GreenLake wrote:"transom" = the flat panel at the end of the boat. You mean "bulkhead" or something else, but you shouldn't be able to view the transom from the front port.
Thanks GL - I meant "keel" in that paragraph and have gone back and corrected the post.
Thanks also for the inputs on the stemhead spacing and my concerns about the attachment to the L tang bracket. I guess I agree with you that if it has held for almost 40 years, theres no reason to think it won't hold for another 5 or 10, except that this boat has clearly suffered substantial trauma in the past few years. I have no way of knowing if that changes the dynamics for the stemhead or not, I guess if the bracket hasn't moved it shouldn't change the operating conditions. My personal experience has been that mechanical things don't get better with age, or even generally stay the same.
I like your idea about building a shim to go in the airspace between the deck and the L tang. To ease my other concern (justified or not), I can make it wider and imbed a large fender washer into the fiberglass centered on where the aft screw will go, and once the aft stemhead screw is reinserted, add an additional washer and nut on the bottom providing a backup surface to hold should the screw ever decide to slip sideways out of the taped tang hole.
DS #6127 - Breakin' Wind - From the land of 10,000 lakes, which spend 80% of the year frozen it seems...