Brick House DisMasted!
22 May 2011 | Tabiteau, Kiribati
Patrick Childress
We are back in Majuro, over 600 miles from the point of dismasting, and now all the chainplates are out of the boat. It is obvious the chainplates had been replaced piecemeal over the years. I had to drill holes through a beautiful cabinet on the port side to slip the bolts from the upper shroud chainplate that broke. That difficult location is possibly why it had never before been replaced. In my prudence to polish stainless steel, I had been polishing away the evidence. I should have inspected the chainplates with a magnifying glass and dye. At the top of each chainplate an extra thickness of metal is welded so the toggle clevis pin has extra area to pull against. It is through the toggle pin hole that moisture had seeped over the years rotting out the chainplate from within. It only took a 30 knot blow to bring down our mast and create a new adventure, or catastrophe could it be called. Since we are writing an article about the dismasting for one of the major sailing magazines, I don't want to say too much here.
But I will tell you 1 thing. I have lost my passion for polishing Stainless steel. Its all new titanium chainplates from www.AlliedTitanium.com for Brick House. Add titanium mast tangs and clevis pins and fasteners to that too. Titanium is impervious to salt water and won't crevice corrode, is lighter, and stronger and doesn't require any polishing.
Follow this link. When we find out exactly when the story will be published, we will print that information here.
http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2011-05-06&dayid=579> &dayid=579