Home of MG Spring 25 Yachts

Dave writes "When I bought Springtied a previous owner had modified the chainplates to his own design. I think he owned tractors in a previous life. These consisted of replacing the original tie rods with threaded bar that went through the deck to a stainless steel plate. This in turn was fitted with "U" bolts that passed back through the deck to another plate below. This caused huge compression loads on the deck sandwich construction. The core of which in this local area is plywood and not balsa. But because of the movement in the plates and the number of deck penetrations water had got in and the plywood was just a mush. So I enlisted a colleague from work (SP Systems) and we dug out all of the old plywood, which was incidentally in its own glass pocket so no water had gone into the deck core. we then filled the void with a mixture of cured block of laminate and SPABOND adhesive. We then laminated additional layers of epoxy & glass to the underside area. I had a old copy of the Northshore upgrade but that seemed very complicated and by this time I had gone right off "U" bolts. So I designed my own version incorporating the strange "T" shape plate of the others if nothing else to cover the holes in the deck. I took the opportunity of adding a short length of track for my blade jib sheets, At the same time we reinforced the boxes where the tie rods connect and laminated in a square stainless plate to provide an aligned anchorage. I fitted the tie rods with clevis fittings in order to assist alignment, and the chainplates design moves the shroud base's a few mm outboard. Take no notice of the resin on the deck Im not the worlds neatest worker when it comes to sticky stuff, my area's metal and wires. Ill clean it off some day"

These pictures have also been added to the Photo Gallery