Reinforcing the forestay and chainplates
Dave Selby prevents Marlin from succumbing to the ‘Sailfish smile’ – and shares a handy tip for retrieving a snapped mouse line
The Sailfish smile is no laughing matter. As with many small boats of the era, the cabin top is a biscuit-tin lid that is glassed and riveted to the hull. The trouble is that the forestay and U-bolt chainplates are only fixed to the deck section and not secured to the hull.
This means that under extreme stress the forestay can prise off the front of the deck to create the ‘smile’. Much rarer is chainplate failure, but as I’d replaced all the standing rigging it seemed sensible to beef up all the attachments. I’m also particularly glad I removed the U-bolt chainplates as one of them was alarmingly bent. I imagine they’d been there since the boat was built in 1978, but I was fortunate to find that Wichard still produce the exact same fitting. The clever solution dreamt up by Sailfish pals Mark Berry and David Longfield was to fashion some plates out of 3mm stainless steel to fit under the deck, spreading the load and extending down the hull to provide extra security.
First we made templates out of card, which was relatively straightforward for the chainplates as these were simple right-angle plates. The under-deck forestay fitting was trickier, involving a triangle with ‘wings’ to extend down the hull. While the chainplates only needed two bolt-holes aligning, the bow plate needed four for the throughdeck bolts.
With a vice, lump-hammer, angle-grinder, saw and swearing, the plates slowly took shape, being offered up frequently to check for fit. With the plates completed we abraded the hull and stainless plates (the latter with an angle-grinder), cleaned everything with acetone and then used West System epoxy and glass cloth to form the bond between the plates, deck and hull: we then tightened down all the through-deck fittings. For the chainplate fittings we fitted props across the hull and vertically to brace the plates firmly in place.
We didn’t glass the undersides of the plates as the cloth would likely have drooped – and, in any case, we wanted to have access to the through-deck fittings should they ever need to be removed again. The chainplates go through a top-hat section in the toerail which left a small rectangular void between the stainless plate and hull above on the outboard edge. We packed this with wood, then filled with West System Six10 thickened epoxy adhesive applied with a cartridge gun.
The result is that the load on the eight through-deck fittings has been not only been spread over a much wider area, but also firmly attached to the sides of the hull. We found that when working with epoxy efficient teamwork was essential, with everything prepared then handed in relay to the chap at the work face.