Bow/Cutwater Eye Warning

[Fritz]

Hello Everyone out there in TV land,
For my good boat Karma this week I thought I would share a discovery I made and rectified this weekend on my 20’ Hourston.

I was replacing my anchor rode and discovered that the double nuts retaining the stainless bow eye looked more like reddish brown corn flakes. A lot of older boats just used tin plated steel nuts on the original perko hardware. When I touched it with my fingers the hardware turned to dust!

I pulled the U-bolt out and luckily the butyl tape had been keeping the water out, but this could have been really exciting at the dock!

It was $3.50 for stainless fender washers and 2 stainless nylocks. The Sikaflex was already ion the shelf.

These are usually hidden by a pile of rope.

Hope maybe this helps someone else before a small disaster. And, It was actually relatively easy to pull using the roller brackets on the trailer to pry against with a healer bar, Just make sure your bow is still strapped solidly to the trailer because the winch strap isn’t doing anything when the bow eye is pulled.

Happy Weekend

 

[myles]

Thanks for posting this, I have been humming and hawing about looking for mine and re-doing them. Did you have any rust coming out from the bow eye as a tell-tale of the worn-out bolts? was it slightly loose? I looked for mine during my restoration, but could not find it, so assumed it was glassed in under the anchor locker.

I tow my 20-hourston from the bow eye around 6.5 knots and my fear is one day I will look back and she will be gone lol. Long term plan is custom stainless towing bow eye in the future.

 

[Fritz]

Thanks for posting this, I have been humming and hawing about looking for mine and re-doing them. Did you have any rust coming out from the bow eye as a tell-tale of the worn-out bolts? was it slightly loose? I looked for mine during my restoration, but could not find it, so assumed it was glassed in under the anchor locker.

I tow my 20-hourston from the bow eye around 6.5 knots and my fear is one day I will look back and she will be gone lol. Long term plan is custom stainless towing bow eye in the future.

Hey Myles!

Hope you’ve been out enjoying your rig and the weather. The original bow eye/cleat is stainless but as you know not all stainless steels are created equal and you will still see mild surface rust. Unfortunately the stronger you make stainless steel the less stainless it is (usually).
The only reason I found it was I was vacuuming the crap out when I changed the rope out on the anchor rode.
It wasn’t loose (luckily) but the nuts were obviously hardware store crap and they had turned to dust. I think the other thing is the angle and depth of the cleat wedges it in the cutwater pretty good when it’s heaved on.
If that answers your question?

 

[Fixit]

had same thing going on with my Wellcraft. I removed the steel plate and added a piece of 304 stainless flat bar and some stainless nuts too.