If the crack is where I think it is, ( under where the front of the mirage drive sits). That is a high stress area, and even on a new keyak if you put the kayak in a pool, have someone start pedaling with the nose of the kayak up against the edge of the pool. Then stick your hand under that area as they are pedeling, you can actually feel how much that area flexes. Even on the newer hulls with the brass insert inside. Typically no amount of welding can stand up to that force. One of our hulls got so bad, that we made a little V bracket from aluminum that spread that force over a wider area. We just bent up some aluminum stock so the front of the mirage tang sat on that, then the aluminum followed up the wall, ( on the inside of the mirage pocket), then two long flat areas that we screwed to the floor in the kayak. We then tested in the pool again, and the hull flexing went away. We were then able to weld the crack with the hobie welder. Because we solved the stress issue, the weld held up just fine, ( didn’t get any worse, ( as they normally do). We also did the silicone trick on the inside, as I outlined earlier. It never leaked again after that. We attacked the root cause of the problem, not the resultant problem, ( that’s important). Just welding it is like putting lipstick on a pig, ( doesn’t solve the root cause), which was a bad design to begin with. Hope this helps FE
Edit: We did very long distance offshore kayaking with our many Tandem Island kayaks, and had our mirage drives upgraded with Eclipse fins, ( require double the pedaling force). That was the only way we could get the hulls to survive offshore, in sometimes pretty harsh conditions in open ocean. Our TI’s were heavily modified for offshore use. Just to be clear.
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