Help! My friend, Ken, is rehabbing a Montgomery 17, 1974, hull #52. Recently he has had to open up the ballast compartment to repair damage that occurred when a previous owner allowed the cb to smash the stopper bolt out the bottom of the hull. Ouch! While he was at that he decided to open up one side of the cb to see what was causing a bulge in the cb wall inside the trunk. He then added some lead and epoxied the removed pieces of hull back in place. At that time he noticed that something was preventing the usual hardening of the epoxy he was using. All did finally take a set and was fine for a couple of months until seepage formed at the bolt holding the stop pin in place and his repair of the side of the cb trunk higher on the trunk started softening up. He opened the upper patch and some yellow fluid oozed out. Anybody have any ideas what is going on and how it could be happening? I have used epoxy several times on the polyester hull of my M17 built in 1977 with no problems whatever. There is some chemical in the ballast compartment of Ken's boat that is raising havoc with the epoxy. Any suggestions will be much appreciated. Puzzled in Rockport, Tom B, M17, "AS IS"