They get bolted down pretty tight to the horizontal rail. If it turns out to be a problem in any kind of roll, I'll triangulate with lines. Come to think of it, I'll probably have to do that. Good point!

I don't intend on using them for any type of offshore sailing. My dinghy is a wooden nesting type and I'll put it on deck for anything like that. I was once on a north Atlantic delivery with a skipper who kept his dink strapped to davits for the offshore trip from Maine south. We ended up lashing the broken davits to the mizzen boom somewhere well off of Cape May, in November. Believe me, I'm not interested in repeating that again. These davits will either rotate inboard when not in use, or be removed entirely (I have a huge lazarette) for any lengthy offshore trips.

The types of clamps I'm thinking of would be able to handle a pretty good force and they will probably be the weak link. The stern rail wraps around and is bolted through the cap rail and hull deck joint in either six or eight places.

If I did get caught in something I wasn't expecting, the design of the davits makes it pretty easy to frap on some reinforcement as necessary, not to worried about that.

Thanks,

-e