Fibreglass repair in the Bora Bora lagoon.
Anchored at night in the middle of a mooring field with our anchor light on we were hit by a small boat traveling at high speed.
Most of the debris on deck was pieces of the plywood speedboat.
The hole in the hull was substantial.
The entire job was done with hand tools, falling overboard with a 120V hand grinder in one hand does not sound like a good idea.
With all of the broken material cut away the hole looked absolutly huge.
We laid up test strips to see how thickened epoxy would work with different fiberglass materials available.
Thickend epoxy did not soak into glass mat well at all, but did work very well with glass cloth.
A cardboard armature was placed inside the hull to lay up the first layer of liquid epoxy and glass cloth over.
Fibreglass mat was added to build up the repair to match the origional hull.
The cardboard armature was scraped out of the inside of the patch.
A large patch was added to the inside of the hull using thickend epoxy to make the job less of a mess. The first layers of glass cloth were applied with liquid epoxy to ensure a good bond to the old material.
With the hull faired and painted she looked just about as good as new.
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