Please identify this piece of hardware

[JPA Cate]

Might someone have been going to install the remainder of the installation: the connection to the hull, (which would have been reinforced.) It is one of the problems to installing unplanned by the designer inner forestays, that you have to figure out how to take out the loads, and make it so that the inner stay's loads don't pull the deck up.

As it sits, it is useless. But if you look at the above decks part, it looks to me as if something may have screwed down onto it at one time.

Some of the Island Packets have a fitting for a boom for a staysail in a similar place....

Ann

[Nobody]

i know this is late but could it be something for spreading the anchor chain