One other note.
You are right, I should have consulted the class regarding the chainplate design, but quite honestly, when I saw the bulkhead crack and took the chainplate off I was more concerned with the best way to fix the boat rather than complying with one design. It would've served no purpose to have a broken boat that complied to OD. If I tore the bulkhead off and repaired the crack, I never would have been comfortable with putting the original chainplates back on. Bottom line something had to be done. I didn't think about this as an OD issue until the fuss about the vent came up. I would not have been happy showing up in NO and be told I couldn't sail with my chainplates.

From a design perspective, the only other scenerio considered was machining out a portion of the bulkhead and inserting a steel plate about the size of the new chainplate. To that we then could have flush mounted the old chain plate. That would have been a lot of work. This design incorporated the bulkhead strength plate and the chain plate in one.