Time to check your chain plate fittings!

From John D. on Petite Helene:
“BTW, I inspected and replaced the rods on my boat.  During the inspection we found evidence of failure starting to happen on two of the four deck chainplate fittings.  We have a structural engineer on our boat and we redesigned them. 

Then…you won’t believe this…but one of my crew has a CNC machine in his garage!!  What are the odds? And he knows how to use it.  He machined the new parts from solid blocks of 316L Stainless Steel.  They are MUCH stronger than the old ones.  When archeologists dig our area out in thousands of years, these parts will still be here.  They will wonder what our primitive civilization did with them.

I don’t think I have a dimensioned drawing but I can send you a concept and what I know about the dimensions.

They were failing on the base of the U.  Cracks formed between the deck bolt holes and the edges of the parts.  One of them had cracked all the way to both ends and was showing hairline cracks in between the bolt holes!  It was CLOSE to failure!

Yes, please inspect yours.”