If anyone could even, at least, venture a guess regarding this skeg thing, I'd be very interested to read your opinion: I need to make a decision soon about whether to mount hardware on my skeg. Thanks! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Honshells" <chonshell@ia4u.net> To: "For and about Montgomery Sailboats" <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 8:43 PM Subject: Older M17 Skeg Older M17 owners: Any reason why I shouldn't drill small holes (1/4", max) through my skeg, port to starboard, toward the bottom and almost on the end, in order to mount hardware? I'd rather not go into the what and why of the hardware, I'm just curous whether drilling through the skeg is a no-no. My immediate thought is that, since I have the steel ballast, I could introduce moisture to my keel. However, I understand a glass "slurry" was used and the skeg seems very dense. Also, it's quite a distance from the bottom and back of the skeg to the area of the keel where swelling problems have occurred. I'm assuming the drilling would be very difficult, so I don't need to visit that part of the equation, I just want to know if I would be risking moisture incursion or other damage by drilling. Also, my 17' is an '84: Does anyone with a boat of similar vintage know the width of their skeg at the very back/bottom? I would be very grateful if Jerry and/or Bob could weigh in on this. Thanks!