How I learned to stop worrying and love the heavy aluminum rubrail. Forgive the poor paraphrasing from Dr. Strangelove but the aluminum rub rail really does have that type of mentality associated with it. Great utility can be had by tapping and threading in these 6mm D rings by Wichard. They are quite heavy for their size and as fender attachment points work wonderfully. I tie a knot through the ring but I've thought of snap shackles too. The hull sides have 6 each side and three across transom, I omited the areas directly near cleats. Unlike motor yachts, sportfish don't have really attractive ways to attach fenders when you need a lot of them but these make the boat look really sharp when all fenders are at same height. Sadly the Wichard 6mm ring is the only one of any quality manufacturer that fits and its only available in Europe. I had to buy three at a time from a latvian Ebay seller and then wait for him to list another three, so on so forth until I had enough! We'll do anything for our boats, wont we.
