Was taking my boat home to do some work on it and noted a soft spot on the deck of the starboard pontoon of my Prindle 18. On further evalaution there was about a 6" longitudinal crack that was obscured by the trampoline. Does anyone have any experience in fixing this type of problem. If so, what is your advice (don't tell me to get a new boat as I'd like to keep this one as long as possible)? Any suggestions as always are greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Scott
Prindle 18
Annapolis, Maryland
Scott, give me a call. I working an a similar crack on the Supercat and can help.
Andy
Pontoon are for pontoon boats - catamarans use hulls 🙂
Scott sorry about your hull problem! Andy: 'life is too short to drink cheap beer' I new when I met catsailors they were good people but that statement just proves it!!! Thats awesome!!!!!!
Edited by fa1321 on Apr 14, 2011 - 12:25 PM.
I got me some pontoon once, in a little place just outside of Vegas...
P18 have foam hulls, supercats are single layup if i'm right. There is at least no foam in our SC17.
I think the epoxy inject method could work for this repair.
SuperCats are foam cored, you may find spots on a SuperCat where there appears to be no foam (near the seam) this is due to the seaming method used. It's basically a tongue and groove. Aquarius Sails has a great forum where you can read all about the SuperCats.
When you remove the non-skid paint on a SuperCat, much is revealed. After bonding the hull halves together, they ground off the goobers (ooze out) and faired the hull from front beam to stern with bondo-like putty, then painted the decks with non-skid.
G-Cats have an all glass hull, there is some 'core-mat' in the deck and the bulkheads of a G-cat. The G-cats don't suffer the small compression dings that cored boats get when bumped into.
Sorry, this is way off topic. and yes, resin infusion is the best way to repair Scott's P18.
Andy
injection will do fine...if you'r still a little freaked out w/the crack then you can sand off the gelcoat a good 2" around the crack and lay in a layer or two of glass and fair out. i'd probably glass it first then do the injection. if your a neat freak then you can match the gelcoat and touch it up when done. yeah, big cracks near structural pieces on a hull are worth the extra mile.
Thanks for all your help. Have injected the hull with West Epoxy. The soft spots are now HARD. Plan to fix the crack with grinding it down and filling with layers of glass and then fairing it out as recommended.