CONTINUOUSWAVE

I bought a 13' Whaler 2 years ago before the forum upgrade I think. It had bad gelcoat crazing under a lousy paint job of some 2 part paint that was painted over the gelcoat without primer-very poor work. Lots of it has been sanded off, probably another go and there will still be some of that stuff on the boat, but it is not coming off easy, so I don't think I need to worry about it. It is a robin egg color, but not sure what exactly it is.... The crazing had worked its way through the blue paint especially looked bad on the hull sides. There are probably like 50-100 lines on each side of the hull. Way too many to grind out and fair.

It has other problems, too, but all in all not too terrible. One small hull hole (I will follow the cwave advice on foam repair with csm).

The transom was moist, but not rotten and I dried it out with heat lamps and cracked the gelcoat a little more doing so in one spot.

The cable pulley connections had crushed the hull from repeated overtightening without support over the years - really the worst problem on the hull. I had to remove the crushed glass on the outside of the transom and plan to fill with shredded mat and two small pieces of plywood so we can avoid repeating that problem. The plywood will get screwed to the inside with some washer coated or bagged off in plastic. It is all ready to do and the repair on the outside will be a little tricky because I don't have 3" on the chine edge for the mat, but I'll do my best.

All the holes in the transom for drainage or anything else were overdrilled to verify no rot and to allow for refilling with epoxy. Any tricks on filling a 3/4" hole that goes through the boat? I'm a little worried about exotherm if I just use colloidal and epoxy.

So I was going to do an overlay of the entire hull with 6 oz glass after fairing out any dings or gelcoat removed to make it less of a gelcoat boat and more of an epoxy and glass boat, but yesterday even though I have peelply and breather and vacuum bag, I got a little worried I'd end up with lots of voids due to all the chines and curves of the hull even under full vacuum, and I also worried about getting the glass cut to the right length so when the vacuum bag is connected, my glass wouldn't be short.

And so I started to reconsider and thought about just sanding well, and then either A - just putting an epoxy basecoat over the entire boat and no glass and sanding, or B - just using System 3 yacht primer which is an epoxy based primer.

The ideal would probably be for the gelcoat to be peeled, but that seems a little much for this little boat.

I would like any finish I put on the boat to not end up with the crazing coming through.

Thanks for any advice and I really like the forum change.

I will get some pictures uploaded later this weekend.

Then, this boat has no wood.

I have a lot of very beautiful walnut. And I know how to make the walnut a deep red. Is there anything sacrilegious about using walnut v mahogany for the wood for the boat?

Personally I prefer mahogany but pretty wood is pretty wood. I would do a little research on the suitability of walnut in exterior boat building. Some woods are far more rot resistant than others and some hold varnish far better/longer. http://www.woodenboat.com may have some articles on the subject.