First and foremost, P-19 owners who have suffered this problem will want to repair the damage that the trailer tires have inflicted upon their boats’ hulls. After seeing photos of the scored chines, one forum member observed that the repair would likely rate a 3 in difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10. Having never worked with gelcoat before, all I can say is that I am glad it didn't rate 4, 5, or even higher. The task proved more difficult than I had anticipated, for reasons which I will explain below.
| After removing the tires and fenders from my trailer, I was appalled to see close-up the extent of the damage to Harried Potter, as shown in the photo on the right.
Apparently the friction not only ground into the chines through the gelcoat all the way down to the fiberglass, but was severe enough to actually melt the rubber on the tire, which then bubbled together with the gelcoat and fiberglass to form a composite “goo.” |
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| After several hours of elbow grease using acetone, Goo Gone, Bug & Tar Remover, and Goof Off... I finally managed to remove a fair amount —but not all— of the melted goo, as shown in the photo to the left.
You will see that there were still streaks and stains around the damaged portion of the hull and even pockets of the melted goo that had since solidified into the fiberglass. |
| I determined that the only way I could complete the task was to sand the remaining stains. I used 320-grit waterproof paper with my electric sander, constantly spraying the area with soapy water as I worked.
Little by little, I managed to clean off the damaged chine as best I could to then attempt to repair the gelcoat, shown in the photo on the right. As one might expect, what I ended up with was a relatively “flat wound,” as though someone has sliced off that portion of the gelcoat with a knife. |
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Here I need to give credit to International Marine: they have been more than helpful in trying to help P-19 owners rectify this problem. As soon as they found out that my hull had been damaged, they sent me free-of-charge a gelcoat repair kit that contained not only the right color gelcoat for my boat (yellow), but also hardener, rubbing compound, acetone, a paintbrush, a bottle with an attachable aerosol spray cannister, sanding disks of various grits, and a set of instructions.
Unfortunately, by the time the the package arrived, the gelcoat had become the consistency of rubbery tofu. The only conclusion we could draw was that UPS had let the package sit for too long in a hot plane or truck, so International Marine sent me more gelcoat and hardener, again free-of-charge.
Having never worked with gelcoat before, I made some erroneous assumptions about the process —and plenty of mistakes. For example, I surmised that the best way to apply the gelcoat would be to use the aerosol cannister. This would likely be an ideal method to repair small scratches or dings, but the damaged area in this case was simply too large and deep. The aerosol ran out long before I could adequately spray the gelcoat over the entire “wound,” so I had to turn to the alternative method of using the paintbrush.
I also naïvely thought that the task would be similar to applying drywall “mud” and thus could “plaster” the gelcoat over the damaged portion of the chine in one application. What I found was that gelcoat is more like thick paint. Consequently, as I tried to apply it to the flattened, vertical surface of the hull, it did not “stick” as well as I anticipated, but rather ran down and dripped off the edge. Because of these errors, I ended up wasting about a third of the can of gelcoat.
| It finally dawned on me that this would be a multi-step process. What I needed to do was mix up only enough gelcoat to paint on one coat at a time, let it cure, wipe it with acetone, then paint on another coat, let it cure, then another, and another, etc., etc., until I had finally built up enough of a patch to fill the “wound,” as the photo to the left illustrates.
In all, the process took about five days, and would have taken longer if the weather had been cooler. Of course, it was only afterward that I learned that it is possible to add “filler” (whatever that is) to the gelcoat to thicken it for “plastering.” We live and learn, I suppose. |
| Next, I needed to sand the patch so that it blended seamlessly into the shape of the hull. I was tempted to use the sanding disks that International Marine supplied in its kit, but I do not own a buffer and my experience in using a drill for such jobs filled me with trepidation, since all too often a drill can “catch” and gouge the surface.
I opted to again use soapy water with my electric sander, first with 320-grit waterproof paper, then 400-grit, and finally 600-grit. I would have liked to use 1000-grit, like International Marine suggests, but could not find any at my local hardware stores. I did the final sanding stages by hand, as I wanted to be very careful not to wear away the patch itself. I then used the rubbing compound with a buffer pad on my drill to polish the area. To the right is a photo of the finished repair. |
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The result was better than I expected, given my inexperience with gelcoat, but it does have some minuscule flaws. For instance, I found that, unbeknownst to me, a loose bristle from the paintbrush had come off and was imbedded in the patch. I have simply left it as a “fossil” in the repair in homage to my inexpertise. I have also found that a few spots within the repaired area still seem a little duller than the rest of the hull, but I am hoping that some good marine polish, and then some wax, will take care of those blemishes. I should add, by the way, that International Marine matched the yellow on my boat perfectly. My hat goes off to them.
Now that I had repaired Harried Potter, I could turn my attention to fixing the problem with the trailer so that this kind of damage would never occur again.
