Boy, I never expected to get so much great advice so fast!! I'm digesting it all now. I've known since I started looking in to this that I'd have an awesome ground plane, but I never gave much thought to problems I'd have mounting the antenna. I'll let you know how I decide to go. By the way, I tried to post photos of the boat, but this server kept giving me errors. Here's a web site with a pictu

http://www.specmar.com/boatpics/boatpic55.jpg