Sustainable Sailing

We have some slight cracking around one chainplate (although “chainplate” doesn’t feel the right description for what is essentially an eye bolt).

When you look at the backing plate the reason for the crack is obvious. Two stacked backing plates and one has moved.

I’m not sure why two sheets of metal were used instead of a single thicker (and preferably much larger one). But the rotation of the 2nd sheet presumably means the single sheet has bent and this caused the deck cracking.

Fixing this is clearly a critical safety issue, we don’t want to lose the mizzen mast and at the same time have a big hole in the deck.

Most of the jobs to fix this are relatively straightforward although they don’t currently have any ties down to the hull (however they are in the thick hull/deck flange area) but they are only for the mizzen so loads are not soi great. I think probably all the mainmast shrouds have a metal strap to connect the chainplate bolt to a bulkhead or strongpoint (no deck cracks for any of them anyway). So we need to:

• remove the chainplate
• replace the double backing plate, probably with a much larger G10 or FR4 sheet that is bonded on with thickened epoxy. I’m thinking of a big sheet that forms a single large backing plate for both these shrouds.
• cut out the cracks with our Dremel
• Fill the cracks, cover with gelcoat trying to colour match to the deck.

But

The cracks extend into the non slip part of the deck. This is a moulded in diamond pattern.

So what do we do? Do we try to cut a matching pattern into the new gel coat?

Then longer term, if we decide to paint the deck what do we do about nonslip areas? I’m assuming that if we simply paint it then the diamond pattern wont be effective anymore. Do we mask the diamond areas and paint those with Awlgrip or similar non slip deck paint?

We don’t have a lot of places we need to patch on the deck (8 holes to fill from the davits, diesel tank fill points, old mast wiring glands) so a repaint isn’t urgent. But the grey is looking generally a bit faded so I’m sure we will get to that point after all the functional work is completed.

[Update] This is connected to what I have written about Dyneema standing rigging so I now have a guide to it all in: Dyneema / Synthetic Rigging Summary[End Update]