As far as I know aerating the water is a myth, what the holes do is equalise the pressure in the step, we did this on our old race boat and it also helped with preventing chine walking, in choppy water the step on one side would get closed off and the boat would get sucked down on that side then released, it would then chine walk over to the other side and repeat, adding vents from the deck reduced this considerably.

Our new boat has larger vents - the steps are of a standard design and aren't as big as they look. If there is a low pressure in the step caused by a lack of air the water is drawn up into the step instead of breaking off cleanly - it is also important to have a sharp clean edge at that point as well. Zero pressure differential equals a step that is working well - the gaffa tape over the vent means that the vents weren't working very well at all.

What about some sort of vein to keep some of the air from going down all the way to the bottom v. I have seen where the most air airates there.. It seems like more drag would come from the larger area of the bottom ( the area on each side of the center pad) not the 15 inch pad down the middle.