I have had the Tides track for the last two years of pretty frequent sailing and it still looks brand new.
But to the gate problem ... I originally started with TWO plates at the gate and it was a disaster ... so I took one off and just ran with one and very minimal problems. If you can photo the gate maybe someone on the forum has a similar plate set up and solved the engineering.
Rob ... Weight OFF the bow ... unless of course you are a treasure hunter. But then again as we look back at all the mistakes the orignal j30 engineering had ... maybe your way will work.
