I agree Dave, but GE Silicone II does not meet those standards and I am floored that anyone at Spinlock would recommend it. Regardless of the brand/type it usually is not the silicone that fails, it is the installer. An un-skilled and/or inexperienced person will gob it on and clench down the fasteners to full tight, squeezing out the majority of the sealant and leaving too thin of a film handle expansion/contraction/flex, all while making a huge mess. This can be true of any sealant, but the 'go to' is the big box store brand silicones that don't cut the mustard. The bigger problem is re-bedding down the road when the previous hack-job leaks prematurely... The silicone imbeds into the gelcoat/teak/wood or whatever surface pores and no amount of adhesive cleaner will get all of it without sanding down (deep) to get it off. This is one of the major reasons I had to paint my decks rather than wet-sand and restore the original gelcoat, there was just so much P.O. hack-job silicone bedding that too much gelcoat had to be sanded off to get rid of the residue. There was gel-coat crazing too but that's unrelated, however if not for the silicone residue I could have repaired the crazing with gelpaste. Anyway, it's just my opinion that it safer and wiser in the long run to use Butyl Tape on the plastics where polysulfide is a no-no, and polysulfide on other bedding where it is more convenient. I've pulled 30 year old hardware that was Butyl Tape sealed and it had never leaked, only removed for other reasons besides leaks. Epoxy potting and counter-boring are the other two parts of the trifecta in leak-free, bomb-proof installations.
