Hello! I'm performing maintenance on several HF whips. The directions
call for megging the HF antennas to make sure the resistance to ground
is greater than 200 M Ohms. How critical is this measurement.
Sometimes, the Meg reading has gone down to 86 K ohms, before being
replaced, but, the boat still has good comms.

Also how important is it to have a good ground on these antennas. I
do not know a lot about antenna theory, but it would seem to me that
a good ground would be important for small UHF antenna using a ground
plane, not a 35 ft whip. However my boss says that by ensuring the
antenna base has a good ground, the megger reading will somehow go up.
This I do not understand.

How someone can answer my questions, and tell me which of us is right

Thanks
-Regards