Chain Plate Ideas

[FullandBy]

Well its spring time and I want to tackle the carpet on my ceilings. But seeming as I have the carpet off, I'm thinking I should also tackle my chainplates - which I'm sure (after 30 years) should be changed. Currently they are enclosed in fibreglass which I guess was a tactic of the times. I would love to see some alternate means of securing the chainplates to the hull (preferably interior). Can anyone post some photos to give me some ideas? Here is what I presently have ...

Inside



Outside

[dsmylie]

What kind of boat do you have? Do you have any exterior pictures of where your chain plates go through the deck?

[sailingdog]

The simplest thing would be to make replacements and through bolt them to the hull.

As for the sailnet photo thing... it's basically busted...so linking to the photos on an external site, like flickr.com is the best way to do it.




If you click on the "Link image" icon and then paste the IMG text from Flickr.com, you should get the result above.

[sailingfool]

That's a signifigant change to make, your knees look like a fine solution, don't try to change unless you have a compelling reason. With any luck your chainplates may be fine, 30 years or not, just open them up enough so you can verify their condition and that of the knee material, which I would assume is a marine wood. Don't rip out anything that isn't rusted or rotted.

[CalebD]

One idea might be to bolt the chain plates through the knee wall but leave the chain plates uncovered. You might have to re-build the knee walls to do this in order to re-use the existing exit points in the deck.
The reason for doing it this way is that even stainless steel will (eventually) rust when deprived of oxygen where moisture is present.

[FullandBy]

It's a Cooper 416. I've included the exterior pic as well now that I've figured out the flickr link thing (thanks SD).

SD - I have thought about bolting to the outside but haven't really seen any pretty examples so far.

SF - oh believe me I would love nothing more than to cover this up and not do anything. But I have seen on one of them what appears to be some rust. Most people I talk to all say the same thing and to not worry about it.

Here is a close up picture of the one chain plate that looks rusty, you can see the rust in the lower right hand corner.

[sailingfool]

That discoloration is hard to call...could this be just some moisture collecting under the carpet? Have you taken off the deck trim plates and dug out whatever is under them? Rust if any would start there...if the fittings look good under those plates, I'd recaulk and go sailing.

I also don't care for the glassed in fittings..why does a builder do that...but you are going way out in left field and looking for trouble to start changing the original construction without establishing that it isn't still servicable today.

If you are not comfortable after the above inspection, get a good surveyor to put a visit to your boat on his itinery. For the cost of an hour of his time, you'll get a better idea of what you have. My bet is that it's just fine.

[Faster]

Originally Posted by sailingfool

...
If you are not comfortable after the above inspection, get a good surveyor to put a visit to your boat on his itinery. For the cost of an hour of his time, you'll get a better idea of what you have. My bet is that it's just fine.

This seems a good plan.. especially now that you have everything open and exposed. I agree that you may end up wishing that you'd left well enough alone if indeed everything is in fact OK.

I would think there are still some people around who may recall the exact details of construction - maybe try Queenship Yachts ( a luxury yacht company that originally grew out of the old Cooper business near Vancouver) for a potential contact. Or perhaps other Cooper owners?

[kaluvic]

Originally Posted by CalebD

One idea might be to bolt the chain plates through the knee wall but leave the chain plates uncovered. You might have to re-build the knee walls to do this in order to re-use the existing exit points in the deck.
The reason for doing it this way is that even stainless steel will (eventually) rust when deprived of oxygen where moisture is present.

I agree with CaledD 100%

[amarinesurveyor]

CaledD is right that stainless steel does corrode when deprived of oxygen.
I would recommend that you open up each one for inspection, it is something that should be done as a maintenance item as boats get older than 10 or 15 years old. This is something that you do not want to wait until it breaks before you fix it.
Here's a link to a couple of pictures I took, one is a failed chain plate, and the other is a cracked chainplate.
Chainplate
Brian