O'Day 37 stemhead

[Peter Brennan]

Has anyone here had a problem with the stemhead on the 37 or 32? The OEM stemhead is an aluminum casting. The bow chainplate, instead of being directly connected to the forestay fitting. wraps the stemhead fitting. A hole is drilled in the stemhead and the forestay fitting is connected to a pin through that hole. This arrangement puts great upward pressure on the stemhead casting, whch on our boat at least, tore itself apart. Our solution was to cut away the damaged casting and connect the forestay directly to the chain plate strap. It ain't pretty but it has worked fine. See pix.

 

[jbowersett]

Stem head replacement

Yes, that casting is not the best piece of equipment of the boat. We had ours replaced on our 34 when it starting showing signs of trouble with a welded fabrication. As I recall the cost was somewhere in the $300 area. A good fabrication shop should be able to knock one up for you. We had 2 anchor rollers included and usually use one of them to deploy our removable bow sprit that we fly our cruising spinnaker from.
JB