Certainly. Therefore, you should only be prepared to tolerate cable loss if you can replace it with antenna gain.A 2:1 VSWR does not cause a 2:1 loss of power. At worst, it could increase the cable loss. Repeating myself, the experiment will tell Roger if he's improved his situation or not. We haven't suggested any permanent changes.
Roger,
Let's assume that the board is properly grounded to the case. Just scrape the case where the connector passes through and use star washers on both sides to make good contact. Looking at your photo, I myself would drill a dedicated hole for the connector just to the right of the whip antenna's hole and run a short wire to the pad where the whip was. (You will want to remove the whip of course.)
Since the subjects of loss and impedance matching have been brought up, RG6 cable is widely avalable, is 75 ohms, and has much lower loss. Generally I use f-type connectors with RG6 to be compatible with my cable, tv, etc..