On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:38:18 -0600, Bonasa wrote:

Hi,

I feel like I'm just barging in here as I'm not a regular poster to this
group, but I'm hoping for some advice. I've already gotten a lot of good
information from Google and doing a Dejanews search of past posts to this
group, but nothing specifically addressing my situation.

I recently ended up with a 22' sailboat for a very good price. The reason it
was so cheap is there is damage to the hull; a crack about 3 feet long. The
gelcoat and fiberglass are cracked clear through, from the inside looking at
the crack you can see daylight. It looks like the side got bashed into a
dock, it's about at the right level and I can't figure out what else would
cause such a long crack.

I'm using Don Casey's Sailboat Hull & Deck Repair book as a reference
manual. The method is pretty straight forward but all the illustrations and
the description of how to make the repair seem to be geared towards a neat
round hole. Once I cut out the ruined fiberglass I'm going to have a hole
about 3.5 feet long and 4 inches wide. I can get to the crack from the
inside, so I'll be laying acrylic over the exterior and applying the gelcoat
as shown in the book. But because it's a horizontal repair instead of the
neat little circles of mat shown in the book I'm going to have to use big
long strips in progressively longer strips.

Even with the 12:1 taper I'm concerned about the strength of the repair.
Fortunately the crack is not on a structural part of the boat but is this
going to be a repair I can trust to hold with a mechanical bond?

Any advice, comments, or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.
I've worked with fiberglass and epoxy before but only on kayaks. So I'm not
a total stranger to the process but this way more than I've ever tried to
tackle. Feel free to throw in some moral support if you feel so inclined.
Thanks for any help and sorry this is so long.

Best Regards,
Mike

Epoxy sticks to old polyester/fiberglass very well, provided the polyester
is cleaned up. They say that epoxy sticks to existing polyester resin much
better than new polyester resin would. I haven't ever done a repair like
the one you outlined, but I have made structural additions to an old
polyester hull using epoxy, and I can tell you that with a little surface
area, it sticks very well indeed!

You are going to taper at 12:1 in all directions around the hole, right?
That is, you are going to taper width-wise and height-wise? If so, I think
it is the best you can do.

--Mac