Carbon Chain plates

Seen here are the beginnings of two of the three most important parts of the cats rig.......the two chain plates.  Along with the fore stay, a failure in any one of the three will bring the rig down.

The raised diagonal portion of these plates contains 10 layers of unidirectional carbon fiber that wraps up and over stainless steel spools and is interlaced with several additional layers of glass.  At this point, all reinforcement fabric has been lightly tacked in place with 3M -77 spray adhesive in preparation for a very critical resin infusion process.