The first obvious problem was that the thwart pillars on either side and the forward one had some hardware store steel (rusty) brackets screwed into the side.
Of course they were junk and it also indicated that whatever backing plates the boat had on top of the pillars when the boat was built were either gone or just rotten.
What that meant was that I had to get behind them and to do so I needed several access ports. I settled on two 4" ports just forward of the port and starboard thwart pillars and a 6" port between the mast step and the splash coaming. For good measure I also decided on a 6" port about foot forward of the stern in anticipation that the rudder mount is bad.



I ground out all the old backing plates and found that one actually had an aluminum backing plate in addition to the plywood, but couldn't find any others. Once satisfied, I cut out Sapelle blocks for the thwart pillar backers and 1/2" marine plywood for the splash coaming backers. I gave it all a coating of epoxy before glassing them all in with West System 610 epoxy (temporary screws holding them in place. 610 is perfect for this type of application because it gives you a consistent structural filling compound with the squeeze of a caulking gun.
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