The chain plate issue seems to be developing in to a bit more of a problem than I first envisaged. I’ve just had an engineer look at it (I suspect that shall cost me a beer at some point) and he confirmed what I suspected; that the current set up is absolutely unsuitable for anything other than a summer zephyr.

The first problem is above deck. He took one look at the welds and said they look crap and, although he might be wrong, suspected they would be full of air bubbles. Regardless, given the direction of force, he said they shouldn’t be welded like that given what’s below deck.

So the solution is to take the two meter length of 25mm wide and 5mm thick stainless steel I have, and cut them in to thirds. This will give me 6 chain plates of 33cm which will be drilled and counter sunk, then bolted through the outside of the hull. The engineer recommended I pad out the layup of the hull around the chain plates with another 1/4 inch of GRP too, “just to make sure.”

The last problem I have is that the middle chain plate (there are three per side) is located right on the bulkhead. The current configuration deals with this due to how they are attached, but the improvement won’t so I’m going to have to move it forward by about an inch. Hopefully this tiny geometry change won’t affect the rig’s integrity.

So, there’s another big job for me to do. Bugger!

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