Help Please (gelcoat blisters)

[onpointe]

Wondering if anyone can recommend an affordable and relatively easy repair for blistering below the water line?? the boat is an 88 wellcraft nova spyder. Bottom never painted, and left in the water. There are 50-100 blisters from the bow to the stern. The price was right for the boat, and shes very clean, so I picked her up and now I need to get her right before the blisters turn into a serious problem. one guy told me its easy...he says use a dremel to open them up, and simply fill em all with epoxy. will this solve the problem?? Is there any specific kind of epoxy to be used?? I saw one minor stress crack on the transom, other than that, all the glass looks good.

Thanks

[onpointe]

How serious a problem are the blisters?? The boat was priced at 14k, and I offered 7500 because of them... Obviously its not worth 14, but I figured prob 10??? that being said, I'm saving 2500 to solve the problem myself...

[Audiofn]

It depends on how large and deep the blisters are.

[LAKESIDE RESTORATIONS]

I have done my fair share of bottom repair at our shop.. I agree the Blisters should be addressed. Assuming the blisters didnt wet into the hull too much & delaminate the glass cloth, they can be repaired. It is a bit of a time consuming process.. THey do have to be opened up, they do need to dry very well & they do need to be taken care of properly. However they can still occur or come back. That said if they are repaired with epoxy & properly dried out most are ok going forward. To help that the bottom could be epoxy coated, or treated with interprotect and then painted if you didnt want to go the gel coat route.. Hope this helps you.. Jamie

[jefro0690]

Grind them out, keep them small and gelcoat paste them! you cant gelcoat over interprotect>>> cant put polyester over epoxy... if you get the right color gelcoat thickenit with cabosol / paste like fill the in with a spreader, right before the cure fully brush on gelcoat this will prevent the gelcoat from cracking! then wet sand with 600 to 1000 buff with a wool pad using the secret compound its a stick compound made by matchless.

[glassdave]

no real easy way to correct it. If the blisters are small enough sand them off and either buff it or seal it and throw some single stage Imron on it. In all honesty, and i'm not knocking the boat in any way, with older boats its just not really cost prohibitive to dump the kind of money into it that it would take to really correct the problem. If the boat will be trailer kept I'd roll the dice and just do a superficial repair. I guess it comes down to how attached to the boat you are, I always liked the Nova's but not sure it would be worth sinking five or six grand in a repair that really caries no greater guarantee then burying it paint/sealer.

I did this on a late eighties Top Gun a few summers ago on a boat that had previously been soaked and it had several hundred small blisters all over the rise at the bow. While the boat was here for some other touch up he requested i just knock them down and toss some color on to freshen up. Boat has been lift stored and has looked fine ever since. I just did another Gun this spring and it seems to be holding up fine to. Certainly not the best or proper way to go about it but lets face it very few people want to sink that kind of jack in an older boat.

The proper way to correct it by the way is to strip all gelcoat to raw fiberglass. You can get a leg up on them by individually busting them but have no real way of knowing whats just below the surface on and adjacent areas.

[Scarab Billy]

I agree w/glassdave.....been there...done that