Quickie boat hitch repair

A friend came in with a mangled boat hitch in need of repair. It was completely unusable.

As you can see in the pictures below, the mounting plate was completely separated and at some point someone that didn’t know how to weld, tried to weld this.

The gap between the metal and the tube it was being welded to was pretty huge (almost 1/4″). So I turned the heat and wire speed up on the Mig welder and poured in some filler metal and made sure i got good penetration with this weld.

Not the prettiest welding. But this weld will last longer than that hitch post will ever last.