by GreenLake » Sun Dec 04, 2022 9:34 pm
Tom, if I recall, the DSII has the chain plates (or at least a backing plate) tucked under the hull-deck joint. It's a completely different setup of what we have on the DS1.
As for James' question: best thing to do is give Rudy a call. He knows hist stuff and is super helpful. If you know what hole spacing you have, he should be able to confirm.
The way the DSII chain plates have been reinforced by various owners is to use wider/longer backing plates (or tubes, or round stock) underneath the hull-deck joint. With appropriately sized backing, there should not be much of an issue if James needs to drill a hole in a new place. The load should be distributed. However, I agree with filling redundant holes with epoxy and perhaps a layer or two of glass as needed. That's usually good practice.
In this case, if the load is well distributed, just filling any redundant holes with a bit of Marine Tex should be fine.
PS: stainless is subject to stress/crevice corrosion and not easy to check for impending failure. I bet that's what happened to those bolts.
~ green ~ lake ~ ~