H33 shroud attachment

[Terry Arnold]

Relating to the H33, I have a question about the structural arrangement of the shrouds. Load is transferred from shroud to chainplate which then goes through the deck, reappearing in the cabin with several bolts fastening it to what appears to be wooden structural members. However, upon closer examination, the teak trim pieces only overlay a kind of plywood sandwich and the plywood pieces inside the sandwich don't appear to be attached structurally to the hull. Has any H33 owners had this assembly apart? It seems that there must be a steel component glassed structurally into the hull to transfer the shroud loads. My boat shows no distress, I just want to know how all that load is transferred. Also, at the base of the mast compression post, it disappears into a small fiberglas box which in turn rests on the bottom of the bilge. Anybody had to do work on this compression post? I have drilled into the fiberglas box and it seems to be solid fiberglas without any wood at all. My boat is a 79 and lately I notice that the lee shrouds are not as tight as they were a year ago when I got the boat.

 

[Sam Lust]

Structure

I've avoided pulling apart the wood coverings over the chainplate attachment points. I broke one bolt trying to pull the chainplates out to clean out the old bedding compound so I gave up quickly -- too many other projects. What I do know is that when the surveyor sounded the hull, when he got to the area around the chain plates on the outside the hull rang like a bell. That told me that the entire area was solid fiberglass. The attachment point must be a build-up of glasswork. I dom't think even Hunter would do it otherwise.I've also been curious about the compression post step construction. Now that you've confirmed that it is solid glasswork I no longer need to drill an exploratory hole as you did. My step has what appears to be either a small vertical crack or just sloppy layup on the forward face where the edge of a piece of mat stuck up a bit. My surveyor said it was nothing. He was wrong about many other things but I've chosen to ignore this item other than running a bead of 5200 into it to seal out water. I can't see any evidence of compression, but by the end of this season the V-berth door didn't want to close, but thats hard to go by because it was very snug when I got the boat. I haven't checked it yet now that the mast is down. I did find that I had to adjust the rigging a few times during the summer but I attributed that mostly to the fact that all the standing rigging was brand new. A little initial stretch must be expected I would guess.

 

[Jim Logan]

Hunter 33 chainplate attachment

On my 1980 33, the base of the mast compression post also rests on a fiberglass "box", that also has cracks in it. This seems to be normal for this sort of boat. As far as I can tell, there is no sagging on deck, but I also occasionally tighten a shroud. I wouldn/t worry unless it occurs frequently and is more than a halfturn or so - heat and cold do affect the shroud length and thus tension at any given time.

 

[Don Connolly]

Chain plates

In redoing the interior teak, I pulled the chainplate woodcoverings and found that several of the chain plates had been leaking and had rotted some of the wood. Rot had not gotten to the inner wood supports and the fiberglass showed no signs of fatigue or failure. I used the old teak facings as templates and fashioned new ones. "Get Rotted" every piece and re assembled. Re-bedded the chainplates at deck level and "voila" no leaks + looks great.