looking to touch up my good condition, second hand, 2003 hull. I found some interesting chips in the cockpit floor near the drain. I know little about the fiberglass deck construction other than what I’ve gathered from this forum.
On the convex corner that turns down into the drain depression, there’s a 3/8 inch hole in the gel coat. To me this looks like a hole in the bottom of a hard boiled egg... there a small void between the gel coat “shell” and the fiberglass underneath.
I could just put some epoxy in, but thought I’d ask for advice first. Is this normal, or a typical minor problem, or something else? Is the fiberglass separating here?
Fairly normal air bubbles between the gelcoat and the rest of the laminate. A very minor problem and fundamentally an aesthetic one; just cover them with gelcoat filler.
I went ahead and epoxied the holes, photo of final cure (before sanding) below. I mixed to a stiff jelly consistency, and following a shop tech’s advise, checked it every 10 mins until it was hard/soft enough to cut away excess with a razor.
The epoxy went very quickly from hard but gummy, to hard and uncuttable, but I caught it in time. Still the blade had a tendency to pull the epoxy away from the holes and I had to mush it back in.
Also, the very complex curves in this spot made it nearly impossible to shave flush to gel coat, so I really just scraped away excess that had slipped all around the holes
I’m thinking either mixing a much stiffer epoxy, or using marine Tex may be the better route for anyone with this same problem in the future.
Your repair should be ok, but as LaLi said, a gelcoat repair kit would allow you to match the color. Let the gelcoat patch fully cure, then file, sand, polish until the patch matches the surrounding area.