I don't store mine, but if i did, yes I would seal the ingress point for air into the engine as recommended. Often it's not immediate death of course, what happens is you get a light rust on your cylinder walls every year, very quickly this rust is cleaned off when you start the engine and this will lead to bore polishing, excessive blow-by, high
oil temps, high
oil consumption, low
compression, all the symptoms of a worn out
motor, except it's not really worn out. Only cure is to remove engine and dis-assemble it and hone the cylinders, but if your going to do all of that, may as well re-build it.
Sounds like you have a smarter than average
mechanic.
Ideally as Guy said, you'd
fog the engine, which requires
removal of the injectors to gain access to the cylinders, that and change the oil as your old oil may be acidic and no reason to led the acid etc away at your bearings for six months.
Funny, a lot of people will "winterize" a $3,000
outboard, but not their $25,000 DIesel