Once again I'm hoping to benefit from the knowledge that this group continually shows in abundance. Chain plates. Dolphin (My Vancouver 25) is a great boat, but among her weaknesses is a truly lousy arrangement for the chain plates. One pair is bolted to a bulkhead, but the other two are bolted to pieces of wood that were glassed to the side of the hull. The unpleasant surprise that ended my sailing season was finding two of the plates had lifted, and after burrowing into things I found that they're bolted not so much to wood as to the mushy remnants of wood. The access to these things is horrible, and water had rotted the anchor points. I had a well-regarded rigger (Alpha Rigging in Deale) look at it, and he referred me to the woodwork/structural guy. Both of them were astonished at how inaccessible these things are -- the boat was built in Taiwan, and the cabinet work completely covers the chain plate mounts. So what to do? The old stuff has to be cut away and the woodwork guy told me about the Fein Multimaster tool, which he says will cut down into the glass and old wood when I have access from only one side, and also allow me to cut away cabinet work in as tidy a way as possible. I'm going for functional rather than highly finished here, so there will only be the minimum of restoration of the woodwork (I want to be able to see these things in future). It looks as if the best/easiest option is to replace the current internal plates with external chain plates. Since I'm planning on replacing the standing rigging (it's more than 20 years old) it isn't a problem if they're a little higher. Things that I'm wondering about include: Is the Fein tool really going to allow me to cut away wood and fiberglass, given that the access is very poor (the tool is rather expensive and I haven't found one for rent). How important is it that the new chain plates be in the same fore/aft position as the old ones? Am I missing something? Apologies for trying to start something that isn't really very Montgomery-oriented, but the group was unbelievably helpful when I replaced the engine beds, and... Giles Morris