1998 Mercury EFI Broken Cowl Brackets

[EKoselny]

I recently replaced my spark plugs and noticed that the rear lower cowl bracket was mostly missing, only about  1/3 was left and the rest was gone. All three mounting bolts had sheared pieces of the bracket left under them. I bought a replacement on eBay figuring I could replace this myself. When I removed the lower cowling I found that the front cowl bracket had also sheared in half. Does anyone know what could have caused both of these brackets to break like this? I have never had a major incident with this boat or motor. 

 

When I tried to remove the bracket mounting bolts for the rear bracket I found that the bolts are too long to fully remove from the motor. It appears as though the entire powerhead will need to be removed just to replace these brackets? Is this correct?

 

Does anyone have anyone near Rochester they would recommend for this work?

 

thanks