Jeff Asbury
Principal Partner
I just had a professional fiberglass company do some repairs to my cabin sole and bulkhead track on my E-27. The guy who did the work on my boat asked me if I had backing plates under my mooring cleats and I assumed I did. The reason he asked is because he was in the process of repairing the glass around the bow cleats on another E-27 that had them pull out during a storm at Avalon harbor on Catalina Island on October 15th. I guess they had some really big waves inside the harbor. The boat was moored with one bow and one stern cleat. The bow cleat came right out taking the glass with it. So then they tied off on the remaining cleat and it did the same thing. They ended up mooring the boat by tying off to the mast. Well sure enough, I checked my cleats over the weekend and there were no backing plates. This will be a priority project now. I am just wondering if this is the case on all E-27's and or other Ericson models. Seems like a pretty bad oversight in construction to me. Check your cleats!:eek: