Repair advice - chips near cockpit drain

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Hi all

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?

Thanks!
 
It sounds like a void created during manufacture, but that's largely just a guess. How about posting some pictures?
 
Here are two photos, before and after cleaning out the loose chips. On closer inspection the void may be 1 to 3 mm in places
2612C1D4-90D2-48DB-B930-EBD78149F83B.jpeg

A6EAB52E-8350-451A-AF9A-8FBAE1454335.jpeg
 
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.

_
 
Thanks for the feedback...

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.

6F175ABF-3EB2-4DE0-98E3-980E61CF3B35.jpeg
 
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.
 
Yep. standard gelcoat void typically found around corners. The cheapest, fastest fix is marine tex if you don't care about color match.
 

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