Sunday, November 22, 2009

Have You Ever Questioned The Strength of Your Chainplates?

Well, most people don't, but this year the subject reared it's ugly head again. Chris Herrmann is a competent sailor or this would have been a dismasting.
When you hear that "pang!" sound and you can't understand why the boat seems weird it's probably too late and down comes the mast. It's one of those things that most guys think, oh it'll never happen to me... but eventually it is coming for us all. So much stress and tension is put on this part of the boat it's no wonder they occasionally fail.
The repair ain't cheap either. To pay someone to do it would cost a fortune, to do it yourself and do it wrong would cost even more, so pay someone skilled the first time and be done with it... shouldn't happen a second time. This same thing happened to USA 102 and all Svendsen built boats are vulnerable to this failure. It was on my mind ever day I owned USA 105 and I've posted blogs concerning my Andreasen built boat too.
It seems to me that once the metal is bent it loses it's strength at that bent point... and this repair only allows for that failure point again. I hope I'm wrong, but if I were to design this, the metal would be straighter and a support with something like G-10 would be epoxied into place first to allow the metal to be bolted into place, then glassed over.
We'll see how long this one holds.

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