Practical Boat Owner - July 2018

Accidental damage or osmosis

trouble, the repair techniques

are the same, says Tony Davies

T

he boat we’re repairing is a

15ft Fletcher speedboat that

was bought secondhand

by a couple new to boating.

Unfortunately they became the victims

of an unscrupulous dealer who was

quite happy to sell a boat with serious

hull defects that meant it very nearly

sank on its first trip out with them.

Evidently we still have to be wary of

rip-off merchants in this day and age.

I became involved while looking for a

suitable boat on which to base this feature.

Fortunately, I was able to right the wrong

perpetrated on these newcomers, thanks

to the generosity of Wessex Resins, who

supplied the materials and one of their top

experts to perform much of the work while

I simply stood back and took the pictures!

The main problem was that there were

no clear cut signs of where the boat was

leaking from. The floor was bonded-in

making it impossible to examine the hull

from the inside.

Below the waterline the hull had been

ineptly sloshed over with rough antifouling

that hid any underlying defects. This

meant we did not know what we’d find

until this layer was removed and we could

inspect the gelcoat. Expecting the worst

we therefore planned to sheath the hull

below the waterline with West System

materials to cover every eventuality.

(^2)
The first problem to
appear on closer
examination of the hull
was a rough patch of mat
and resin that had been
applied without proper
wetting-out or hull
abrading and was easily
peeled off. Curiously,
though, there was little
sign of real damage
beneath this.
(^1)
Being a smallish boat we could turn
her upside down to make the job
easier. I roughly marked the waterline by
referring to the discolouration on the
antifouling and lightly scored the gelcoat
to give us a line to grind down to.
3
A more serious flaw was found on
one of the strakes which had been
scuffed deep into the lay-up and was still
wet. This was a possible water entry point
and duly noted.
Epoxy sheathing
a boat hull
PRACTICAL
Investigation
Step
by
step