The following advice was provided by Bob Hathaway in response to a query by Lesley Whitfield and Paul Brittain who wanted to be able to use a storm jib on their sloop-rigged, Victoria 26, "EverGreen".  Bob provided this response by e-mail on the 9th May 2004.

Congratulations on your purchase of a Victoria 26.  I owned one for many happy years before and during my employment with Victoria Marine / Yachts.

The inner forestay should be made from 5mm 1x19 wire with a matching bottlescrew or (better) Wichard quick release adjuster. In the ultimate analysis it will take over all of the load from the outer forestay and the chainplate should be sized to suit the breaking load of 5mm wire.  The normal practice is that the chainplate has a design breaking load twice that of the wire attached to it.

The exact psitioning of windlasses on V26s varied with the mood of the deck fitter, but typically you should be able to fit a deck padeye about 150-175mm aft of the chain locker bulkhead.  If reality is different to this then please come back to me.  With the design that I am describing below, the closer that the padeye is fitted to the bulkhead the better.

Buried in the laminate of the V26 deck is a 300mm wide "king plank" which will take care of any through deck compression forces, so the padeye can simply be bolted through to the chainplate described below without any need for compression spacers or ply backing plates to spread the load.

The anchor windlass backing plate should be replaced with a bracket in the shape of a T with the vertical leg of the T braced with gussets aft to the line of the padeye. The vertical leg of the T should be made as long (vertically) as possible and consistent with the anchor locker hatch. There should be a matching backing plate for through bolting through the bulkhead.  The entire assembly should be fabricated from 6mm stainless with a minimum of 6 x 8mm dia bolts through the bulkhead.

This deals with everything apart from the risk of the bulkhead failing in shear or torsion.  This is resolved by creating a GRP girder both sides of the bulkhead by laying up a 6mm thick L between the bulkhead and the deck, as deep as the space above the hatch for the width of the hatch but increasing to 150mm outboard of the hatch to the hull sides.  The laminate should be taken round onto the hull sides both forward and aft of the bulkhead to create a 3 dimensional structure.  I would suggest that epoxy resin and cloth would be stronger than polyester and mat and it would be easier to achieve a good bond to the hull and bulkhead with epoxy.  Obviously, the laminating should be done prior to templating the new chainplate.

The resulting structure, with 8mm Wichard Padeye will be strong enough to lift the boat with, which is, by the way, a pretty good way of assessing chainplate strength!  If you buy the double padeye you will also have a tack attachment for your storm jib.

Having prevented the deck tearing off, you also need to prevent the mast falling down by fitting a pair of light (4mm wire or 6mm Kevlar) running backstays to a pair of padeyes well aft.  Because of the hull to deck joint, a pair of simple 8mm U Bolts with backing plates through the toerail and hull/deck joint will be strong enough.