Winter Project (Gelcoat Repair) - How to Evaluate?

[rockinthesuburbs]

This has been on my winter project list - and now that winter is winding down... time to get at it. Won't go into too many details as it's still painful for me, but early on I lightly scraped a rock while walking the boat to the shore to offload some passengers. The white colored portion I can't really feel anything other than some roughness on the surface, but the darker areas I can clearly feel like it's gone into the gelcoat slightly.

What's the best way to go about evaluating this further? Should I try a wet sand and wax first or go straight into sanding it down and doing a gelcoat repair? I've looked at a lot of gelcoat repair threads and feel like I could handle it myself, especially being a smaller repair but I wouldn't be opposed to getting a repair quote as well. Curious what the group thinks! Cheers

 

[Hoppy]

I am no fiberglass and gelcoat expert so take my advice with a grain of salt. Your boat is way newer than mine so your finished expectations may be different than mine, it is relatively easy to fix gelcoat but to make the repair disappear is another story. I can't really tell in the picture how deep the scratch is but if it is less then a 1/32 it probably can be wet sanded out, deeper than that your into adding gelcoat back to repair and if it is into the fiberglass below the gelcoat the structure of the boat has been affected and that can mean fiberglass repair depending on the damage. To wet sand it you would need to 1) wet sand, 2)compound, 3)polish, 4)wax. Also fyi only the Yamaha personal water crafts were painted the boats were not painted the Yamaha boats were gelcoated. Gelcoat can be bought from https://spectrumcolor.com/ and Minicraft of Florida inc. | McKote Gel Coat "You've been matched" I no experience with either. I have been watching YouTube videos by https://www.boatworkstoday.com/ and have found them helpful. All that being said your boat is really new I would have it looked at if I was not really sure what I was doing.

 

[84rzv500r]

if you want it perfect pay a pro after he/she shows you live examples of their work.... otherwise look at as an opportunity to Learn... I tend not to care so much how it looks within reason as long as it performs well with boats and such anyway...