nice picture.  confirms our suspicions. good luck with the replacement task.

i suggest you carefully inspect other structural stainless steel around the boat,  especially the chain plates.  i would be suspicious of any that are weeping rust stains.  the standard ones had square holes.  some of mine cracked outward from the corners of the holes, others looked okay.  i replaced them all.  they were mostly difficult to get at from inside, requiring removal of woodwork etc.

boating is fun!

james

Hi all,

We just broke off the top of the bobstay fitting (half the the upper hole) having an argument with the dock during Hurricane Newton here in Mexico. Haven't got the chain out yet to see inside, but from the outside remarkably the fitting still looks OK - no cracks. Still need to get the magnifier out and will do that. maybe pull the fitting.

Questions:

1. The lower hole is still intact and there is enough length in the bobstay toggle I can bolt to that and get s good angle still. Anyone else used that as a fix?

2. If we need to replace, does anyone have diagram/specs of the fitting?

3. Has anyone documented a refit? I couldn;t find one yet but internet here is very slow so I can't serach so easily.

Thanks

Jane, SV Chantey, W42

The bobstay fitting on our boat was pretty corroded.  I would guess it was underwater for years without a zinc.  It was a pain to chisel out, I vowed never to do it again, so I had one made out of titanium, and I'm in the process of installing it.  The boat is still in the water, and by moving all the heavy stuff to the stern, the hull opening rose safely above the waterline.

Ahoy,  Yes, I know nobody asked me, but this forum needs a little shot, so Here's a little "Cutwater" fitting story and a little info.

Once upon a time. I was delivering a boat back from Okinawa, bound for Astoria, Oregon.  On about day 8 the automatic bilge pump quit working.  Didn't notice this. Soon the floor boards were awash.  Pumped rapidly for quite awhile.  Discovered the cutwater fitting hole was leaking badly but we could not do anything about it from inside the boat.  My crew and I pumped 200 to 300 gallons a day (not a misprint) for the remainder of the 39 day crossing.

The boat owners did not know they had a problem.  The cutwater fitting was out of the water when the boat was stationary, and the automatic bilge pumps took over when the boat was moving.  The boat had been a full time cruiser for about 3 years, and they had always anchored off of this fitting.  That means it had been subjected to about 1 million side load cycles.  Each cycle just very slightly opening up the slot and breaking down the fiberglass backing.

I, personally, do not use a zinc on the cutwater fitting.  I keep the fitting out of the water.  Also, I use a forked end on the bobstay for this fitting.  It is more streamlined with less parts.  From a performance point of view, this is just one piece of a 1000 piece puzzle.

Note:  This is only one of my "Cutwater" fitting stories.

Thanks,  Dave

if you raise the cutwater fitting 6", then you will almost certainly need a shorter bobstay wire.

i think would prefer west system high density 404 or 406 filler rather than glass beads.

i would wet out the s/s with neat epoxy first,  then wet sand to expose some bare metal. and then add the filler to the rest of the resin.  you might need to shove some epoxy mixture in from the outside to completely fill the void around the external part.  in use, the fitting is going to be loaded such that it will press up against the top of the slot, so be sure when you bed it in, that you shove it upward as far as you can. i put the bobstay wire back on and tightened it up a little to hold it there.

two layers of cloth sounds a little inadequate.  the construction manual shows bonding over the inside with one mat plus cloth and then two mat plus roving (a total of six layers) extending 10 inches on all sides.

be sure to caulk the outside well. any water that gets past the caulk will most likely lead to eventual crevice corrosion of the s/s.

consider yourself fortunate in that you don't have to chisel out the old one from inside the chain locker.

james