Stopped our boat from wandering......

Had a problem last trip out on the lake. Should have taken pictures before
I started this repair, sorry. I had a small spot of damage on the hull in
the lower left front that I was sort of ignoring until fall. But apparently
it wasn't ignoring me. Last trip out the boat was taking on water and after
much exploring I discovered that a sizeable section of the hull had
separated. The entire square that these two cracks define half the boundary
of was delaminated form the hull and swinging like a flap. In the corner of
the cracks the hull was damaged enough that we had a small fountain coming
in. About enough to keep the bilge pump on about 80%. It's hard to get the
scale from this close up but the short leg is about 8 inches and the long
side is about 2 feet. Closer examination suggested that there was a void in
this area. I saw little sign that the flap and the remaining hull were ever
attached to each other. Both halves were smooth. So after 19 years it came
apart. This picture is after I glued the flap back up. Had to cut the edge
of several pieces of wood to follow the contour of the hull. Attached those
to a long piece of wood and used that with a bottle jack to press the flap
back onto the boat while the epoxy harded. Got a pretty good attachment.
I've filled in the crack with filler and I'm drimmeling it out to a good
depth for gelcoat.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jamesgangnc/hull.jpg

I saturated the hull inside behind the problem with slightly thinned epoxy
to try to soak into the glass around the problem. I.m going to follow that
up with a couple layers of new glass. It's hard to see butthe damage is
about where those red artifacts are in the picture's left upper quadrant.
Working space is a little cramped.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jamesgangnc/inside_bow.jpg

Unfortunately on a 19 year old boat no repair project goes without finding
additional work. The floor of the ski locker was not real well attached to
begin with and detached further on the left side. Needless to say being 19
years old and plywood it was also rotted in places. The manufacturer had
let the gap along the edges fill with pure polyster resin and then covered
it with a layer of glass. Of course pure resin is not much in the way of a
satisfactory gap filling. I suspect the locker floor coming detached on one
side contributed a bit to weaking the structure and allowing the hull
problem to manifest it's self. So I've built a new floor and this picture
is it getting coated with resin before installing. On the underside I have
beveled it so that I will need less filler.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jamesgang...cker_floor.jpg

On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:28:21 -0400, "jamesgangnc"
wrote:

Stopped our boat from wandering......

Had a problem last trip out on the lake. Should have taken pictures before
I started this repair, sorry. I had a small spot of damage on the hull in
the lower left front that I was sort of ignoring until fall....

{Snip}

One word: Aluminum.

Casady