My poor ex-racer-Sunfish has all kinds of gelcoat cracks.Sunfish repair questions...
It is my understanding that if I have circular patterns of spider cracking, then that means the hull took some blunt force and was delaminated. Delamination would mean sanding out the bad fiberglass and replacing that and repainting. If I have spider cracks that are just linear running bow-stern direction, then that would be a gel coat repair. Right?
Can delaminations show just the linear spider cracks? Or are they usually indicated by circular cracking?
Thanks.
Alex
To fix gel coat cracks you need to open up the crack into a "v" slot then
fill with Marine-Tex. Lots of wet sanding involved.
Now I'm thinking the repair can go underneath the linear cracks of the usual cockpit seating area.I should add that your "linear cracks" can be demonstrated to be due to structural weakness in the one layer of fiberglass roving underneath. Again, I'm not going to fix them until there's a "catastrophic event"—and then, I'd sand the surface down to dark fiberglass, lay down two layers of 4-inch tape, and leave the last coating of resin off. (For a textured surface, as I suggested earlier for a cockpit bottom repair).
To fix gel coat cracks you need to open up the crack into a "v" slot then fill with Marine-Tex. Lots of wet sanding involved. Unless it's a brand new Sunfish or you want to practice you might want to use the time sailing instead of fixing. My O.C.D. makes me want to fix every crack
but I was not granted a infinite lifetime so I mostly try to tell myself the cracks are just in my imagination.