Below are some photos of some little cracks in the under the starboard hull, and in the rear starboard transom around the lower gudgeon. I would really appreciate any advice as to the severity of this damage and what I should do about it. Previously that hull was basically watertight but now about 4-5 litres come out after an hour of sailing.

The last two pics are of discolouration around the port lower gudgeon, and tiny cracks around the pylon support.

I am completely new to sailing so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

The keel pics look very serious. The others are probably fairly easy repairs.

Get professional help! It could be a serious safety issue if that hull fails in heavy seas. Better safe than sorry. Also, if that hull failed, the other could be next.

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Kenny Boudreaux
2010 C2 F18 USA 323
Goodall Design "Southern Area Rep"
Owner of Sailboxes.com
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I recommend start looking for a replacement hull. From the pictures that one is shot due to the crack along the bottom. The price to fix it would easily out weigh the cost of a solid used one. If you have insurance on the boat I may look into that as well.

You can get a replacement hull for less than replacing your boat. That hull is beyond help.

I wouldn't be so quick to write that hull off but then i'm the do-it-yourselfer type for sure. My 1st question is; is there any delamination of the foam-core areas (soft spots)- because if there are, that would weigh heavily on whether or not I would do the following. All of the areas shown in the pics are solid glass areas which are definitly fixable in my opinion. If this were my hull I would remove it from the tramp frame, turn it upside down on some saw horses and use a 4" hand grinder with a 40 grit wheel and remove the gelcoat around all of the cracked/fractured areas in order to get a proper assessment of the damage....accept for the area around the pylon. Judging from the pics of that area I would say those look like cracks in the gelcoat. I recently reworked both of my h16 hulls including a complete re-gelcoat. The bottom of both hulls were completely worn all the way through. They honestly looked like they had been dragged on concrete for a couple of miles. I ground the gelcoat off about 7' along the bottom in the middle of the hulls and about 4" up each side and layed up 3 peaces of 3/4 ounce mat along with one really heavy layer of woven. Then used polyester filler (bondo) to smooth them out and finally re-gelcoated. The hulls are no doubt a little heavier then original but they are certainly structurally sound. The transome area shown above in my opinion would be the easiest to fix with a heavy glass layup... mybe 1/4 to 3/8 thick.
On a different note, I have a new project boat - h18 that has severly delaminated hulls. I'm considering some different methods of fixing this and plan to start a thread to track my adventure with this. Being that this is such a common problem with the old hobies, maybe we can all learn a few things. Then again, i might just cut the hulls up and cart em out to the curb for pickup. I'll let you all know what I decide if anyones interested.
Regards, ~john

...a followup on my commments about fixing the transom....the first time i ever pulled the gudgions off a hobie, i thought the 1/4 inch stainless machine screws had been added by a previous owner as a quick fix. To my surprise, I found later that they were OEM. I thought this a poor design since the screws were just threaded directly into the transom, probably along with some marine 5200 caulk for added strength. The only sense I could make of that was maybe the design was to allow the gungions to seperate from the transom during a hard hit to the rudder but that doesn't make much sense either. Anyway, my point is, If i ever had to repair a transom or fix the screw holes because they got stripped out, I would put a 4 inch inspection cover in the deck so I could put stainless washers and nuts on the inside end of the machine screws.
~john

jlillie there is a metal plate behind the wood on the hobie transom