Deck Fix

[out2sea]

I spent Friday washing and waxing the boat (Hydrasport 230 WA Lightening Series) and I noticed a small ding (about the size of a quarter) in the port walkaround, about 2 feet towards the bow from the cockpit. It appears as though something heavy and blunt hit it (like the head of a hammer). It has a hairline fracture around the small circle and is slightly spongy to the touch. The decking is gel with a diamond pattern and there is no easy way to get to it from the bottom. Any suggestions as to how to make this right?
Thanks.

[likwid]

Probably gonna wanna drill it and inject epoxy to seal off the core in that area.

You'll never get the same color back patching.

[ScottC]

Yeah I agree with likwid, get some epoxy (west system if you can)
and get 404 filler balloons and some gelcoat.

Tape off a square around the area, drill and fill, the brush on the gelcoat. Get a few coats on. Wet sand even then polish. You can;t put age in a can so matching is near impossilbe but if you take your time you can make it mostly unnoticable.

[out2sea]

Thanks to both of you, I will try this approach.
Be well.

[zacs]

The harderst part is matching the nonskid. It depends on how nice of a job you want to do, but some people who are very particular about these things make a mold from of existing non skid patern, and press that into the repair before it cures. If you want detailed instructions let me know and i will dig them up.

[beamie]

What Zacs said about matching non-skid is right.

Not too hard to do. Find an area of the deck and wax it. Make a dam around it and pour in some Microballons and resin. Let cure. After cured tap it off.....now you have a mold of your non-skid. And like zacs said, use this to do your repair. You now have to wax your mold and use the right amount of filler for the damaged area and weight down your mold and let cure.

Really quite simple and fairly easy to do....

[ScottC]

You use the Meguires mold release wax, it comes in the gold can and works great.