Thanks for replying
@swatski. It's below the water line and I don't have any experience with fiberglass. But YouTube makes it look super easy to do.
From what I can tell by looking at the pictures - this looks really good! (I mean, as in:
very fixable, and can be DIY)
This will
need to be fixed for sure, I would not want to keep the boat in the water or wet slip, but this kind of damage does not concern me for any serious impact to the hull, or something that would compromise the hull's strength - not at all. Again, just looking at the pics.
What year is the boat? This trailer is not the new Shorland'r. Is this an original trailer?
Personally, I would fix it using gel coat only. Paste, not liquid, importantly. IMO it will be the best and strongest repair for someone who is not an experienced fiberglass worker. If you try to get fancy and layer it with this and that - for which there is not much room as the gauge is not that deep - you will end up worse than what you are starting with.
The Spectrum gel coat is very high quality, just make sure you buy it and use it fresh. Shelf life of polyester resins is terrible. Do a couple of thin layers to fill and over fill, then go to town with wet sanding and polishing.
I would not use epoxy. Yes, it is stronger, but it is very hard to sand, and you will most likely damage the softer polyester gelcoat around the repair - while sanding the epoxy patch. Epoxy binds very well to polyester but not the other way around. So your gelcoat (polyester) on top of epoxy will be an issue - the epoxy will need to be sanded coarsely to provide for some kind of mechanical binding, but no matter what you do it will never be very strong bond - and likely problems down the road. Whereas a simple gelcoat-only fix will look like new and you will never have an issue with that spot again.
Just my 0.02.
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