New oarlock system on Watertender 9.4

Our dinghy is a Watertender 9.4 that we love because it is supremely stable (as in try as you might you can't get it to capsize) and virtually indestructible. Having two young sons has made the first invaluable, and gunkholing in the rocky NW makes the latter a real saving grace. The original oarlocks on the boat are fairly insubstantial for anyone, like us, who rows as their sole means of propulsion. There are supposed to be aluminum backing plates inside the plastic hull, but over some time, the screws strip through that and pull free. On ours the screws had pulled out and stripped on the starboard side and were no longer functional, despite my many efforts to keep them just snug, not to overtighten, and to even try some West System GFlex to help hold them in place. Time for a new and better solution.

Stock photo of a Watertender being rowed. You can see the oarlocks. They are only screwed into the plastic hull with an aluminum backing plate inside the hull that doesn't hold up to much use. It is not through bolted in any way.

To fix this problem on our dinghy I noodled for a while and decided on a much more substantial solution involving an aluminum angle piece. Today I finished the first stage to securely fasten the oarlocks to the aluminum angle. To do this I drilled and tapped holes for the machine screws, and also sanded both surfaces rough to add some JB Weld as an added chemical bond. I used blue loctite in the screw holes to reduce loosening and to reduce corrosion between the SS screw and aluminum angle.

The final step will be to mount them onto the dinghy using through bolts on the ends of the angle. That is why the angles are longer than the oarlocks. When completed, this should be far more secure and trustworthy than the original configuration, and let me tell you, losing a functional oarlock when 1/4 mile offshore and a headwind blowing you away from your boat is not pretty. Trying to move a dinghy anywhere with only one oar is the ultimate example of futility.

So yeah for this problem fixed.