I never drill holes in a sound boat

Another option is to cut wire each side and re wire around

Gee mate replacing chain plates is a big job. Yes if you can inspect them that might give you peace of mind but as they are glassed in this could be a mission. My last rebuild the chain plates leaked in heavy rain due to not having a capping plate on the deck, it was a yearly job of re-sealing with as much Fix tech polyurathane sealent as possible primarily just to fix the leak.

To my 40 years of boating I have never come across a yacht that has ripped her chain plates out of the glass. The weakest point is genaraly the rigging that fails first. If I was you just heading up the coast for a few months, just seal them up and enjoy your cruising without stress.

southace said..
To my 40 years of boating I have never come across a yacht that has ripped her chain plates out of the glass. The weakest point is genaraly the rigging that fails first. If I was you just heading up the coast for a few months, just seal them up and enjoy your cruising without stress.

There are many examples of U bolt chain plates with severe crevice corrosion failure where they pass through the deck. With a U bolt you can be lucky, and only one leg breaks and you dont loose the mast.

Inspected a 27 ft boat recently, and almost certainly the lower shroud had a broken U bolt, and the owner was blissfully unaware, (but was selling the boat).

I have recently removed and replaced the chainplates from a 36 year old boat. Apart from a little corrosion etching where the plates passed through the deck and a little pitting on the side of the plate that lays along the bulkhead, there was nothing that looked like imminent failure with regard to the plates. There was significant corrosion on the shanks of the 6 3/8 bolts that secure each chainplate to the bulkhead. Some of the corrosion was quite bad and had occurred on the part of the bolt in the wooden bulkhead. There was some evidence of this in the form of rusty gunk around the heads of the bolts. Again, I doubt that this corrosion was going to cause a failure any time soon.
However more alarming was the fact the chainplates where not lying flat on on the bulkhead due to the glassing in of the bulkhead . The bolts had been tightened up to try to pull the 1/4"x1 1/2" chain plates flat against the wood but due to the fact there where inadequate washers behind the 3/8" nuts, the nuts and washers had just sunk and crushed into the plywood bulkhead, damaging it and hindering the chance of any reasonable secure clamping force to the chainplate, The bulkhead had to be repaired and the problems of misalignment rectified before the new plates where fitted.