Stainless Steel Failure

The heat was just bearable, definitely awning weather, so up it was over my new boom cover and mainsail. From the time of my first glance at Bohemian, then Raesade, below decks I was struck by the ugliness of the pothole trims. White decks, white interior, yet the edge of the ports was  trimmed in black. Oozes of dried silastic and occasional runs of black mould camouflaged by the trim made it appear unsafe, unsightly and unhygienic.A few minutes work with a knife and sandpaper, masking tape and white polyurethane paint had it looking clean and unremarkable. I like unremarkable, just like a sailor returning from a circumnavigation reporting  proudly that he/she had stayed out of the news headlines and any trouble for the entire voyage.

The heat and tiredness from my first serious horse riding lesson earlier in the morning, had me feeling very lethargic, so I set the cushions in the cockpit, poured a cup of Joe, and retired to read about Hiscock on Wanderer II. Zzzzz.

Anyway,  a little while later woken by toasting feet and roused by a distant rumble, I made a decision to  decamp due to a rising,temperature, a drop off in the wind ( a cooling 6 knot S), and imminent storm. I packed up, made a list for my next visit, and clambered over the side. As I gripped the pushpit and backstay and manoeuvred the dinghy with my foot, the backstay let go. a quick glance showed that a 3/8" ring bolt on the port side chain plate had given way. Back on board it was an easy fix: new ring bolt, large washers and a nyloc nut. But what worried me more, and I guess is the reason for this post, is that the old bolt had rust across the entire fracture. That means, that for some considerable time the bolt had been completely sheared off and I'd been sailing flat water, but possibly even offshore. Under the weight of the main, such a failure would probably lead to a dismantling, at sea, on an engineless sailboat.

The point is, that the bolt's twin, on the starboard side, looks ok. There are no fractures or signs of decay, the sealant looks intact. Sweet? No, not sweet, it could be cracked through too. This is the great failing of stainless steel rigging, normal steel will show signs of weakness, rust, bending, fatigue, even an audible warning, that it's under duress. Stainless steel does scary stuff, it will sit quietly for years, no rust, no pitting, no bending, stay silent under load until one day it fails totally.

Unfortunately the "simple"  almost Zen like rig of the Folkboat, one stay in all four compass points plus a lower shroud, allows no room for even a small failure in fixing bolt, eye, swage, shackle, turnbuckle or chain plate. At any point in the stainless steel network, a catastrophic failure can occur at any time.

Short of stripping the entire rig and replacing it, there other types of inspection and maintenance that the Skipper of an old fixer-upper can do. I just need to figure what they are, I suspect that pulling all the through-deck fastenings and checking them would be a necessary point to begin.