Re: Help... 1/3 way through trasom repair and...!
Yeah, removal of the outer skin is actually easier in a lot of ways than removing the inner skin, but you have to be good at finishing gelcoat and matching finish and color to have it look anything close to good.
It's like painting a car... you can do it yourself with a rattle can, but it'll look like you did. To make it look good you do lots of prep, pick a high quality paint, apply it in the right way in a spray booth, and oven cure.
Most people don't know how to do that in gelcoat, so they end up with a solid transom and a boat that looks like crap, which kills the resale value and a lot of pride in ownership.
That's why we mostly recommend working from the inside here. Plus usually the same boats that need transoms need stringers too, so you need to pull out most of the interior anyway, in which case doing the transom from the outside IS actually more work than just doing extra work on the inside when putting in new stringers.
Erik