More fibreglass

This week has been mainly spent on further repairs to the topsides there are a number of areas which require attention generally in the form of stress cracking in the gelcoat, damage to the paint and a couple of areas where the boat has, I presume, over ridden the fenders which has caused the gelcoat to be worn away. First off I dealt with some stress cracking on the transom which I believe may have been caused by contact with a solid object and a couple of smaller areas on the port topsides amidships. I started by opening out the cracks to their full depth and full length, I was going to use a Dremel to grind them out however I found that the corner of a tungsten carbide scraper was extremely effective.

Tungsten carbide scraper

Stress cracks in transom after opening out

After opening out the cracks I then cleaned them out with acetone before filling with epoxy thickened with West's 406 colloidal silica as these areas will be painted it is not going to show. I still have some more cracks to open out and fill on the starboard topside, hopefully the fine weather will continue next week so that I can complete this task.

The next task was to deal with the worn gelcoat on the port side there were two areas one had only just worn through to the CSM behind the gelcoat and the other was just an abrasion to the gelcoat.

Gelcoat damage

The worst damage is to the left of the photograph the other area does not show up at all well but the area which had worn through to the CSM can just be made out in the photograph below . The two areas were sanded down, cleaned up with acetone and then built up with two coats of gelcoat and a final finishing coat of flocoat.

After sanding

After gelcoating

The gelcoat was built up a little on the high side as the hull curves in two directions at this point both fore and aft and a marked tumblehome it is all too easy to end up with a flat spot in the centre of the repair. Once the gelcoat had cured I then sanded it to match the curves in the hull starting with some coarse, 40 grit, paper to quickly remove the excess and finishing with 180 grit paper, I find that pressing a steel rule flat across the repair helps to show up any high or low spots there is no photograph of this I am afraid as I only posses two hands.

After final sanding

The finished repair does not show up too well in a photograph taken in bright sunlight which I suppose is what we are trying to achieve hopefully it will be even less obvious once I have painted over it.

Finally for this week I masked up and painted the stripe around the hull above the boot top with International Toplac Mauritian blue the longest part of the job was applying the four strips of masking tape the full length of the waterline and then removing it all again after applying two coats of paint.