Minor deck gel coat repair

[Ross D]

I pressure washed my Vega properly for the first time since buying her last season. The dirty spots which were over the majority of the deck and all over the cockpit have turned out to be numerous minor dinks in the gelcoat, most only a few mm across but some larger, I guess these are from 30years of sailing there is nothing major or structural.

What is the best option for quick gelcoat patching?

Does anyone have any advice on a more permanent repair? Re-gelcoating the entire deck is not really an option, what about paint or deck coverings?

 

[oldsaltoz]

You could simply apply small amounts of flow coat with a bush of suitable size for the area/s to be treated, it goes on just like paint.

Flow coat is the same stuff as gel coat but has wax added to no need to cover it with plastic to get it cure.

I would avoid any paint at this stage as it will need cleaning off if you ever wanted to treat the whole deck.

Good luck.

 

[William_H]

Deck repair

Most decks have molded in non skid. This makes decent gel coat repair very difficult to make it look like original.
At some point you will end up painting the deck. Then you have to make it non skid as the paint fills the hollows of the non skid. I would suggest that you use a polyurethane 2 pack paint. This I think is sometimes eroneously called epoxy. It is a resin with very good adhesive properties plus UV resistance.
If you can get the right colour you could use it as a patch on the holes and it should adhere better than gel coat or flow coat. Polyester from which the boat was made is not such a good adhesive although probably still OK.
I ended up painting my decks with polyurethane in white. I reasoned it would be easy to match the colour and of course cooler which it is. However it does mean sun glasses are obligatory for almost all sailing due to the glare. a beige would have been better. I used Intergrip into the paint for non skid. (grains sprinkled on the wet paint.
The paint does not stand up to hard wear in areas like the cockpit floor but does mean it is easy to touch up each winter. So the surface of the boat is easily sustained in present condition. (not brilliant but never bad.)(I brushed on the paint don't spray it is dangerous stuff)
Good luck olewill

 

[Deleted member 36384]

West System Instructions For Gelcoat Repairs

This link on the West Epoxy Systems site has all sorts of information on surface coatings.

In the paragraph on "Polyester Gelcoat" there is a link to download their book "Fibreglass Boat Repair and Maintenance". In Section 2.0 of the book you will find specific instructions for your problem.

Good luck, the book is a good source for all sorts of other GRP work.

 

[V1701]

Same on my Vega which is 40 next year! Ive patched the (20 plus) holes and dinks in & around the cockpit using ordinary gelcoat filler. I did try to colour match it by adding a bit of enamel paint to make it off white. That didn't work very well so now I'm going to paint the whole cockpit, most probably using Hempel's (Blake's) Multicoat, as recommended by another forumite as it's not so glossy as the two packs. If you want to go with a more glossy finish single pack then Toplac would fit the bill I think, and (would you believe) Dulux Weathershield is recommended by people on here for the textured areas of the deck. If you paint with one part paint you can't then go on to repaint with a two pack whereas if you paint with a two pack you can subsequently repaint with either one or two pack. Two pack is more hard wearing. The worst part was sanding the gelcoat filler, ended up buying a detail sander from Lidl for £15 to do it with...

 

[Ross D]

Thanks for the tips, one of my concerns with the deck was covering/filling in the moulded non-skid areas. Matching coulour is not a real prioirty as our Vega is a kind of mottled colour anyway, I wish we only had 20+ dinks to fill in. There are about that many on each side where you step into the cockpit, not to mention the mast base. Also I think at some point Chelabelle has been owned by a serious sailor, who has subsequently taken off most of their gear so we have filled holes everywhere.

Good tip about gloss white, I think we will go for an off white colour to avoid the glare. I looked up Dulux Weather shield on the forums and found Sandtex also recommneded as a deck paint. I was thinking of treadmaster but that seems a very expensive way of achieving non-skid.

 

[Hardley]

Thats the problem with Pressure washing, it will find all the small viods below the gel coat, I know to my cost, having let a friend pressure wash the boat when I was in a hurry to get on the water.
As has been mentioned they can be filled, but take your time and do not over fill the holes, you could do a few at a time, cover the others with a waterproof tape untill you have time to get round to them.