The Carnage Memorial Weekend...... ?

[Crlos16]

Well over Memorial weekend, we ended up renting a lake house on Lake Livingston. I had heard so many stories and I was aware of the risk I was taking, But figured as long I’m “very” careful and follow other boats I should be fine, to start the boat ramp was very sketchy and nerve-racking but once we launched we where set, water was not to bad, but once we got close to Pine Island OMG we must of had 2-3ft waves so I carefully followed a boat into pine island. So Friday evening and Saturday went great, spend time exploring and hanging out in Pine island, for Sunday we ended up back at pine island and had a great day, after a long fun day we decided to head back to the boat ramp and call it a day as we heading back and once again fighting these 2-3ft waves I’m tracking back the same way I came in, so as we get closer to the boat ramp I was thinking to myself this was not bad at all we are definitely coming back to this lake and ”bam” it felt as we hit a wave and actually went airborne I look back and see nothing, I stop and look around the boat and don’t see any damage so we keep heading towards the boat ramp and beagle pump is not pumping any water out so I think we are ok. Get to the boat ramp and I nearly had to completely submerge the boat trailer to be able to get the bow over the roller ended up scuffing the bow pretty bad, once the boat is out of the water I start looking around for damage below the water line and there it is a quarter size damage to the gelcoat, so next thing I grab the wrench to remove the drain plug and I’m expecting to see all this water to my surprise very little water drained out not enough to fill a 12oz plastic water bottle.

now I need some advice from my fellow jet boaters, is this something I can repair with Spectrum gelcoat paste? Or is fiberglass repair needed here? Looking very close to the fiberglass fibers it does not look as it was ripped or disturbed, looks more like a blow with ball pin hammer.

Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[scokill]

I've repaired small above water line areas with the gel paste. I think the bow could definitely be repaired by you. I would get the area below the water line professionally repaired. You wouldn't want any voids around the edges, so you would need to chip away until you got to good solid gelcoat. I would be worried about adhesion in an area like that. I would think that it could be repaired for $250 give or take....could be wrong. This was $6K damage and didn't have that much water intrusion.