Boat repair, need advice.

Hey guys great forum you have here.

There has been some strong winds in a rare direction in my area a few days ago and as a result about 50 boats ended up on the rocks. There is a shortage of boat repairers in the area because of all the damage. I do automotive fiberglassing in my spare time as a hobby. Long story short the owner of this boat is paying me cash in hand to patch up his boat to move it to another larger populated area about 150km away to get it professionally repaired. Ive never done boat repair before so ive come looking for advice. I did 4 hours work today but had to stop cus I got rained out.



There are about 10 leaking holes throughout the hull and the hull is full of water because it was on the bottom for a day. So far Ive drilled through the cracked areas to drain most of the water. I then ground back all flaky bits until I got back to a clean surface. I then sanded back around the hole and removed any anti foul in the blast radius. I cleaned the holes in acetone before filling the large holes with filler, sanded the filler back to the shape of the hull and then laid several layers of chopped strand matting and some woven in some places. If you can tell me any advice for the otehr holes ill be doing tomorrow, if the way im doing it is sufficient. Remember this is a temporary job (a possible 3 months in the water before a full repair)

I took some photos so far. These are the ones I have done so far today.

before


after


before


after


this is after the filler but before the glass on one of the holes, the hole was about 1 inch deep.


Heres some of the other holes, mostly at the bottom of the keel.




Forgot to mention, the boat is made from vinyl ester, but im using poly ester
Any help will be appreciated

cheers
-Ben

 

Ben, You are doing OK mate. Just make sure that you do not try to put csm or resin over gelcoat, it tends not to stick. Grind off the gelcoat in the areas that you need to put the g;lass repair. Keep up the good work. Mix the resin with about 2% MEKP. No problems with the Vinyl ester and polyester repair.

 

The pic that show the transom repair looks like you have put resin/cloth over the antifouling, if so remove it and do it again , grind off with disc sander and 36 grade discs, grind off the repair, the antifoul and the gelcoat down to clear laminate, then redo again.

 

I removed back to laminate around the hole, but not as far as I glassed. Is it really bad going over antifoul?

 

Big,

Landlubber is right. Glass to paint - the strength of your bond is the strength of the paint....

 

ok, I understand. Ill take note of that for the rest. There is a deadline for the boat, its going in the water monday. So ive only got today to fix it and the rain isnt holding up. Should I compensate catalyst for the humidity? Say 2.5-3%?

 

Stick with 2%. And like they said, you need to sand off all the paint and gel coat before any new glass is put down, use a grinder with 36 grit. Plus you need to use mat under each layer of roving.

 

The boat is done, finally. It rained non stop and I was working in half foot of water. Two glass patches I had to glass over dripping water, which is a bit sus, but there was nothing I could do to stop it fully. I mixed at 2.5% with allot of wax added in the last layers to help seal it a bit better. 450g CSM was always on first, then I finished it with heavy woven layers with the heavily waxed resin. It went ok I guess, well see when he puts it in the water. $400 cash for 8 hours, not bad I might get into this business. I didnt take any photos it was too wet.

 

BIGs,

Good money mate, and what you have done sounds sort of OK. Don't wax the resin if you do any more of this work, it is only used to seal the final layer, and in this case the final layer would have been flocoat, which is of course waxed gelcoat. Waxing between layers can possibly cause delamination, but I would not worry about it in this job, it was all done too fast for any problems like that. Good on ya. I hope that the next $400 is as easy, some how I doubt it.

 

The best advice:

Landlubber:
ya know what, you really, really know your business.........very impressive.
I, personally, believe that the sign of a true master is his ability, and even willingness, to talk to a novice.

 

Thanks for the advice Landlubber and sorry for the late reply. The boat went in with no leaks 100% sealed. He was extremely grateful considering the flood like conditions and gave me another $200. Also it turns out he part owns an aeronautical company in Brisbane and he offered me a subcontracting job laying up moulds for there production planes (which I know allot more about). All in all, this was a sweet deal.

 

You have done well mate, good on ya.