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It was fairly common practice back then to use the blind mounting holes on many of the installations of outboard motors on Whalers.
The engine was mounted all the way down and no way to adjust the height of the engine due to using the blind holes.
It wasn't that these engines didn't have the standard mounting holes like all the rest of the engines, it was because of the splashwell on certain Whalers.

The engine in my opinion and experience should be raised a couple of holes.
On my prior Montauk, my engine was mounted too low and there was no way to raise it up without drilling 2 new holes and plugging the original 2 lower holes that were used in the engine bracket blind holes.

A friend of mine has a 1996 Outrage 17' II.... For some odd reason, the engine was mounted using the blind holes. Whoever mounted this engine should have done a little research as you do not need to use the blind holes on this model Whaler. Now my friend cannot raise his engine and this desperately needs to be done as you cannot sit in the rear of the boat without getting soaked due to the spray from the cavitation plate.
We are going to remedy this problem by filling the blind holes and drilling the correct lower holes so the engine can be raised or lowered properly. This should have been done this way originally.

See this article on how to fill transom holes.
http://www.whalercentral.com/readarti...icle_id=62

Filling two 1/2" holes is not that hard to do and the repaired holes might not even be seen depending on how high the engine is raised.
I always wanted to do this to my Montauk but never got around to it.