Thursday 8 January 2015

The weakest link

With Matilda Emilie sold, I left the regular survey of the mooring gear until I had some time over the Christmas break.

While the shackles were in quite good condition and came apart relatively easily, despite being submerged for most of the time, the wear and wasting was a concern as shown below.


These have only been in use to two seasons as I bought all new gear when Matilda was moved to her mooring at the beginning of 2013. She's not a heavy boat at 21 feet so I presume the wear must be down to the constant abrasion or maybe inferior materials.



4 comments:

  1. Hello Max, surely a good reminder and warning about what is happening off our sight.
    In the years I had my first 211 moored near Toulon I always used stainless steel shackles in reason of the light weight of the boat. They worked really well, only changed them once every 5 years for peace of mind, but did dive to check them every year.
    Fair winds and good luck with the selection of the new boat

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  2. Hi
    There does seam to be a fair amount of wear on them for just two years. Can you fit a larger shackle?

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  3. Lorenzo - if everything is stainless then it works ok, but the worst thing I have seen is when people mix galvanised chain and stainless,the electrolytic action is very aggressive and very fast. Good to hear from you Happy New year

    J Star - not without fitting much larger chain, what's on there is already well oversize in terms of tensile strength

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