Fiberglass over gelcoat??

Hi Everyone,

I need a bit of guidance. I just picked up a 1980 Hobie 18 from the original owner (got a great deal on it), and am getting to work on it. The boat's in pretty good shape and I have most of the repairs under control, but there's one thing that's got me stumped.

There was a good sized gouge on the side of the port hull where another boat ran into this one. I don't think it got down to the fiberglass, but it's hard to tell because of the former owner's repair. He filled in the gouge with a cut-to-shape piece of fiberglass, filled in with resin, etc., and topped off the repair with a strip of fiberglass over the top of the gouge, about 2 inches wide by 12 long, over the top of the surrounding gelcoat.

Structurally, it's quite solid and I'm not worried about it failing or anything, but I'd like to make it look nice again. Can I just sand down the fiberglass he added until it's a little lower than the gelcoat surface, then fill in the depression with gelcoat, then sand and fair the hull? I'm just a bit thrown by the fiberglass-over-gelcoat bit.

Along the same lines, he added a few strips of glass over the bottoms of each hull as well. Once again, over the top of the gelcoat. This one won't bug me as much since it's not visible, but it's not very streamlined either. Once again, can I just fair in the glass on the bottom? Do I even need to cover this in gelcoat? If so, where can I get enough of it to cover such a large area? All the gelcoat kits I've seen are quite small. The hulls are sky blue as well, so I'll still need to die any gelcoat I add there.

Any thoughts on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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-Bill

Conesus Lake, NY
1976 Hobie 14

Not the best when over the gelcoat, but sounds solid.

I would sand flush and spray over.

The keels? The same. Grind or sand flush. No real need for get coat though. You may want to seal with some clear finishing resin.

Gel coat or epoxy? Go Epoxy. The original gel is not available in blue and wouldn't match anyway.

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Matt Miller
Former - Director of Parts and Accessory Sales
Warranty and Technical Support
Hobie Cat USA
(Retired 11/7/2022)

Yeah, laying glass over the gelcoat isn't optimal, but if it's working well... you can't argue with that. if you plan to use the boat on the beach I might leave the glass on th ekeels to help protect it from wear; if you're concerned about the drag you could sand it smooth. I dunno. Good luck with that!

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Warm regards,

Jim