Should I buy a boat with BAD gelcoat crazing?

[jeffsnox]

I'm in the market for a cruising yacht, and I need a mooring also... and, a yacht has come up for sale that's the exact type I want, in the exact place I want to moor, for sale WITH the mooring. Which is damn lucky!!

It needs a few things doing to it, nothing serious though.

But

The cockpit gelcoat is really really badly crazed. Not just here and there, but all over... and the cracks have taken up muck - so it looks pretty unsightly.

I think taking a tool to each and every crack, then refilling, would take years.

So what do I do?

Live with it? I'm told by a surveyor that it's not important except for cosmetics.

Buy something else? Which is bound not to be quite so handy.

Fix it? If so, how?

Clean it? Do you think it might clean up? Or will the dirt be DEEP in the crazing?

Boat is a Virgo Voyager. Circa 1984.

Ta!

 

[Hermit]

If is is bugging you BEFORE you buy the boat and there is no way to clean it find another boat - buyers market at the moment.

Rob

 

[aknight]

Jeff

Welcome to the forum.

I am assuming the crazing really is just that, and not stress cracking (for example around fittings that have been installed). The latter is a more serious proposition to fix.

Whether it's 'worth' doing the job is a difficult call for a boat of that age and (I suspect) value, unless you feel competent to do the work yourself and therefore don't have to pay someone else.

The best bet might be to gently sand the gelcoat, perhaps in a relatively obscure sample area to start with, and see how deeply the crazing has penetrated. Gelcoat is surprisingly thick and - depending how often it may have been deep-polished in the past 20 years or so - you may find that the crazing has not penetrated all the way through to the grp underneath. Spot gelcoat repairs are technically easy - get hold of Sailboat Refinishing by Don Casey on Amazon - but there is a real issue with colour matching the new gelcoat to the old. If you make a lot of small repairs it will be pretty visible.

The theory is that you can lightly wet-and-dry all the (unaffected) gelcoat and use colour restorer, e.g. Meguiar's, with an orbital polisher to bring back its original colour, and so improve the colour matching with the repaired areas, but on those boats that I have seen fixed in this way, the match wasn't that great.

If the crazing is very extensive across the cockpit, then probably you are looking at a repairing the whole cockpit rather than patches. That removes, substantially, the colour-matching issue, but adds a new problem which is how to get a good, consistent finish across the large area of new gelcoat that you will be applying. There are various techniques, of which spraying is said to be the best, but spraying requires a degree of skill.

Are you planning to keep the boat, or is it just a short-term step from which you'll move on to something bigger once you're sure yacht ownership is for you? If you are moving on, I would be seriously tempted not to get too carried away with the gelcoat as the cost and effort won't benefit you personally and you will find it hard to recover the cost on resale. Perhaps, as stated above, just try light sanding with very fine grade wet-and-dry over the entire cockpit, then hire an orbital polisher and apply cutting compound/colour restorer, followed by a decent polish and wax. The materials (excluding the polisher itself) will set you back about £50 and you should see a noticeable improvement even if the gelcoat is still not perfect. I've used that technique on my boat with reasonable results - best of all it requires next to no skill, which is just as well in my case /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[DavidTav]

I wouldn't let it put you off if a surveyor reckons that it is only cosmetic. I would have thought that you should be able to get the boat at the right price to reflect the condition. If it were me I would either learn to live with it or possibly repaint with deck paint.

 

[Blueboatman]

Ah. Negotiate a serious discount to reflect the cost of getting the work done byt someone else-even then when you resell in the future you are limiting the number of potential buyers...Still a bargain?
Newbridge quality varied enormously from boat to boat-they moved factory and changed the skill levels of the workforce before going out of business.....so have a really good look at other stressed areas and also for evidence of wicking under the aft end of the hull (where it will appear above the waterline)...Those cracks are there because someone has done something wrong-delays between layup stages/condensation/bad mix/wrong reinforcement/cold poorly waxed mold /frost etc etc etc....

It would not stop me considering the boat/mooring package but worst case price would be prudent sum to offer,no ?.IMO

 

[Slowtack]

No

 

[Mudplugger]

I'd be tempted to go along with Andrew,s reply, and couple it up with the comments from BB,man. If? it is the right price, has a mooring that is convenient for you, and you are happy with the surveyor,s comments and capable of a little manual labour...go for it...Masking tape & Deck paint will probably cover 90% of the crazing! HTH

 

[simonfraser]

no, too much hassle for a first boat

find one you can use rather than a rebuild project

 

[billskip]

Maybe you should look at it this way

You are buying 2 things the boat and the mooring rights.

they have two seperate values The boat is "A" and the mooring is "B"

If you buy at the price that You feel is good for you ,you can allways sell the boat after a couple of years and you still have a "much sort after mooring" which alone could return you original investment.

I would be more concerned that "The Mooring" agreement Is watertight (ptpun)

As for the cosmetics of the boat you must use this in your negotiations with the intention of resale and upgrading but keeping the mooring rights All IMHO

 

[tangomoon]

Yes agree with you. Wife has put her foot down now; Renovating is disheartening if you don't have the right mindset and you always find more to do as you peel one layer more reveals itself. Still plenty do it. BOL.

 

[Dave99]

you are right by the sound of things it will need to be ground out and filled; it can come back also

 

[Avocet]

Speaking as someone with a boat that has badly crazed topsides, I can assure you that it's one hell of a job to undertake! In some ways, a cockpit will be even harder than topsides (a more complex shape to sand / polish). In other ways, it will potentially be easier - depending on how you want to treat it.

Although I looked at various options, I was convinced that the only way to do it properly was to remove the gelcoat (as if it had osmosis) and replace it - either with fresh gelcoat or (better) with epoxy. After the former, you will have to buff it to a gloss (if you want that sort of finish) which is a huge amount of work and after the latter you will have to paint it.

The least painful option would be to clean it and then paint with a high-build epoxy primer on a hot day. Then as the day cools, it might "wick" small amounts of it down into the cracks and stabilise the surface. The risk you run is that the degeneration of the gelcoat continues under the epoxy and all you do is postpone the day that it falls off!

Finally, I'd be worried that the rest of the boat's gelcoat might develop the same trouble one day. It's by no means certain, but if they used the same batch of defective gelcoat, it's a possibility you'd need to consider!

 

[Graham_Wright]

Cover it up!

I had a similar problem colour matching on the foredeck after a lot of work there. In the end I covered it with Tek-Dek (and the rest of the deck also). It was not cheap but the adhesive is very tenuous and adds a layer of sealant and the Tek-Dek looks fanatastic and is claimed to be superior to teak and last a very long time.

 

[jeffsnox]

Many MANY thanks for all the detailed replies!

I've since been and looked at a number of other yachts and have decided to steer clear of this one.

(I've also found some other moorings for sale separately, which definitely helps)

 

[Swanrad2]

Saw a guy do almost an entire Macwester 26 with crazing, my thinning paint, covering the entire area and sanding back after three coats you could not see any evidence of crazing. It was so easy, saw him again (4 years on) middle of the season and the boat still looked great. Just dont tell the current owner.

 

[Lakesailor]

Best solution. No need to ride on a lame donkey. There's plenty of fit ones out there.