How deep should I go?

I've put this one off all summer.   Now it's time for action.   I think I will have to take the gas tank out & reinforce this from the inside.    Of course I will fix the gel from the outside.   What do you guys think?

The PO must have caught a stick or something with the pitot tube. I would think an impact hard enough to crack this much gel would have broken off the pitot tube.

Good point, Eric, didn't think of that. Maybe it's not fractured all the way through.

By the way, you were on the site at 6:30 AM too. You don't watch much TV either??

There is so much glass in that area that I am sure it is not cracked through. If you die grind the crack form the outside you will see very easily if it extends into the glass and how far. If it does but not all the way through I would grind until you are into good glass, bevel the glass back at a 45 approx., then fill it with polyester resin thickened with microfibers and cabosil (silca). The cabosil will help in not sag. underfill it so you leave room for gelcoat. once cured gelcoat the area and put a piece of wax paper over it to get it smooth and flat. You should add some wax to the gelcoat to keep it from being sticky.

This repair would be better with epoxy but then gelcoat is out.

I would not take the tank out and do anything from inside unless the crack goes all the way through.

My two cents. Jim

Chris,
I'd just route out the gel (Dremel with a small burr) and see what's under it. Yes, there's lots of hull under that area. Epoxy resin isn't out of the picture here if you do see some cracking under the gel. Yes, polyester resin/gel doesn't like to stick to epoxy and a conversion layer of polyvinyl resin is usually used but that's on big areas when you're doing a complete regel. A small gel repair like this you won't have a problem. If it is cracked under the gel, use a glue injector (syringe) and get the epoxy into the crack. Wipe it down to remove any excess. Let it cure and then go back at it with the Dremel to just clean up the groove again. Then you can get the gel back in.

SNobsessed wrote: It will be interesting trying to color match!

Chris,
We'll all be sure to take a look when we're at GL 10! You're probably better at it than I am. It can be tough! Just use the end of a tooth pick to add the tints slowly. It doesn't take much!

Finally got this finished.

Here are the during & after pictures.

The PO had replaced the pickup with one that has a different base hole pattern & left the 3rd hole partially open! I wonder how much foam I soaked in the last 130 hours??

I made a rookie mistake on the color match - I rolled the boat outside to get some sunlight & matched best I could (to the deck). Then after block sanding the original gel color came through around my repair. Won't even mention the pinholes.

A little touch up paint (shame on me) & now it is good enough for the transom under the platform.

My hat's off to you guys that do this for a living!

Chris,
I can't see what the color difference and I'm sure others won't ether. Looks good. Now are you going to do the deck around the lifting ring?

I've posted a method that I find works for me. If you've missed it, here's what I do on critical gel repairs. Route the crack out. Overlay the area several inches on both sides with fine line tape. Go back and carefully route out the tape that's now covering the routed grooves. Overfill with the gel. Rough hard block wet sand level down to the top of the tape. The tape will prevent you from sanding the original surrounding area too much and act as a guide to your sanding depth. Remove the tape and finish hard block wet sand.