your absolutly correct it is a ton of work, alot of thought went into which way to go, but with all the repairs needed with stress cracks and cutting the cockpit in half to replace the tanks, I figured it was my best shot at getting the boat straight. I lost count of all the stress cracks and hollow voids we found, I basically ground off all existing gel on the deck and fairing, also did some bottom work replacing existing pickups with teagues rear feed style with the shute in the bottom feeding them. I haven't ruled out spraying it with either paint or thinned gel with durratec. My biggest deciding factor was durability, in my opinion paint is not as tough as gel. the cost was also consideribly cheaper, just alot more sanding, with the help of some good friends it shouldn't be that bad.

Next time use Duratec in your gel coat & no wax, it will dry like paint.

I follow you on voids as on my old race boat I used a gelcoat cup gun to dump it on the deck then sand it flat then surfacer then urethane . Nobody on the plantet will tell you gelcoat will outlive urethane in the elements . What your doing is fine but way more work and I know its much less work to have just long boarded the gelcoat with 180 then 220 and painted with urethane , much more gloss .