Hi Tim,
Thanks, they're great photos, I can see exactly what's going on now.
To be honest, that damage doesn't look too serious; I think you could do this repair all in polyester if you wanted to and it would be fine. If you want to make the repair a little more robust then I would mix up a small amount of our
Epoxy Rapid Repair Resin and using a small brush work the rapid repair resin well into all the broken and damaged area (from the outside of the boat) and then add it a few chopped fibres of glass, mixing them in with the resin so that the majority of the 'gap' is filled with this mix of chopped glass fibres and epoxy resin. don't fill it up completely, you want to leave it slightly recessed so that you have room for the gelcoat.
Once you've done this, from the inside of the boat I would take away any broken material you can find and then do a similar operation, again filling any actual recess (if there is one once any broken material has been removed) with epoxy and short strand glass fibres and then over the top of that I would use patches of
woven glass, wetted out with the epoxy repair resin to patch over the damaged area, ensuring the strength is restored.
There would not be any easy way to make use the vacuum bagging tecnique in a repair like this but you could use some
perforated release film and
breather cloth pressed hard against the repair patch from the inside whilst it cures to squeeze out any excess resin and ensure that the repair is well consoldated against the damaged area. Once the epoxy cures the release film and breather can be removed.
Finally, I would use a polyester gelcoat pigmented with a
white polyester pigment paste so repair the gelcoat on the surface. You may choose to build up the gelcoat slightly proud of the surounding area and then, once cured, gently flat back and polish the repair so that is is flush with the surounding area. Finally it can be polished up to a full gloss using a
polishing compound. Addition of a few drops of solution MW wax additive (we have this in stock but it's not listed on the site so contact us if you need this) added to the polyester gelcoat will allow it to cure hard on the surface and not remain tacky like gelcoat normally does when it cures in contact with air - this is not essential for this repair but does make the gelcoat more sandable, particularly at first. An alternative is to pull release film gelcoat over the gelcoat repair whilst it's uncured and then remove it afterwards and do any final flatting and polishing.
Doing the gelcoat last ensures that it won't get knocked around or damaged when you do the other bits or repair work.
I hope this helps and wish you all the best with your repair.
--Matt
Matt StathamEasy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales