E31 - Teach Me About Chainplates That Are Fiberglassed to the Hull.

[David Vaughn]

Chasing a deck leak on the port side of our E31, now that she is in her new home. I've re-bedded the chainplate covers with butyl tape.
It rained hard a couple of days ago and still a little leak.

Removed the top piece of ceiling and a couple of pieces of the overhead to get a better look. Found that one of the bolts on that stanchion was leaking. Sealed that. Rained again last night.

This morning I went back, still raining a bit, to check my work.
Stanchion bolts ok. No sign of leakage from the deck chainplate covers - but there was still a puddle of water on the port side shelf above the settee.

Removed more of the ceiling (interesting assembly sequence Ericson used on these, part of the galley had to come out) and found this:



Water is seeping from the dark area on both chain plates, and continued to seep after the rain had stopped and the deck was completely dry. The one in the third photo, is the aft lower, it appears to be the worst of the two. The second photo is the intermediate, which on the E31 cutter takes the place of running backstays. Also, there is what looks to me to be rust stains below the dark area in both photos.

My guess is that water has collected and maybe delaminated a space around each chainplate and/or the foam that was used in the stringer which reinforces the area where the chainplates are mounted, is saturated.

Either way, any thoughts on condition and repair?

Any words of encouragement would be helpful too, as I suspect I'm looking at cutting them both out and replacing. This was not a thing I wanted to find on a Tuesday morning, when I thought we were so close to having her ready to go for a winter sail later this week. Sigh.

 

[bigd14]

This may not apply to the 31, but the angled upright chainplate looks very similar to the E27 and E29 chainplates. The uprights were welded to a horizontal stainless strap that was then glassed in place against the inside of the hull. Hopefully you can remove that little plywood panel and find out more. I am guessing you will find that you have two uprights welded to a horizontal strap. If this is the case, the good news is that it's just fiberglass work. Cut out with a grinder, have chainplate assembly duplicated, reinstall and glass over. Extremely messy, and time consuming but not overly complicated. Would be good to properly pot the area around where the chainplate comes up through the deck to prevent core damage while you are at it. Keep us updated and good luck!

E 27 Chain plates

Found it! Scan of the chainplate plans

ericsonyachts.org

 

[David Vaughn]

Thanks. I hope you're right.
I've done fiberglass work on previous boats, so that's not too intimidating. My concern is finding a local fabricator to work with. Not likely to find one with any sort of sailboat experience around here. Sure I find one that can fab a copy of what I pull out, assuming it comes out in one piece; but it would be nice to talk to someone with the experience to recommend options, if they exist. It's times like these that I envy those of you that live in areas where sailing is more of a thing.

Interestingly, the boat came with a set of drawings from Bruce King's design office. The one for the chainplates is completely different than what is on the boat. And this looks like what one sees in the interior photos of the E31 Independence brochure that is in the Resources section. Would be interesting to find out when it was changed and why, because the drawing looks like it would be much easier to do maintenance.

 

[paul culver]

Like bigd said, that's the set-up in my E29. I've been taking the "out of sight out of mind" approach since I bought the boat. But if I had to I would look into the option of strapping the chain plates to the exterior of the hull as others have done.

 

[dt222]

David,

On our '31 in 1999 or 2000 one of the chain plates failed at the deck level due to corrosion. The owner at the time decided to replace all of them with externally mounted chain plates attached to the hull. They were a combination of 1/8" and 1/4 inch titanium. The work was done by both Chesapeake Rigging (fabricate and mount the new plates- $2,276) and Seaside Boat Works (cut out old plates/ disassemble/reassemble/refinish interior cabin, refinish deck where old chain plates entered the hull- $4,862), both of Annapolis. The end result can be seen below and gives the look of other boats with this approach (Westsail, Hans Christian), and makes it much easier to monitor chain plate condition. It may be something that you may want to consider

Don

 

[Pete the Cat]

Thanks. I hope you're right.
I've done fiberglass work on previous boats, so that's not too intimidating. My concern is finding a local fabricator to work with. Not likely to find one with any sort of sailboat experience around here. Sure I find one that can fab a copy of what I pull out, assuming it comes out in one piece; but it would be nice to talk to someone with the experience to recommend options, if they exist. It's times like these that I envy those of you that live in areas where sailing is more of a thing.

View attachment 45263Interestingly, the boat came with a set of drawings from Bruce King's design office. The one for the chainplates is completely different than what is on the boat. And this looks like what one sees in the interior photos of the E31 Independence brochure that is in the Resources section. Would be interesting to find out when it was changed and why, because the drawing looks like it would be much easier to do maintenance.

I have no familiarity with this specific structure, but the glass work looks really funky to me. Like someone without much experience has been in there before you. I see finish cloth where I would expect to see structural mat or roving (or both). As suggested, I think you have a date with a grinder --get a vacuum with a good disposable sheetrock bag and a first class respirator. I rebuilt the chainplates of a Folkboat that were glassed in the hull and pulling out. I ended up bedding them in West System with high density adhesive filler after 3 layers of mat and roving cloth for structure--properly wetted and squeegied in place. I held the thing in place with duct tape to get started, but you can be inventive. The key is the metal needs to be sanded bright just before you glass--even then it may eventually develop a place to trap moisture--I think this is why embedded chainplates are not common--you will still need to caulk where the chainplates come through the deck. I sailed the boat on SF Bay in high winds and racing for a few years and never had a problem. The Folkboat had bolts embedded in the hull (but not showing externally) and I treated the threads with mold release wax and so the final structure had bolt ends and nuts and fender washers on the inside. I have no professional idea that this was the best fix, but it is my experience. Other fiberglass Folkboats have the same arrangement.

 

[David Vaughn]

Thanks guys.

Don - That looks nice. I would not object to moving them outside. Having to disassemble so much of the cabin just to inspect them may be part of the reason they got this way.
Do you happen to remember what they used on the inside as backing / strengthening?
Did anything on the standing rigging have to be changed to compensate for the change in angles when the plates were moved?

Ray - Thanks for the tips. Yes, it does look like it was, shall we say, 'not factory'. There are a few places where the cloth was not fully saturated, and globs of resin in weird places. When I rebedded the chainplate covers, I knew I was going to have to completely redo the deck openings. There is some core damage, thankfully Ericson used plywood in this area not balsa.

Cutting/grinding begins today. I'll post photos of what I find. Thanks for the input.

 

[Loren Beach]

Looking at how other owners made the change to external plates, many seem to have left the inside embedded plate in place to act a strong "backing plate". This seemed to work well on the E-27 and 29, anyway.

 

[David Vaughn]

Loren - I've seen some threads here and other forums about using the embedded plate as part of the backing, so that is a consideration for us.
On the other hand, I've seen comments from Martin King in this thread Got Design Questions, about Bruce King's opinion of external chainplates on his designs.
Many things to consider, especially since I don't have a local yard with this sort of experience to whom I could hire it out and just be done with it. On the plus side, whatever we end up doing, I'll know how and why it was done and be able to pass that on to the next owner, when that day finally comes.

 

[Pete the Cat]

Thanks guys.

Don - That looks nice. I would not object to moving them outside. Having to disassemble so much of the cabin just to inspect them may be part of the reason they got this way.
Do you happen to remember what they used on the inside as backing / strengthening?
Did anything on the standing rigging have to be changed to compensate for the change in angles when the plates were moved?

Ray - Thanks for the tips. Yes, it does look like it was, shall we say, 'not factory'. There are a few places where the cloth was not fully saturated, and globs of resin in weird places. When I rebedded the chainplate covers, I knew I was going to have to completely redo the deck openings. There is some core damage, thankfully Ericson used plywood in this area not balsa.

Cutting/grinding begins today. I'll post photos of what I find. Thanks for the input.

I think most of the boatyard folks will say that end grain balsa is preferable to plywood in decks. If end grain balsa is installed correctly (needs to be covered on the ends with wet epoxy before installation) it is oriented so that water really cannot spread as it will in plywood--that is what "end grain" orientation is for. Plywood is cheaper and faster to work with in the factory but is largely impossible to prevent water from migrating through the layers. Although both plywood and end grain balsa can fail, my experience is that end grain balsa is much less likely to spread rot than plywood. The best production boat builders (Tartan, Hinckley, Sabre, and maybe some Ericsons(?) usually put neither balsa or plywood under stanchions or through deck fasteners. I have have not yet rebedded everything on my 32-200, but it appears the stanchions I have done are through solid glass. I realize there are books and magazine articles about the evils of balsa cores. I think the folks who have actually worked on both would dispute that. Of course there is no way for me to document that and I would probably not replace plywood or end grain balsa in a deck if I could manage some solid glass alternative (the weight savings is probably not worth it). But there sure are a lot of Youtubers making videos about the process.

 

[Kenneth K]

I have have not yet rebedded everything on my 32-200, but it appears the stanchions I have done are through solid glass.

Many of the E32-3 stanchion base areas are plywood cored.

 

[David Vaughn]

Fair point. What's going back in there when I repair that, is a layer of G-10 so I hope that will last a while.

The cutting began today and raised a question for bigd14 or anyone else familiar with the chainplates from an E27 or E29 mentioned earlier.
Is that horizontal bar welded on such that it would be on the side against the hull? If so, then these are the same or very similar, and maybe this won't be so bad.
There is significant water damage to the laminate around the plate. The delimitation is pretty deep, and extends further into the stringer than I first thought. However, once I cleaned off the residue, (these photos were earlier in the day) the chainplate looks to be undamaged. No pitting or cracks that I can see so far. I know stainless likes to hide its flaws until it fails catastrophically, so we will have a new one fabricated. But it does give me some hope that the plates that haven't suffered serious leaks may still be in good shape.
Tomorrow, that middle section under the plywood comes out and the serious grinding will probably begin.

So my plan is once everything is cut/ground out, to repair it in the same way a thru-hull opening is sealed. I've done two of those on a previous boat, so that's not scary and I have plenty of cloth left over from that. Then glass over the chainplate itself in a similar fashion with reinforcement along the horizontal bar. If all goes well, it will probably outlast me.

Have I missed anything? Thanks for the comments.

 

[Mike Brockman]

Did this job last year on our 1970 Ericson 41. Chainplates were very corroded and well past replacement time but had not failed. Spent a year trying to decided how I wanted to replace. Contemplated adding knees to mount chainplates or externally mounting them to the hull. In the end decided to install new chainplates back in the hull like the factory did. The originals lasted over 50 years so I am pretty sure I wont have to deal with them again.

 

[Dave G.]

The owner at the time decided to replace all of them with externally mounted chain plates attached to the hull

Curious if anyone knows what this modification does to sheeting angles and windward sailing ability ? I think the answer is obvious but I've been wrong many times before.

 

[David Vaughn]

An update and a question for anyone that has done this before.
Got the plywood off and chiseled / cut away more fiberglass. Some came off too easily. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm not convinced that some of this glass was properly wetted out when applied. Or something was off with the resin.
Moving forward, I'm grinding out anything with that dark discoloration and anything else I can find that doesn't appear solid.

My question is: how far outside the damage would you go before you start the recommended 12:1 bevel?

Oh, if you're wondering how deep the damage is, in the second photo, that greenish area near the center - pretty sure that's the outer glass layer under the gelcoat. The hull is green.

 

[Pete the Cat]

You really need to get in there with a grinder (and a vacuum). It is a bit hard to tell from the pictures, but this is really a messed up effort by whoever worked on this. The whole area needs to be ground flat and the surface of the metal exposed and flat. It looks like someone just dribbled epoxy into a pocket they made with a piece of resinated cloth and then threw some stranded glass in there with a prayer that it would hold---and, of course--it didn't. Don't worry about reducing the strength of this area as it looks like all you have there now is brittle, delaminated glass that is providing very little support. You need to have structural glass mat/roving in an adhesive (403 or something like that) in a properly wetted out filet preferably on both sides of the metal. On the Folkboat I had bolts that went through the chainplates from the outside of the hull (set in 403 recess and faired over with 407) with nuts on the inside to help bond them in place. This is an alternative to putting the chainplates on the outside and having to rerig everything. You need to be grinding all this old delaminated stuff away and you probably will need a 40 grit disc sander to get the surface flat enough to put some structural mat/roving over the area--three layers--I would say at least 5" on either side of the metal. Skene's Fiberglass Boat Repair (the book is out of print but might be at a library or on line) would show you ideas on how to do this properly.
Protect yourself while you do this work. I have scars on my lungs that I believe came from doing this kind of work with inadequate protection.

 

[dt222]

Thanks guys.

Don - That looks nice. I would not object to moving them outside. Having to disassemble so much of the cabin just to inspect them may be part of the reason they got this way.
Do you happen to remember what they used on the inside as backing / strengthening?
Did anything on the standing rigging have to be changed to compensate for the change in angles when the plates were moved?

Ray - Thanks for the tips. Yes, it does look like it was, shall we say, 'not factory'. There are a few places where the cloth was not fully saturated, and globs of resin in weird places. When I rebedded the chainplate covers, I knew I was going to have to completely redo the deck openings. There is some core damage, thankfully Ericson used plywood in this area not balsa.

Cutting/grinding begins today. I'll post photos of what I find. Thanks for the input.

David. The next time I am at the boat I will have to look on the inside to see what the packing plate arrangement is. I think it is just a flat plate not bonded to the hull. I don't think and of the standing rigging had to be changed, just adjusting the length using the turnbuckles.

Don

 

[David Vaughn]

Thanks Don. Next time you're there, if the area is accessible, can you see if after they cut out the old plates, did they rebuild the reinforcement stringer that the originals were glassed into? Wondering how, if they used a backing plate, they dealt with that.
The more time I spend on this, the more I think I want to move them to the outside. The other old ones would still have to come out, but installing new ones from the outside may end up being less trouble.