Bronze Chainplates

I finally got around to crunching the numbers and found that the readily available 1/4" x 1 1/2" aluminum bronze flat bar stock will be plenty strong enough for my chainplates, and probably even exceed the original stainless steel ones. I'm mainly concerned with the yield strength. If you exceed that, the material will deform and not go back to it's original shape. It's called necking, and will actually reduce the area of the metal -- think of pulling taffy. The smaller cross section will be much weaker, so the next time it will break much easier, that's when tensile strength comes into play.

I used the old chainplates and bronze turnbuckles as a baseline and made conservative assumptions whenever possible, in order to give myself a margin of error. In all cases, even in the worst case scenario, the new aluminum bronze chainplates were stronger than the stainless steel ones I'm replacing and the turnbuckles to which they'll be connected. Now, I just have to order them and get the old ones off.

I actually found another guy on CF that has the same boat and recently did all his chainplates. I think he replaced his with stainless steel. He did the backstay one as well, but didn't take the old one out. He just mounted an external one and drilled through the entire mess, i.e., old chainplate and fasteners. I thought about that, but decided to try to get the old one out anyway. I may still go with an external one, but I want to inspect the hull and timber where it will be fastened and make any needed repairs while I'm at it.

Radio watch:

With all the wind, I didn't try to go back on deck last night. It was gusting well over 40mph. However, I spent some time this morning reading about how to hook up winlink using a sound card instead of the Pactor modem. I bought a modem, but would really prefer a simpler arrangement, so I'm going to try the sound card method first. If that works, I'll probably send the modem to Charlie. It's got an ethernet connection, so it's really more convenient for land use than on a boat anyway.

Zoe watch:

She had a lot of fun playing in the snow this morning. The wind died down and we've got a bit of sun, so it's really nice out. I'll take her out again this afternoon to play some more. I think we got about 2 feet, with drifts up to 4-5 feet high in places.