When we bought the boat, one of our survey findings was some rust on some chain plates, and some very corroded chain plate bolts. The people we paid to change the rusted bolts for us before we sailed her home changed only those that were easy to get at, which in the Offhore 41 leaves 4 or 5 that are a bit tricky... Having read about chain plates in CL's failing where they pass through the deck, we decided to remove all of them an check their condition.

Some of them proved to have some minor pitting, but all were found to be in satisfactory condition. It may be that these were not the original ones, but that they were changed along with the standing rigging in '88. Anyway, where they passed through the deck, the sandwich core /planking (teak planks!) was very wet, end grain being directly exposed to the results of failed chaulking. Ideally, the core should be sealed around these holes with epoxy, but this required drying out the core first wich we did not have time for if we wanted to sail that summer at all. So, put new chaulking (Tec7). However, to make the system a bit less vulnerable, we cut out a section of the teak deck around each hole, and buildt up a GRP (with polyester) block that stands slightly proud of the teak deck (see pictures below). The idea was to protect the through-deck holes from moisterness coming laterally via the teak deck, and to let water run of the blocks rather than stand around the chaulking. The blocks were painted white, and chaulked against the teak deck. Of course we also chaulked around the chain plates after re-inserting them, but with the blocks in place there was no need to fill the whole hole through the deck with chaulk. With luck, therefore, the teak core may dry out over time. Note that the teak was fine, without any rot, which is quite impressive after having been standing in water for (presumably) quite some tim

e.

Our boat has a re-inforced chain plate system, by bottlescrews connecting the usual chain plates to a strong point buildt into the GRP further down the hull (see images). Although no one else seems to have heard about this system on a Offshore 41, it seems to be original, as the original furniture is buildt on top of the strong point fixings. These strong points are in good condition, but the normal knees for the main shroud chain plates had small cracks at the bottom. We fixed this by carefully removing all paint, and making the curvature at the bottom less sharp by applying some shaped pieces of foam. Then we re-inforced this area by applying several layers of mat and epoxy, tabbing the knee firmly to the hull, and also to the shelf below the knee (which in turn is tabbed to the hull).