't have 30+ years of experience under my belt, I have inspected quite a few rigs. There hasn't been a single one that I have looked at that was older than 25 years with original chainplates that did not have at least one with cracks (this isnt to say that they dont exist, I just haven't come across them yet) If it were me with a 20+ year old boat, with glassed in chain plates, and signs of spider cracking on the hull over one of those plates, I would sit down, pour my self a tall glass of rum, and break out the hole saw.
Short of your hull being made of tissue paper, I don't think it couldossibly be the result of just chain plate corrosion. If they were corroding, AND there was an impact.... But that would still fall under the insurance claim.
That looks like impact from the INSIDE. A hit from outside that could cause that sort of crazing would be unlikely to have totally missed the teak rails. I would think there would also be a more distinct primary impact point - down to the glass - instead of just crazed gelcoat.
Could be caused by the expansion of corrosion inside those miserable glassed in chains.
High water and a gust could have caused it, just don't know - if I took a hammer and hit it I'm real sure it look the same. My insurance co confirms if impact it's covered, if plates pulling it's not, unless the impact loosened the plates.
That's why I've got a thermal camera coming - no guessing and a certified surveyor to put in writing what caused what when.
Not much of a way for it to have been impact from inside, but an impact to the rub rail and possibly the cap rail could have flexed the hull in around the chainplate. That would make it look like it was pushing out. When is your surveyor coming?
Hopefully he's coming Wednesday. It's a hook up I happened on when Beth Leonard (yes, that Beth) gave me her card at the rigging talk during the SSCA GAM last weekend - she told me she might know someone.
I've been going crazy trying to find a method of non-destructive testing - apparently there is a guy in Trinadad that x-ray's chain plates for 800 bucks, but no one nearer - or at least they don't advertise or even admit it.
I can't just hole saw a core out because doing so might in fact destroy any evidence that it's not impact related.
Even my insurance agent is telling me to proceed cautiously towards proof. I've been gathering wind/rain and tide stuff to show impact is and was possible.
There is no inside liner - the plates are embedded in the hull and then have cabinetry built over the area.
Only way to get to it is to disassemble the inside.
Here's a shot from the inside - you can see I had some long time ago water damage (more than 9 years the PO owned the boat).
I do know that Seafever pounded on some piles hard enough at some point in in its past when its mooring chain failed and broke open most of the starboard side of the boat
There was not really much obvious external damage as the rubber rub rail hid it very well
It was not obvious how bad it was unit I stared re-coring the foredeck section of the hull and I was able to lift the deck by hand
Friend of mine with a lot more experience than me took a look over the week end and proclaimed it impact, minor and I was a wuss (I stopped all sailing in mid-august when I found it).
I'm waiting for the thermal imaging - should be Wednesday.
The survey is done, I don't have the report yet so I can't share the images.
Per the verbal report all my chain plates show signs of moisture intrusion - and we found additional spider cracking (less obvious) at other plates - some in the white gel below the cove stripe (blue).
The only good, dry plate is the forestay.
I reckon I'll be in the vendor tents at the boat show, talking to riggers
At this point I'm not sure if I'll be going at them from the inside or the outside.
The survey is done, I don't have the report yet so I can't share the images.
Per the verbal report all my chain plates show signs of moisture intrusion - and we found additional spider cracking (less obvious) at other plates - some in the white gel below the cove stripe (blue).
The only good, dry plate is the forestay.
I reckon I'll be in the vendor tents at the boat show, talking to riggers
At this point I'm not sure if I'll be going at them from the inside or the outside.
Chuckles, there is a lot to recommend putting them on the outside of the hull where they can be easily inspected. In your case, you won't lose any sheeting angle as the chain plates are not going to move very far outboard, if at all. You can have them manufactured out of beefy flat bar and make matching backing plates to take the load. If you bed them with butyl (on the outside plates only), you'll never have another leak.
Jim,
I saw no images that indicated a major imminent collapse or disjointed chain plate.
I'm perhaps operating under an abundance of caution, but I always handle safety issues that way.
I have no training in thermal image reading (and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express), but I do have a minor bit of metallurgic training including NDI from my days as a USAF Metals Processing Specialist in my early 20's. I think by the time a thermal image would show a break I'd be picking up mast pieces.
With encapsulated plates it's not like a weak spot can develop and part of the plate pull upwards, the entire surface area of the plate is essentially glued to the hull.
The good, and confusing news is that other than gel coat cracking - there is no sign of movement or delamination.
Obviously I'm continuing to educate myself on this.
Chuck,
As you are aware, I'm new to all of this, so please forgive any naievity in my questions. I understand that there is some water in that area, that make sense to me. All boats leak, you're going to see water around the chainplates. How far away, how much, etc., is another story, but I find it hard to believe that any boat will be perfectly dry, especially around an area like that that is subject to dynamic loads. The deck penetration is a weird shape and it's got to be tough to keep that properly sealed (not that you shouldn't try!).
But what I don't get is how the surveyor connects the moisture at the deck to the problem you showed in the picture. If it was winter, I could understand that water got into the area, froze, and then created the cracks you saw. Obviously, that's not the case. Is the surveyor saying that the water also penetrated deep enough that it weakened the chainplate/hull joint so that the forces were concentrated on a small portion of the chainplate? If so, is that cracking near the bottom of the chainplate?
Sorry, I don't mean to dwell on this, just trying to learn.
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