Im new and looking for suggestions and recommendations.

[jgos929]

It appears a couple of weekends ago when we were beached something took a chunk out of the bottom of my boat. From what I could tell it was a sandy bottom and I have a keel guard so I wasn't to worried about it. I learned my lesson and wont be doing that any more. As you can see in the pics there are two chunks missing. The first one just a pice of the guard is missing but the 2nd one actually took some of my boat with it. After all the reviews I've read and the easy how to's I think I am going to use the Marine-Tex putty to fill in the 2nd spot and get it back to where it was before. I also plan on installing another keel guard just for the extra security. My boat is green and the Marine-Tex is white, the guard on it now is also white so I was going to go back with a new green keel guard to better match the boat. After I do the repair with the Marine-Tex is there anything else I need to do to the spot before I put the new guard on? Since its going to be covered should I even bother with touching up the paint? From everything I've read nobody really goes into what they did after the spot was filled and it was always done on a boat with a white bottom.

My next issue as you can see in the pics are a ton of scratches along the bottom of the boat. What can I use to make that look better? I'm pretty handy with an orbital and my best friend owns a detailing company so I should be ok with the equipment aspect of this little project. I just have no idea what products to buy in order to get that back to looking good. I already have boat wax and color restorer but does this call for a rubbing compound of some sort and then come back with a restorer and a wax or can I get buy with the products I already have?

Thanks for the help.

 

[BWT]

Re: Im new and looking for suggestions and recommendations.

From what I can see in pic#1, looks like you need to do a little more than marine-tex; there is some broken glass visible. Looks like a small area and hopefully minor, but looks like whatever was hit was done fairly hard as it took chunks out of the guard (and that's some pretty tough stuff). First thing I would do is remove the entire guard so you can get a better look at the overall damage. Also, if you have access from the interior try and inspect that area as well to see if any of the impact carried through to the inside laminates. With a little luck you're looking at some grinding and new glass layup from the exterior side of the boat. With no luck at all, you may be repeating this process from the interior as well; hard to say without a little more investigation.

As far as the scratches, with your fingernail how deep do they feel? If they just barely catch your fingernail you'll be able to wetsand them out. If they easily catch your nail you MIGHT be able to sand them out. If you see any white at the base of the scratches when you wet it with water then it's going to be a little more entailed.

Let us know what you find.

Good luck!

~BWT

 

[jgos929]

Re: Im new and looking for suggestions and recommendations.

I am going to remove the guard this weekend and look at it closer. From what I can tell I dont have access to it from the inside or if I do everywhere I could get to felt solid. It looks to me the damage had to come from beaching. It looks like it was shaved off and not so much impact damage if that makes sense? Either way the guard is coming off Saturday. I know nothing about the repairs you're speaking of so I guess a professional consultation is in my near future. Damn.

The scratches look worse than they are. They wont catch your nail its more like a bad sanding job type of feel, its just a dull feeling instead of smooth like it is higher up on the boat.