Fair enough. Some more detail, and answers to your questions.
I did not intend that statement to be inflammatory, and so worded it as fact-based as possible. I said:
That is 100% true. I have personally seen 4 suffer that type of failure, either watch it fall or saw it within hours of the event.
3 were O'days (2 25 and and 22) and one was a Catalina (25). Here is my friend Bill's 25.
That's his chainplate between his feet, which pulled straight up through the deck.
Two points to makes clear:
1) All of these failures were preventable by simple observation and maintenance.
2) I've seen 10x above-deck rig failures of all types.
I admit the sample size is small. And some it it could be simple coincidence. But two other facts are true:
1) The majority of boats I see are NOT O'days; not even close
2) The majority of boat I see or hear of doing full bulkhead replacements ARE O'days.
So I'm pretty sure there is a correlation. So I stand by my statement.
So whats wrong?
Well, first remember that people have been building recreational fiberglass sailboats for 70+ years. And many of those boats are still sailing, probably well beyond the year when the original designer and builder thought that would. And design and construction techniques get better over time.
And you have to remember the job of the chain-plates; to spread the load of the rig from the shrouds the the hull of the boat. That much is simple.
For a long time, the practice of many manufactures was to bolt the chainplates to internal wooden bulkheads. These bulkheads, tightly fit and tabbed into the hull, did an decent job at this task.
As long as they stayed structurally sound. The problem is that wood when subjected to water rots. Not in well maintained boats, but the list of structural wood rotting and causing grief in sailboats is well known. Bulkheads, compression posts, Compression foots, etc. It happens, either due to poor maintenance or because you cannot see it. Structural wood in sailboats is a bad idea.
So what's better?
The simple trick is to tie the rigging directly to the hull, or do so via fiberglass or stainless steel. There are three basic techniques, depending on the type of boat/rig.
For boats with inboard shrouds, you can design in structural feet that come inboard to meet the shrouds, like on @Maine Sails boat:
Or you can link the shrouds directly to SS rods that tie to the fiberglass stringers, Like on @giulietta's boat:
In these days of boats with big overlapping genoas, those two systems were the norm. The shroud base had to be narrow to get a good sheeting able on the headsail. Now you see more boats with non-overlapping rigs, and the shroud base can be wider, which in addition to giving even better sheeting angles, is also better structurally as the compression loads are less. For boats with non-overlapping rigs, the solution is easier. Tie them directly to the hull, which is reinforced in that area.
Is the perfect? No, because given enough time and neglect, anything can fail. But on a boat, I like my chances better with SS than wood.
Most builders currently agree, and the use of chainplates bolted to wooden bulkhead is very rare now. Catalina, who used to do this, AFAICT has totally switched to SS rods attached to the hull. O'day, seemingly caught in a time as they have out of business, probably would have as well.
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