Fiberglass repair?

Sorry to post a second thread in one night, but I wanted to keep the issues separate.

On the keel (bottom) of my boat where the flat area begins to turn up there is about a 12" long section where the gel coat is worn down to the glass, and in a 3" or so section it has worn through to the second layer.





Question is: how serious is this? Should I do a small fiberglass repair to this area or just gel coat over it and call it good? The first layer appears to be a cut-gun layer and the second layer looks like a woven part of the glass layup. The woven section looks completely OK. It would be relatively easy to prep and cure in a layer of fiberglass repair just to cover over the woven section, but in the end I wonder if I'm just being too precise for no good reason? To do so won't add much structural rigidity to this area of the boat and a good thick layer of new gel should keep any water out of there for good.

Thoughts? Opinions? General advice? Give it to me!

Kevin

Use the side of a half dollar and tap the discolored area to see if you have any delamination (seperation) of the fiberglass. If you hear a dull thud or hollow sound you got delam in there and you will need to remove it. Taper sand the repair area so that when you add the repair it will lay down better. Remove the damage and leave as much parent sound material as you can. When you lay up the repair cloth use circles/ovals in your lay out and AVOID corners. Corners have the tendancy to lift up or can "snag" and cause the repair to lift off. Then continue with Pete's recommendation...

Silver dollars? I might try it with two quarters! :)

I'll do the tap-tap tonight and see what I hear. I looked over a couple of instructional videos on the web (good old you-tube) and they generally discuss repairs where you cut through the entire surface, which I don't plan to do. I'd like to just grind away to good surface next to this area and then lay in some glass mat and resin it up. Assuming the structure underneath is sound, that should work, right? Morfoot - thanks for the advice about edges!

I'm sure my wife will love the smells coming from my garage.

Kevin

Wow. That's interesting. I'm not thinking of cutting out my floor...

I did the tap test and everything is rock-solid.