Hull Repair

The biggest desires of a boat owner is to keep the water on the outside of the boat............the way outside surface......

With my handy dandy little 4 1/2 inch grinder I tenderly start the process of finding all the problems. My friend and mentor in the world of fiberglass Dr. John Burns has told me over and over, "if you want to heal your hull, you must first look like your destroying it"...............chuckle This means you need to have about a 16:1 ratio of depth to radius around the improfection, this allows the new material to bond and heal, sounds good to me....................

One of the neatest things that I found to help remove the old paint and uncover the problems with "old repairs" that were not done correctly is the "power washer with sand" attachment. This little beauty powers off the old paint down to the nice white gelcoat and shows all the spots that are hidden. The nice thing about this device is that there isn't any dust floating around in the air, it falls on the tarp and can be picked up and disposed of properly.

Doing a little experimenting with 4 bags of silica sand purchased from Lowe's (broken bags purchased for a $1) I found that I was going to need a lot more sand.........."LOTS MORE" so I went to a local landscape company and had a Yard of sand delivered, for a much reduced price..... (Sailors, Thrifty is another word for Cheap..........chuckle)

Delamination.......I wish there was a better discription but the outer layer of gelcoat and cloth didn't have enough resin to adhere to the hull layup. If you can remember peeling a banana you can get the picture of the hull below the water line..........BIG BUMMER........Dr. John said, "tell me when you want me to stop pulling"........after I watched how easy that outer layer came off there was no choice, "pull it off and lay a new one after the hull is dried out"..........I did not plan on this..........