Bright silvery thing.
Tom, That is all that's left of a pair of 1" Nautical Engineering cleats made of vinyl clad cast aluminum, original to the boat when we bought her in the summer of 1995. I had to go back to a 1996 West Marine catalog just now to find the name of it and as I suspected, the company has long since gone out of business. Our boat came from the factory with clear anodized 1" aluminum track and I allowed that she deserved better. I replaced it with two continuous 11 foot lengths of 1 1/4" bronze track and it was at that point where I called the factory to see if I could buy just the larger stainless steel bases that were a part of my plan. The woman on the phone said that this was the first time anyone had ever wanted just the bases but she and I agreed on a price and sent them to me. An aside: That's ABI track made off shore and was offered in 14 foot lengths up until a number of years before we bought our boat. Apparently if was far more efficient for them to be cut in half in order that a forklift could take a ton of them at a time into a shipping container. The long ones had to be hand carried by two or more guys. I wanted a single length of track on both sides of the boat, so I searched the country far and wide to find them. I finally located a pair in a warehouse in Portland ME. We had to fly to Boston anyhow so I rented a car with a ski rack (in the middle of a sweltering summer) and drove to Maine to get the track. Countrywide truckers wanted more to ship them than what the tracks cost and trust me, they weren't cheap. The 5/16" X 3" bronze screws, flat and split washers and nuts, 74 of them were out of this world costly but by this time I was a in way too far to back out! Back to the shipping, it turned out that DSL air freight only wanted $48.00 if I could get them myself at their Los Angeles warehouse, deal made but I also had to hand carry them (ski rack) myself to DSL in Portland. Anyhow I shipped them to home in a length of capped PVC pipe and drove back to Boston. At the time I had nothing more sophisticated than a hammer and a hand drill in our meager garage but I did have the entire resources of the gigantic Hughes Aircraft Company where I worked my entire career at my disposal. I took the un-drilled bronze cleats to a machinist I knew where he drilled and tapped the 1/4-20 mounting holes. So I really had no choice but to use the wider Nautical Engineering stainless steel bases if I wanted all this to work. About the cleats, I was just about to take one of the old aluminum ones to a local foundry to be used as a pattern in order to have them cast in bronze. I mentioned this to a fellow sailor and graphic artist friend at work who immediately took it from me and explained that he'd get them cast at his favorite foundry. What I didn't expect was that he carved the name into both wax patterns and then had them cast. It was a thrill when he gave them back. In a word I was stunned and ever so grateful. I still see him on the water from time to time in Marina del Rey sailing his classy, open cockpit lapstrake sailboat. Sorry, waaay more than you wanted to know but that's the whole story. It's all a great adventure, Glyn