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I'm assuming that "West" means West System epoxy.  Making a putty of epoxy and colloidal silica results in a fairly low strength bond. The #404 high strength filler may be a better choice.

I'll add a few lines but can't do it 'til early next week.  I've got five surveys backed up and lousey weather to boot.  Patience.

The objective here was to make replacements that appeared  "original".  The pintle is a bronze casting that is embedded in the rudder casting.  The original had an area of weakness where it exited the rudder.  The new casting is designed to be very rugged in this critical area and also allow for the future replacement of a worn pin. But you could make them any way you want.

Not much of a dilemma at all.  First, let’s get realistic about prop drag and its effect on speed.  The drag of a Campbell Sailor (sailing at 5kts) is around 12 lbs for a two blade and 18 lbs for a three blade.  As mentioned above, the two blade can be hidden and one blade of the 3B could also hide (dropping its drag to around 12 lbs).   My guess is that at the most, you’d lose maybe 0.10 kts.  That isn’t significant for a cruising boat. 

Hanging 100+ lbs off the transom is just where you don’t want the weight.  Loading the extreme ends of any vessel promotes “hobby-horsing” in heavy seas.  This almost insures that the prop will be batting air just when you don’t want it to be doing that.  A diesel down below gets the weight in a better position being more forward and below the LWL.

Gas tank?  If you install a permanent tank with deck fill and venting, etc. you’re fine.  If you use the portable tank that comes with the engine, you have a placement problem.  You can’t keep it anywhere in the interior where fumes could accumulate.  It’s got to be in a sealed but vented locker or outside where any spills or vapors from the vent cap can go over the side.  Fuel usage is another concern for a cruiser.  My 2GM13 gobbles up a little over a pint/hour at 5kts.  My 10 gallon tank gives me roughly 60 hours of steaming.  No outboard can come close to this.

If engines were only used for motoring in light air and seas, the outboard would be fine.  But that isn’t always the case.  Driving into a heavy wind with nasty seas is not a job for any stern hung outboard.

All fasteners are 1/4-20 bronze machine screws with nuts and washers. Because the new bronze track holes were on different centers, new holes were drilled.  The interior liner did not interfere with putting on the nuts although the clearances were quite tight.

Rough calks indicate that you would need 150 cu ft of rigid foam to keep afloat. That would probably make the already sparse living space a bit short of room.  The life raft is a better alternative since sinking is a rare event.

I hate to be a fuddy-duddy about this but it's the sailor who makes the boat and not the other way around.  As you may know, Tania's boat wasn't a standard "production" model. Brian Caldwell's was an old '74 that also made the round trip.  I believe that either could have done well in any other relatively well built barge. I can't recall whether anyone has ever made a big deal about Shackleton's 22' lifeboat.