Advice for my boat that took a highway skid at 55MPH

[pantaloonz]

Yes, the boot took a detour today and skidded along the highway and off the shoulder.
My buddy was towing it, the winch strap strapped, and *I did not have the saftey hitch latched-- shame on me*
No one was hurt, and the boat slid harmlessly off the road.

I want to thank the 15 strangers who pulled over and helped me and my friend MANHANDLE that boat back on the trailer. Amazing Human Teamwork!

Anyway it appears to have skid right along the keel and a slightly kiltered to the right. It peeled the paint and probably a few layerd of fiberglass. Though I can see no holes or major gashes or anything indicated the hull was penetrated (except for a small hole I found unrelated to today)

Here's the Bow and gashes along the keel: all of wish are not wide or particularly deep.



This is before I did any work. Here is the worst part, the stern under the drain and you can see the underside of my draink where the pavement shaved it quite nicely.. though it does appear still miraculously sealed..


I've gone ahead and sanded the entire damaged areas from bow to stern. Course grit, wipe down, fine grit wipe down (done with elecrtic sander and by hand) The cleaned with denatured alcohol.
I went ahead and applied a thin coat of resin over all the damage. It's already much much better.

Now the questions:

Obviously I'm not going to be able to easily apply fiberglass to the hull..
I have a little bit of fiberglass experience, I fiberglassed the replacement engine box recently, I used some pretty cheap fiberglass matt as I had strads of it going everywhere. But I understand how to use it and I have the gloves, mask, and all that..

1. The structure of the boat is surprisingly whole... should I have it professionally evaluated? I see no stress cracks or anything..besides the skid marks.

2. Is applying new fiberglass the best bet here? : If so
A. What is the best mat I should use
B. I have standard resion/hardener from my local home depot, should I go differnet?

3. Would several layers of resin be more appropriate?

4. Drain plug? Pry if off and replace or resin/glass around it?

5. Do it myself.. or leave it to te pros?

6. what kind of paint/primer?

I will be redoing the winch and verifying all safety mechanisms. and rest assured.. I will NEVER forget the safety chain agian..

--P.S. 3 of 12 gents that stopped...did so because the same happened to them :0

-Pantz

 

[ChizelSpiel7]

Damn. I thought i had problems with my new bought boat. Good thing nobody got hurt. Good luck on the lesson learned. . I now now what bellows are. Very important to check you're bellows as well.

 

[Yacht Dr.]

Well I dont see anything too serious there Pantz. But the bottom two pics are kinda too close..can ya post a few longer shots?

If all you need is mat..then thats all there is too it. Home D. resin might be ok. Labeled resin on big box shelves tend to kick off real fast like. But its not like your doing stringers so you might be ok mixing small batches.

 

[pantaloonz]

Thank you Yacht Dr.

It also does not appear to me to be extensive, just a good strong case of road rash.

Yes the labeled resin does set very fast I only did 2 ounces last night just to test/get a feel for it. I'll be attacking it in three sections. Making sure to give myself plenty of time for the stern where it's most extensive.

Doing a bit more research around applying/reapplying the gel coat. The worse wear is in the last two pictures. I was under the boat with my phone taking the pic so yeah they are a little close up. I will get a couple more shots of the stern rash tonight from further away. These pictures will also show the sanded/prepped areas a bit better.

I'm thinking I need to redo the gel coat too. so I'm headed to Hamilton marine today: List;

Fiberglass mat.
Gel Coat - (proper white)
New Jacks
secondary winch (this will NEVER happen again)

Home Depot:
Sandpaper - several different grits for gel coat repair
Mixing sticks
Better mask
disposable brushes

High level plan:

Lay a single layer of new mat along the majority of the thin gashes: then gel coat it.

Lay required levels of mat on the stern area

Fill the smaller hole (not all the way through) I found when doing this work.

Gel Coat the stern area.

...
-Pantz

 

[Woodonglass]

The mat sold at HD is only .75 oz. I'd highly recommend two layers of 1.5oz CSM or 4 layers of the .75oz HD stuff. Since the HD resin KICKs so fast you can stop it from doing so by cutting back on the amount of hardener recommended by a few drops. It also helps if you set the can of resin in a pan of icewater. Makes it think the temps are a bit colder outside. If you need to build up the stern area a bit you could use some cabosil to thicken the resin up some and cut up some of the CSM to make some "Tiger Hair" and spread it out first and then lay the glass over it. That works great too.:thumb:

 

[pantaloonz]

Good Morning

Had a great conversation with the gentleman at the marina where I was picking up my supplies. He was extremely helpful and made a lot of great recommendations; the first of which I completely ignored !

Never try to lay a 8" X 16" piece of fiberglass mat upside down... I can laugh now but man I was ugly when I couldn't get that damn thing to stay stuck..

Anyway I threw out that batch of resin and mat and did what I was told, pre-cut numerous workable strips. I used pre cut fiberglass "tape" as he called it along the keel down to about 4' away from the stern where I had to start using wider strips. It was a huge pain in the arse, as I've only done fiberglassing when I was standing up and have the wood easily reached.. I won't lie, it's not pretty and it's going to need some sanding, and a few bubbles cut out.. but I feel much better about the stern I need to run a few more strips down each side of the more deep cuts.

Here's the bow/keel snapshots:


I'm not going to even try to get the "point" shape back, the damage is not extensive enough for me, and I'm simply not skilled enough to attempt it. That was a couple layers there.

The stern has 3 layers;
Before:
looks better there than this:

as you can see I've got some bubbles and stands to fix/grind/sand on area in particular I'll need to grind down hard.. alas imperfection!

So tonight is:
Clean up the botched areas (there really isnt that much)
Add a few more lines along the bow/keel where the most material was lost.
Sand and clean well the entire length for tomorrow is time to start gel coating.

-Pantz

 

[pantaloonz]

Anyone do any Gel Coating ?

I'm very intimidated to try and lay this on.. upside down after my pretty ugly fiberglassing (I fixed it up tonight).

I'm considering just priming and paint, but If the gel coating is doable I feel I should try it.

 

[Woodonglass]

Just use a roller like painting. It's two parts like resin so once you add the hardener you'll have 15-20 mins so mix up the appropriate amount. Roll it on and wait 45 mins for cure then mix some more and roll on some more. 3-4 coats should do it. Then the fun begins!!! Start sanding with 180 grit and work your way up to 1000 grit wet sanding.

 

[Yacht Dr.]

Hiya again Pantz.

Looking at your newest addition pics it seems like the back end got ground down to the drain plug fitting. Can you confirm this. IT looks like there was some delamination going on it the first pic..so If you got that much taken off then you should probably get some more glass on there. Speaking of glass..that 'tape' that you got is worthless. Dont believe me?..wet out a scrap piece, let it dry..then tear it like paper.

As far as the gelcoat goes. You could do like Woody said..or mix some up in a preval sprayer ( some reduction is required ). Spraying it will go on smoother but it will take a few power heads and some patience. ( spray wait..spray wait..). Same gig as rolling. You could leave it or sand and buff it out.

Sorry bit Ive been very busy lately so I missed a few days posting.

 

[pantaloonz]

Thank you both!! again for all the posts, and no apologies necessary, I'm grateful for any advice.

You were right about the tape, it's pretty lousy stuff its just too small to work with and even with a small brush you wind up with resin way past the boundary of the tape. It was impossible to use that along the very bottom as well but I was able to use along the sides of the bow/keel and that worked ok. I did end up layering 4 layers of glass on the stern to raise it back up somewhat (it'll never match the original hull but I'm alright with that)

Yes the grinding happened right up to the drain plug: to be fair though, this outside plate of this plug was not more than 1/4" from the bottom of the hull to begin with, so there wasn't much for the pavement to grind out. I've glassed in another 1/8" or so with the glassing I did.

I did a lot of sanding/grinding on the fiberglass that I laid. Hindsight always being what it is. I would have used a slightly lighter mat than 10oz, and done more layers, a bit more slowly with my own: traced out and precut pieces to match the damaged areas.. (live and learn)

The first layer two layers of gelcoat went on last night. That stuff actually went on pretty easy. My brush stiffened out long before the stuff in the cup did. So I changed brushes halfway through to avoid clumpy and obvious brush groves which should cut down (slightly) the amount of wet sanding that needs to be done.

Based on what you said above, and the fact I can still see the outline of the glass in some places, another couple coats tonight is probably in order. Now that I'm familiar with how it goes on I can do that quite efficiently.

Hey Wood, being this is on the bottom of the boat, I suppose I could just leave it be for now since only I'm gonna know it's there. But here's the question. Let's say I apply another 2 coats tonight, the 3rd coat regular, the 4th coat with the wax additive. Would I, at the end of the season be able to do the wet sanding procedure, or do you need to do the sanding within a specific time frame?

Thanks again! all

I'll post some pic maybe later tonight or tomorrow. I lost the intermediate photos.. darn phones.

-Pantz

 

[Woodonglass]

Once the final Waxed coat of gelcoat cures you're good to go. You can do the final sanding/finishing anytime. Heck do it next year if you want!!!

 

[pantaloonz]

Brilliant!

I'll go ahead and lay on gel coat #3 with standard hardener. Wait for cure. Then go for gel coat #4+wax! .. need a little help here though.

The gel coat I have says added 8cc per pint(16oz) of hardener. I mix 1/2 pint batches: so 4cc of hardener.

There are no instructions on the wax additive bottle. The gel coat can just says: mix any other additives in well before application.

how much wax additive in an 8oz batch of gel coat?

-Pantz.

 

[ondarvr]

The same amount, or slightly more than the amount of catalyst added, which comes out to 2% or so. It won't really make much of a difference if you're not going to sand it until a much later date though.

 

[pantaloonz]

Thanks Ondarvr, jus the information I needed!

-Pantz

 

[Yacht Dr.]

Just making sure that you had enough build back there. A lot of drain plugs are not Flush to the bottom of the inside of the bilge ( about 1/4" higher ). The flange being about 1/4-3/8" would have suggested that the repair was just about through the boat. So its really up to you to determine if you're good to go

At least the thing didnt hit a tree

 

[pantaloonz]

Thanks for the further info YachtDr. I share the same concern around losing some stability at the drain plug, and that's where I concentrated the fiberglassing. All of the glass I laid around the stern stemmed from that area back. -- It does not look good and I did a pretty hacky job.. but I feel better about having it build back up and I'm anxious to put it on the water and make sure we're still holding water!

I finished the 4th gel coat last night. Naturally where I used the least amount of fiberglass looks the best. And where it looks like a three year old was smearing plaster on the wall looks the worse. But again.. this is on the underside, it does appear still structurally sound, and I'll be living with it. It's good enough for me. Here's the set of pictures from best to worst (bow to stern essentially). The first pic I removed some tape to show the contrast.



With some sanding I could make it look a bit better, but I want to get my toy back out there so, if I'm so inclined I'll get to it at the end of the season.

I want to thank:

Yacht Dr.
WoodonGlass
Ondarvr

for your guidance and information, it was very helpful and my next fiberglass/gel/paint job will be that much better.

I got my eye on a 14' aluminum fishing boat that just came up for sale at the end of my road.. (no fiberglass needed I hope!!!)

-Pantz

 

[Yacht Dr.]

Once you get the hang of it its not all that bad. You did a fine job and all the fairing can be done at a later time. Like you said, getting that baby out there is top on the list while the season is in full swing

Happy boating and stay safe.

 

[pantaloonz]

Hi gang!!

Success! ! Had the best boating tone so far!!! Enigibe ran great and I took in only a very small amount of water. Maybe a couple pints!!

I'm very happy and thanks again !!

-pantz

 

[Woodonglass]

Woo Hoo!!!! It's ALWAYS a goo thing to be ON THE WATER!!!!! Congrats, Here ya go....